On 30/09/04, Konrad Strauss wrote:
No matter what virtues can be expounded with respect to digital
files, I can't imagine anyone would say stability and longevity is
one of them.
I think that is only because a reliable physical medium has not yet
been
devised. Plastics materials are of doubtful longevity compared to gold
or ceramics.
In particular, the writable CDs do not have a fixing process to prevent
further exposure, unlike photographic plates (which are known to last
for 150 years).
On the contrary. We need to abandon the concept of the carrier medium,
rather concentrate on a file-based storage system. It is true that
when there is only a single copy, analog tape is probably the best
choice, but the best way to ensure that a recording survives is to
have multiple copies stored in different locations.
On different continents.
At this digital
excels. The ease of migration, easy creation of multiple copies, ease
of transmission etc, are a strong argument for the superiority of
digital storage. Not to mention the much lower cost.
I think the big weakness of digital has been that the quality of
conversion from analog was at first poor. Good current equipment
seems to satisfy the most critical sound engineers. (I'm not talking
about a $20 computer sound card here.)
Regards
--
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx