Re: [IRCA] cassettes to digital media

[Scott Fybush <scott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles A Taylor wrote:
>  From what I infer from the back-and-forth about my question, I suppose 
> that converting analog audio into a purely data form is most advantageous.
> 
>  From my point of view, I want my 29 years of IDs to be stored in a form 
> that economizes in media space.

One quick thought on this before I head downstairs for dinner -

Especially when you're dealing with material that's as valuable (at 
least sentimentally, and in this case historically, too) as these tapes 
are, it's probably not a bad idea to approach a project like this with 
three questions:

1. How do I get the material into a form that's usable for me now? This 
argues for digitization, probably as high-bitrate MP3s that would take 
up half a dozen CDs or so if stored as data. Use those as the 
"day-to-day" listening copies, make dupes to send to all your fellow 
DXers to enjoy, post 'em on the web, what have you.

2. How do I preserve the content in the highest possible quality for 
future use? Data storage is cheap right now, and getting ever cheaper, 
so dubbing the cassettes to digital can and should be done in as 
lossless a manner as possible. Even high-bitrate MP3 compression (256 or 
320K) still isn't quite as good as the original, so if I were doing a 
project like this with a relatively small number of original tapes, I'd 
be sure to save the material SOMEWHERE as uncompressed .wav files. That 
will still only take 20-30 CDs or a half-dozen DVDs, which amounts to a 
couple of bucks in blank media costs these days. Or you could store them 
on a hard drive, which would cost a bit more but might last longer.

3. What do I do with the originals? You never know when better 
technology is going to come along, so as long as the original cassettes 
remain playable, I'd keep them. There are a lot of people who copied 
their 8mm home videos from film to VHS in the eighties and early 
nineties, and you know what? Twenty years later, the film has often held 
up better than the VHS tapes, assuming it's been kept at all. And if you 
wanted to have a nice usable DVD dub of those films, it would look MUCH 
better if it's first-generation from the film, rather than 
second-generation from an aging VHS transfer that might not have been 
done all that well in the first place.

The technology for dubbing audio is much better, so I'd have a little 
more confidence about discarding the cassettes at the end, but if it's 
just one box with 30 tapes in it, I'd keep it, if it were me.

(He said, contemplating the closet behind him with 2000+ aircheck 
cassettes that will need to have something done with them sooner or 
later...)

s
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