Re: [ARSCLIST] CD Longevity (was Vinegar syndrome audio tapes [ARSCLIST] Memorex CDs and more)

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Richard:

You're misunderstanding me. I don't believe for a minute that burned CD's can't sound as good as 
manufactured. My objection is paying the same price for downloaded WAV-quality files as a whole 
packaged CD, which is what the current business model for that service entails. With iTunes, you pay 
a little bit less than whole-CD prices (except of course when the CD is on sale and you've bought 
enough to get free shipping). But with iTunes, you get vastly inferior audio quality.

So here's my point, which I think you missed. This new service, of which Elliot Mazer is a 
participant or principle, sells full 44.1/16-bit songs, but at a price that equals about $15 per 
full album, same as street prices for CD's. My point was that that's not a market price for most of 
us since, for $15 per album, we expect artwork, a case and a manufactured CD vs. hours of downloads 
and burning our own CDs. In an ideal world, everything would be in print on regular manufactured 
CD's, but one of the plusses of downloaded digi-files is that it's a way to unlock some of the vault 
material in a distribution model where the copyright owners can make money on sales of a much fewer 
copies.

I was not stepping into the manufactured vs. burned CD's debate at all. I'm curious how you read 
that into my post.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2006 1:54 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] CD Longevity (was Vinegar syndrome audio tapes [ARSCLIST] Memorex CDs and 
more)


> At 01:21 PM 1/21/2006, Tom Fine wrote:
> > Elliot Mazer is involved in a venture that sells full 44.1/16-bit CD-quality files for prices more 
> > akin to printed CD's. My only beef with that is, it's not market price. You're paying for a full 
> > ride but getting no packaging, liner notes or aluminum/semi-permanent CD in the deal.
>
> Tom, our best bet is to convince Mr. Mazer to use MAM-A or other gold phthalocyanine dye CDs which 
> actually may last longer according to recently published accelerated aging tests by Joe Iraci.
>
> Once again:
> http://www.uni-muenster.de/Forum-Bestandserhaltung/downloads/iraci.pdf
>
> I agree about the album art missing, but please don't assume that burned CDs are inferior to 
> manufactured ones. At the very least, it's likely to be a non-issue, at the best, it's possible 
> that the burned CDs have a longer life expectancy.
>
> Sorry to nit pick on this, but we have a huge PR problem started by the IBM data tape guy in 
> Germany. It ticks me off. FUD simply FUD from the company credited with causing the invention of 
> the term (check Wikipedia).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard