The future of music storage

[sdtom]

I've had some of the early CD's from 1984 unplayable.

My point about this is we dictate what the market will or will not do, the kids do and the CD is too bulky for them. Their phone does it all.
Tom

[Jonathan]

JimL, just wondered if the problem with your Rubinstein disc is bronzing? If so, you should be able to get a replacement from the manufacturer. If the plastic bit in the centre of the disc says PDO then this may be the issue. If you Google bronzed cds, you should find contact details. Hope this helps!

I agree that downloads are probably on the way out but I still buy physical cds and downloads and I stream via Spotify as well!

[Ilja]

Herbert, while hard drives are a very fallible medium, SSDs are far less vulnerable since they contain no moving parts, and therefore *appear* to be ideal for archiving purposes. Unfortunately, SSDs are still fairnly expensive, and flash memory is too young to have been tested by time.
Even with CDs, the problem of archiving recorded music will persist as there will be a point at which hardware makers cease producing CD players; and that point may not be very far in the future. And the degradation of materials (particularly glues) that are used in CDs will inevitably lead to their demise; you may be lucky for a long time, but they *will* die at some point.
To avoid the 'Dark Ages' you speak about, we need mostly to think about durable data formats, which will ensure that today's FLAC or MP3 can be used in the future. That is one reason why proprietary data formats can pose such a problem.

[sdtom]

I wonder if you tried another CD unit Jim

[Herbert Pauls]

Ilya, the other thing about SSD memory is that it is still magnetic, as far as I understand. Although physically hardy, flash storage has its own rate of decay (which, as you point out, has not yet been established...). At least, if we use the open source formats like flac (which thankfully seems to be becoming quite standard), there will be less danger of incompatibility problems in the future. But we still will have to back up over and over.

[Ilja]

Hi Herbert, SSDs are not magnetic like hard drives are. Rather, they consist of billions of transistors. As it looks now, decay in SSDs remains very limited so long as the number or read/write actions remains limited (a transistor is basically a switch, so repeated use will wear it out in the end). That would theoretically make them ideal for long-term archival purposes.

[Herbert Pauls]

Thanks Ilya, that's good to know. Hopefully the medium holds promise!

[thalbergmad]

A couple of my reaaly old cd's won't play and some of my tapes are chewed, but never had a problem with any of my 78's that still play like a dream after 90 years. On the downside,  my beloved Gounod's Faust takes up about the same space as a washing machine.

All my digital thingies are on external hard drives, but they lack the visual effect of a leatherbound volume.

Thal

[Richard Moss]

Even if SSDs are a more secure medium, I wonder

(i)   how many are needed to house each 1,000 CDs in someone's collection (assuming 1 hrs music (avg) per CD)
(ii)  what are the the logistics of keeping a backup, assuming quite a few SSDs are needed
(iii) a worry with all PC-based data formats in the long-term is keeping software that can read the format(s) - who can now find software to read say WORDPERFECT?!   

Whilst mp3 seems to be the current music 'lingua franca' (even though I appreciate FLAC is a better technical standard), who is to say in  10yrs it won't be totally obsolete.

A pity about the bandwidth on fired clay tablets and vellum - at least they have a good track record for long-term storage!

Cheers

Richard

[matesic]

Space? - my maths are no better than the next man's, but if you allow 1GB per CD you'll have space to spare, so maybe 4 SSDs per 1000 CDs. Cost? - currently solid-state memory as on SSDs and SD cards comes in at about 30p per GB, so not much to add the the price of a CD if you want to copy it. But Time? - aye there's the rub. I'm never going to get around to copying all my CDs, but with so many online sources of new material I'm unlikely even to play most of them again. The increasing tendency (certainly in my small part of the globe) seems to be for recorded music to be regarded as something you experience and don't actually need to possess.

As for formats, even when the CD (or WAV) standard of 44.1kB/sec becomes obsolete along with most CD players, there's sure to be software still available to convert data held on solid-state media into other formats. This may or may not entail a degradation of sound quality, but isn't the music the most important thing?

[sdtom]

78's are like old Singer sewing machines and Kitchen Aid mixers they just keep on working. Of course if your turntable dies you might be in trouble.

[TerraEpon]

Lossless music files have a much less problem with retention than something proprietary like Wordperfect -- it's VERY easy to convert with 100% accuracy and on top of that, FLAC being open source means it's far less likely to disappear, even if the others (ALAC, APE etc) eventually do.

Incidentally a 70 minute CD takes around 300GB to 350GB when compressed, give or take, especially if it's acoustic (though it party depends on mastering and how 'busy' the sound is, and more loud popular type music will take up more...whereas a quiet piano CD can actually take up LESS space than a 320Mp3, and mono sound compresses things way down as well).

Merely copying a CD doesn't take too long, as it's easy to just run it in the background (time concerns come with how thorough and correct you want your file names and metadata). But if you usually use a CD player and want a digital backup file 'just in case' it's not a huge commitment.

[Ilja]

TerraEpon and Richard:


WordPerfect files can still be read by LibreOffice, a free office suite that is regularly updated (we run a scientific journal and yes, there are people still submitting in WordPerfect every now and then; on a floppy, of course, which is why I have a USB floppy drive standing by).


Thing is, we've become much more aware of the need for durable data standards lately, which is why even many commercial software vendors (Microsoft, for one) have converted at least in part to non-proprietary formats and principles (XML, usually).


I wouldn't worry too much about the amount of SSDs required; prices are rapidly going down for larger-volume units, and at 1GB per 3CDs (I think TerraEpon's estimate is fair) you'd need 1TB to store everything. That is pricey today (if you want it in one unit), but will be much more affordable in a year's time.

[Richard Moss]

Ilya, Terrapon and UC friends,

Tks for all the calculations and advice about storage.  Working on an average of 1Gb per CD (which obviously from early ones of say 30-50 mins to later ones of 70-80 mins, I'm assuming an average of 1 hr per CD) and thus I agree 1Tb needed for a back-up copy of 1,000 CDs (at MP3 resolution - don't know about FLAC).

I think I'll get a small external HDD with USB 3.0 connectivity and of 2Tb capacity (Seagate or similar) for ease of operations for now - it gives me an 'off-line' copy, complete freedom and ease of use, PC compatibilty and buys me time.  I'm assuming this HDD will be good for 5-10 yrs say (but I can always routinely re-copy it to elsewhere as an on-going check)) and by then, if I'm still here to worry about back-ups, I'll see what is around then. 

An external HDD, like a flash drive, means I can always take it with me or put it in a safe place when I'm away as some sort of back-up against fire or flood, as well as 'IT' risk.

All I've then got to do is 'rip' all my CDs to disk and back-up - a pain in the !!! to do but a few a day will get it done.  It will also have the hidden benefit of finding any CDs that don't play properly and then I'll know about them and decide what, if anything, to do

If I (or anyone else for that matter) go for a number of flash-drives, then the brain hurts working out what to put on  which drive for ease of back-up!

Right, time to stop talking and start the action for the plan!

Cheers

Richard

[sdtom]

I had corrupted flash drives less than 10 years old. I think I'll stick with the system I have. They are on my hard drive backed up on auxiliary hard drive and I've made a CDR of it. If this all fails then I just won't listen to that composition.