"Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I happen to agree with Tom, but the National Archive of Australia
> appears to have created a tool which translates all audio into FLAC
> files for their archives...that was the basis for my original question.


From an archivist's point of view this is potentially odd: the basic rule
of thumb is to preserve the format as it arrives at the archives, and
normalize (i.e. convert to a preferred format) for preservation and access,
but still preserve the original, just because it is the original. If
National Archives of Australia is keeping whatever comes in and normalizing
to FLAC, that's ok, but if they're converting to FLAC and getting rid of
the original, that's not good practice for a variety of reasons. I agree
that as memory gets cheaper the rationale for compression gets weaker,
under any circumstances. Can anyone propose to revise the standard for WAV
to include more robust metadata?

I also cannot understand why you would convert from MP3 to FLAC.

-- 
Matt Snyder
Archivist
Special Collections Unit
The New York Public Library
[log in to unmask]
Tel: 917-229-9582