Re: [ARSCLIST] Preservation media WAS: Cataloguing still :-)

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Speaking of drives, one man's observation here. The crop of Chinese or Korean CD-ROM and DVD-ROM 
drives being put in both dirt-cheap and mid-priced PC's today are as low-grade as I've ever seen. 
Very poor mechanisms, likely to lead to disc-read errors. The writing drives are not much better, 
although, for instance, I've been surprised how reliable the Philips DVD/CD writing drive in my Dell 
E510 has been (good enough that I haven't felt the need to spring for a Plextor). The worst seem to 
be the no-name stuff coming out of China that are found in lower-end Dell and HP. So before one 
condemns digital storage as "unreliable," one should make sure one has reliable hardware.

-- Tom Fine

PS -- I won't even get into how horrible the built-in audio is on most modern computers. Ever since 
Intel started building it into the motherboard, it's been a race to the bottom. Soundcrapper is now 
considered a deluxe add-on!

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jerome Hartke" <jhartke@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2006 7:09 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Preservation media WAS: Cataloguing still :-)


> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
> > [mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike Richter
> > Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2006 8:33 PM
> > To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Preservation media WAS: Cataloguing still :-)
> >
> > steven c wrote:
> >
> > > Well, there is an upper limit to the accuracy of any analog data-storage
> > > technology...if nothing else, the molecular qualities of storage media
> > > define a limit (albeit a VERY large one!). In fact, I would suppose this
> > > would also apply to digital media?!
> >
> > Digital media incorporate error correction in order to reduce the
> > probability that an error will affect the result. In fact, the raw error
> > rate of digital recording tends to be very high, but layers of ECC
> > reduce it essentially to whatever resulting rate is acceptable.
> <snip>
> Optical media raw bit error probabilities are typically a few per million
> (ppm) for good discs. This is very low. ISO limits are 58 ppm for DVD and 70
> ppm for CD.  There are lots (hundreds of thousands) of raw errors on a disc
> because there are trillions of bits. Error detection and correction normally
> reduces the read error rate of data to the host to zero. Of course, bad
> discs or drives can and do cause problems, similar to attacking a tape with
> scissors.
>
> Jerry
> Media Sciences, Inc.