I had a go-around on a related topic, about whether CDR's full of MP3's get more damaged from
over-time breakdown vs. audio CD's. My suggestion was that since data is packed tighter on an MP3 CD
due to the lossy-compression format of the data, a relatively small glitch in the CD would zap more
audio content. I was told this is not the case but was unconvinced by the argument -- which was
basically that both audio and data CD's have robust error correction and a glitch of the same
physical size would be correctable in both cases, or not. I still don't archive anything in a
lossy-compressed format.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2008 4:52 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] CD-R question


> At 04:21 PM 2008-01-05, Howard Friedman wrote:
>>And are you saying that a 534 minute CD will not survive as long as an 80 minute CD, all other
>>things being equal?
>
> That is an interesting question. I would suspect that the likelihood of the 80-minute CD being
> useable is higher than the 534 minute CD because in 50 years someone will try and play both in a
> CD player and when one plays and the other one doesn't they may assume that the one that doesn't
> play is no good and dispose of it.
>
> I realize that putting it into a PC drive and reading it would quickly educate the user, but I
> fear the least-common denominator when it comes to technical savvy in at least some archives. Many
> archivists try very hard to keep up with the technology, but archivist salaries are, sadly, rather
> small in many places and their workload is heavy.
>
> When tapes started to squeal, many got dumpstered as "unplayable" with no recovery attempt made.
>
> So, I do think that it is not as safe to leave a non-mainstream CD around in an archive.
>
> As to the survival of the two from a photo-chemical perspective, I think that Jerry has provided
> information about what that depends on. Disc type, storage conditions, and quality fo writer are
> all key.
>
> The other thing to worry about with the compressed audio CD-ROM is that you will need to have the
> proper codec to extract the compressed files. With WAV files, while you need a codec, it is the
> simplest variety. MP3 will be decodable, I suspect, longer than many other formats.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
> Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
> Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
> Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.