2016 CDs - I am getting anxious

[Harry]

I'm pretty much happy with Windows Media Player - and yes, it's still there under Windows 10. I recognize the program's weaknesses and work around it. Like "lonely bull" above, I sometimes get an album showing doubled tracks, and yes, the solution is to change the album title for each iteration to something unique. I must have five different versions of WARM floating around on my computer's disc - iTunes files, WMA files, HAPresents versions, early CD-Rs, etc. And for albums that I have in both mono and stereo, I separate them out with a suffix for the title, and try to append each track title with [mono] where necessary. That way, when I sort files in Windows Media Player by song, I can identify the mono versions easily.

Harry

 

[lj]

I will quote verbatim some key content from a February 1, 2016 article in the San Diego Union Tribune entitled "Experts Warn of Rush to Digitize Documents." Vint Cerf was interviewed. He presently is a vice president at Google. He was a co-designer of the basic communication language of the Internet and has been called the "father of the Internet." Looking ahead, Cerf said he has some concerns about the trend of digitizing documents, photos and music. He said, "This great effort to digitize everything, including Google's efforts to digitize books, has a downside, which is the possibility that the digital media will not survive." If the media does survive, Cerf said there is another issue of whether software and hardware will be available to read the digitized artifacts. If the company that makes the operating system goes out of business, for instance, who will have the rights to the technology needed to read the encoded bytes? He said "the idea that somebody would continue to write software that's backward compatible with something that's 100 years old in not so clear. It's already not clear talking about 10 years. The big problem we have is making sure these digital objects that we create are in fact correctly renderable in the future." There is concern that some documents that are digitized and archived on the web might disappear. Cerf explained that one vulnerability of storing anything online is the vulnerability of the domain name system. If someone who holds a domain name fails to keep up payments on it, he said, the name could be turned over to a new owner. He said "at that point, the access to the information is effectively lost if the way you were getting to it was through the URL reference."

 

[Rudy]

There is concern that some documents that are digitized and archived on the web might disappear.

I read that a while ago too. What he says is true to an extent, but this doesn't directly apply to cloud backups of our personal data and files, or data storage in general. (For one, domain names aren't often used for accessing remote servers; they aren't needed.) And it doesn't quite cover music distribution also. He's talking about something different, more of a "big picture" for Internet and media in general.

I do remember one thing that bothered me about that article--he downplays the idea that all formats evolve and adapt; it's not like someone throws a switch and suddenly one day, we can't read PDF files, or play WAV music files. There is always time for changeover, and backward compatibility is usually available, even if only in a read-only state so that we can save files to a new format. (Sort of how my ancient Excel 95 spreadsheets can still be read by Excel and saved in the most recent format. And plain old ASCII text files have been around for decades.) Long term, yes, 100 years from now, it could be an issue, but any smart digitizing/archival effort would include upgrading and converting those old files to a more recent popular format, not just let them sit untouched.

The real ironic part of all this? Analog anything will still outlive us all. There are papers and books centuries old that can still be read. Someone with a paper cone and a needle can still make sound from a record. Photographs, slides and negatives might fade a bit, but they are still viewable. I am a big fan of digitizing, primarily because it allows much greater sharing and distribution (and partly for having an off-site backup in case of disaster), but you can bet I'd keep a hard copy of the original when possible. I'm digitizing all of my family photos, but I'm not tossing any of them into the dustbin. Except maybe some of those my ex-wife was in.

I guess for me it boils down to the fact that my digital file collection is safe and sound today, and probably will be so for my lifetime. And my current issue with music distribution is that the high-res files I get today aren't even available on physical media. True, I'd love having a physical backup of what I'm downloading (not CD-R or DVD-R which have a short lifespan), but there is not even a physical product to purchase. Streaming and downloads are the direction music distribution has shifted. Ten years from now, a 60th anniversary reissue of Whipped Cream may very well be download only...or maybe received via neural implants.

 

[Bobberman]

"NEURAL IMPLANTS??" Wow i remember back in the 90s a good friend of mine,( now deceased) said he believed the way formats were changing so fast one day they would evolve into a small implant with tons of memory for music and " Even it would sound superb". ( Those were his exact words.) And i Dont think we are very far away from that possibility.

 

[Rudy]

I'm pretty much happy with Windows Media Player - and yes, it's still there under Windows 10.

