Re: [AV Media Matters] cassette tape shelf life?

[jeffkreines@mindspring.com]

>Get the important stuff transferred off to CDR while you still have access
>to an excellent playback machine. Use gold CDRs.

While that would be good for an access copy, wouldn't a 1/4" analog tape
be a safer bet -- that is, less likely to suffer from a catastrophic
digital data loss?  Sure, there might be a dropout here and there, but an
analog dropout that is far less tragic than a digital glitch that makes
the media unreadable.

I have some tapes of radio shows produced by my uncle (a really bad 5
minute detective show with one actor playing ALL of the parts!) from
about 1950, and, except for splices opening up, they all play fine.  Not
sticky, either -- 3M 100 acetate tape.  It was a tragedy when 3M decided
that their magnetic recording products division wasn't making enough of a
profit, and killed it off.  I always thought that their products were
better than Ampex and others.  Also, I really miss their 16mm and 35mm
mag film.

Of course, probably the best archival format for audio would be some sort
of uncompressed digital optical recording (with perhaps an analog safety
as well?) on polyester-based motion picture film. A silver image on
polyesterfilm, stored properly, should be good for well over 100 years.
But I doubt this will ever happen.  Too expensive.

It's always scary when new cheap technologies become the saviour --
witness the horrors of microfilm, and subsequent loss of data -- in the
world of libraries and newspaper archiving, as detailed in The New Yorker
a couple of months back.

Jeff "cold storage" Kreines