Re: [ARSCLIST] Taiyo-Yuden out of business??

[John Ross <johnross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

When planning a digital archive, it's absolutely essential to think 
about the bits separately from the media that carries them. Bob is 
quite correct that media types will appear and disappear over time, 
but as long as the file formats are well-defined and not tied to a 
single type of media, it ought to be possible to transfer the files 
to new media without any loss in quality.

Of course, this assumes that an archive has the foresight and 
resources to perform those transfers before the previous media type 
becomes unplayable. Not always a safe assumption, but it's probably 
the best we can do.

 >Parts can be easily constructed one-off at reasonable prices for devices
> playing cylinders and 78s.

Indeed. But it will be a great deal more difficult for tape, let 
alone wire and other more obscure formats. How many high-quality 
working 1/4-inch tape playback machines will still be in working 
condition fifty years from now? How many cassette machines? At some 
point, the only source for critical parts will be other machines -- 
and the law of diminishing returns rapidly kicks in. That's not 
related to whether the original recording equipment was analog or 
digital; it's true for both.

John Ross

At  9/3/2007 10:36 AM, Bob Olhsson wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From Don Cox: "...They will certainly be obsolete for _new_ storage by then,
> but it would be
> surprising if there were no machines available to play them. Equipment
> is available for playing cylinders and 78s..."
>
> Parts can be easily constructed one-off at reasonable prices for devices
> playing cylinders and 78s. Digital gear is made up of parts that are only
> affordable when produced in immense quantities. Most of them are also only
> constructed to a disposable standard of quality.
>
> The good news is that you can clone digital audio. The bad news is that you
> need to do so frequently in order to stay ahead of hardware that will
> probably never be available again after only a few years. Those of us who
> have been working on standards have watched formats disappear faster than
> any standards could be defined. As solid state memory and broadband delivery
> take over, I expect to see all digital storage involving moving parts go
> away rapidly. Working DAT machines are becoming very rare because there are
> no more parts.
>
> This parts manufacturing scale issue makes digital media EXTREMELY
> unreliable and expensive in the long run as an archival medium.