It does the job, but I don't use it primarily because it doesn't serve my needs--it needs extra codecs to play some of the common file formats out there. These days, so many free codec downloads are now a carrot dangled in front of us to blindly install it along with three or four malware programs as the hidden cost. It used to be I had to install half a dozen media players to cover all formats, or try to force-feed some unofficial codecs to WMP to get it to do what I needed it to. With something like VLC or Kodi (formerly XBMC) for video, and JRiver (or Foobar) for audio, one program covers all formats.

With JRiver being the "audiophile" solution, it provides its own drivers to make certain we are getting maximum resolution to our outboard equipment. In my case, my external DAC can only handle up to 96kHz, so I have JRiver downsample 192kHz to 96kHz before sending it out of the S/PDIF optical output. (It's an older Cambridge Audio DACMagic.) Otherwise, it comes straight off of the high-res files as-is. WMP can't do this. It just blindly follows whatever the Windows sound drivers feel like configuring themselves at for the day (I've seen it stuck at a specific sampling rate based on which program was using it last, which sometimes leaves it incorrectly configured or even inoperative). JRiver isn't perfect either, but at least I know what type of digital signal it is putting out, at which sampling rate and bit depth, and to which port (coax digital, optical digital, USB, etc.).

Different strokes!

 

[Rudy]

"NEURAL IMPLANTS??" Wow i remember back in the 90s a good friend of mine,( now deceased) said he believed the way formats were changing so fast one day they would evolve into a small implant with tons of memory for music and " Even it would sound superb". ( Those were his exact words.) And i Dont think we are very far away from that possibility.

Maybe I was watching too much Star Trek: Voyager lately.

 

[DeeInKY]

What this country needs is a good cochlear implant with a USB port so we can upload directly into our heads.

 

[Rudy]

What this country needs is a good cochlear implant with a USB port so we can upload directly into our heads.

USB 3, please. I'm impatient.

 

[Nathan Strum]

I'm really glad that I backed up my downloads and put them on disc - my music libraries in both iTunes and windows media player have a strange habit of deleting tracks from albums - or in some cases duplicating every track on a album, so instead of 11 tracks there are 22 ! Anyone else experience this?

In iTunes - yep. Typically, it's happened with purchases I made online, then replaced with a ripped version from a CD. Sometimes the online version will still show up right along side its replacement.

 

[Bobberman]

Rudy I was reading your post about the blank CDs. I found that to if you use a cheap cd like memorex and TDK or even Hp. after you burn them about a month later you go and play it, it sound like an old scrachy record. then you trash it.

there is a place here in Cleveland Ohio called A to Z Audio here is the web site www.atozaudio.com they have the professional DVDs and CDs like the brand falco they do not have CD rot, here is another brand I can't find them anymore

office depot had them, verbaitem AZO series these have that extra layer on them so you will not get that CD rot. I have been an adio tech since August of 1984.

take care
Bob

Hi Bob i want to let you know i have experienced that " scratchy sound" on some CDR S And another thing i do when i record on Cdr is I never Record past 64 minutes on them ( my maximum limit) in order to avoid that for the most part and give them a fighting chance to be usable for a good long period of time since i got my first CD burner in 2004 i learned these things on my own. And if i ever get a chance to have a digital music player that will give me more than enough GB'S ( Much more than the 75 i have on my laptop music player) i would like to eventually put all my cd library on a very good quality device. And i have plenty of source cds to do it with.

 

[bob]

bobbeman and some of the cds you can't get them anymore as they are out of print,

bob

 

[Bobberman]

bobbeman and some of the cds you can't get them anymore as they are out of print,

bob

That is Very true Bob and i have A Lot of Cds that were very hard to find to start with and i know i will never be able to get them again if they are lost or gone in any way. As is the case with many of my cds. I agree with you.

 

[lonely bull]

Well, it's March - anymore news on the CD releases? I have goose bumps and my wallet is very twitchy !

 

[Mike Blakesley]

i want to let you know i have experienced that " scratchy sound" on some CDR S And another thing i do when i record on Cdr is I never Record past 64 minutes on them ( my maximum limit) in order to avoid that for the most part and give them a fighting chance to be usable for a good long period of time since i got my first CD burner in 2004 i learned these things on my own.

