Especially the MP3 CODEC? I can't think of one, so that's
not my reason for being anti-lossy schemes. My reason is simply audio
quality. As for blowing up to WAV, as I said, it won't gain any
quality but might (small probability) make the file slightly less
vulnerable to being zapped by a drive-sector flaw due to less packing
density (that might not be the right computer-engineer term, but what
I'm saying is in WAV format, more space on the drive, more sectors are
required for the same linear time in audio, so one bad sector might
zap for instance a few measures that might be repeated elsewhere in
the WAV file but it could completely destroy most of a
lossy-compressed MP3 file and render it un-fixable). However, I think
you run about the same probability of that sector cropping up in the
file table or even the boot blocks, so the golden rule is many copies
in many places.
-- Tom Fine
PS -- for these open-source volunteer-work CODECS, the idea that they
might be unreadable in 50 years seems slightly more plausible. But MP3
is an industry standard established by paid scientists and is widely
licensed by for-profit companies and propagated.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brandon Burke" <burke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 3:50 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Digital Audio Preservation Question
Tom,
Converting an accessioned archival MP3 file to WAV doesn't, in an of
itself,
mean creating
a 24/96 derivative. And it sounds to me like you're jumping to that
conclusion.
In this case (Martha's original point), the issue is readability in
the
future: 10, 20, 50 years down
the road. Of course, my guess is as good as anyone else's here but,
i think
conversion to WAV
(16/44.1) still sounds like a pretty good idea..
Brandon.
Right, Richard, I read the original post. I was commenting about
lossy
formats in general.
As for the original poster's specific question, I don't see any
benefit in
blowing up an already inferior file, but I'd make several extra
copies in
different places on the theory that one bad sector could destroy an
MP3 file
whereas it might only cause a fixable glitch in a WAV file due to
the much
denser info-pack of the MP3 (ie what's left after the lossy
compression
packs more audio linear time into fewer hard drive sectors than if
the file
had been left full WAV). However, there's equal probability that
the sector
that will fail first will be the file table so the whole drive is
rendered
damaged, perhaps fatally. So it's a gray area. It all comes down to
many
copies in many places as far as digital storage but as far as audio
quality,
I believe there is no good argument that lossy compression is ever
a good
idea with archival versions of things.
-- Tom Fine