Just for the record, I've burned hundreds of CD-Rs, both "name brand" and cheap no-name ones, and I have never to this day had one fail to play, and never an issue with the sound either. The oldest CD-Rs I have are around 17 years old and still play fine. The biggest and most obvious key is, don't scratch them. If you keep them in proper storage they should be fine. And most of my disks are burned right out to the edge of the 80 minute limit.

Your mileage may vary if you live in a super-humid zone - those people seem to have the worst luck with "CD rot" in my experience. My disks have always been stored in my house, so they're not out in the weather. I suppose that's the biggest reason for their longevity.

 

[Bobberman]

Just for the record, I've burned hundreds of CD-Rs, both "name brand" and cheap no-name ones, and I have never to this day had one fail to play, and never an issue with the sound either. The oldest CD-Rs I have are around 17 years old and still play fine. The biggest and most obvious key is, don't scratch them. If you keep them in proper storage they should be fine. And most of my disks are burned right out to the edge of the 80 minute limit.

Your mileage may vary if you live in a super-humid zone - those people seem to have the worst luck with "CD rot" in my experience. My disks have always been stored in my house, so they're not out in the weather. I suppose that's the biggest reason for their longevity.

i Totally agree Mike. And so far that has been my experience i store all cds the same as you described and I strive to keep them scratch free and Dust free as best as i can. I have owned CDS since 1988 and from the begining one rule i made for myself is treat cds more like vinyl but yet even more carefully. ( delicatley) and who ever said they were indestructable back then was full of rubbish ( people thought they could use them as coasters or frisbees like vinyl records" Then They woke up".) My strictest advice for all recordings regardless of format would be " Take very good care of your recordings and they may outlive you".

 

[Captain Bacardi]

Well, it's March - anymore news on the CD releases? I have goose bumps and my wallet is very twitchy !

From earlier in the thread from our leader:
Still April as a tentative release date. I would expect preorder info at some point in mid March. We'll be posting it here once we get word.

 

[Bobberman]

From earlier in the thread from our leader:
Still April as a tentative release date. I would expect preorder info at some point in mid March. We'll be posting it here once we get word.

Also as mentioned earlier "Patience Will be Rewarded". Let not your Heart be troubled.

 

[Rudy]

What El Captain said. There were manufacturing issues along the way, so nobody can give a concrete date at this time.

 

[Rudy]

As for the CD-R, they can sit unused inside a case in perfect atmospheric conditions for a decade and become non-playable. I had some like that; they're in a landfill now. A couple of discs I had fail on me within months. I also have some that I abused severely, taking them in the CD wallet for the car, using them in changers, leaving them out in 110 degree heat or in sub zero weather, looking beaten up and bedraggled, and they still play a dozen years later! So my experience has been all over the map.

Anything important I might have burned to CD-R was for convenience; I kept most of my original work files on my computers over the years, so I've had them in at least two places for all this time, in addition to the CD-Rs. Or another thing I had done was burn the data files to a separate disc or two, so I could recreate the audio CD at some point in the future. (Often I could burn a few albums' worth of the data files to a DVD-R. Still not ideal but it was better than nothing at the time.)

It's a fact that they fail, and it's not if, it's when. CD-R is made possible through a laser "burning" dye within the disc. A chemical shift at any point could cause it to go bad. Just a tiny flaw in the TOC (table of contents) can render the entire disc unreadable, since the player won't know where to find the data. It could be a nearly invisible scratch or nick on the label side, the beginning of bronzing or oxidation, a flaw from manufacturing, or anything really.

The marketing folks at the manufacturers tell us CD-R/DVD-R lifetime can be as much as 100 years. Data storage and recovery experts put a CD-R lifespan at two to five years. Reality is obviously somewhere between those two points, but let's be honest, should we trust marketing hyperbole, or the experts who do this for a living?

My point is that if it's on CD-R, it needs to be backed up, either through a newer CD-R/DVD-R/BD-R burn, or stored on a hard drive (or solid state drive), a USB stick or remotely on a cloud server. Keeping only one hard copy of data is an accident waiting to happen. Don't ask me how I know this.

And don't forget that those of us in I.T. make a fortune off of disaster recovery...

 

[DeeInKY]

Save early, save often.

 

[Rudy]

To bring some closure to this topic, as well as take some of the stress off of our staff, we have posted:

OFFICIAL Herb Alpert/TJB Release News »