Studer A827's locked up

48 tracks of analog 2" tape synced together using Lynx2 module

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Studer
• Analog
• Multitrack
• tape
• studio
• recording

[4DJAO]

Sweet!

[BlueFoxTV]

@wado1942 Well CD's and other optical media is crap. Hard dives aren't HDD's are Much better protected from EMI. The paters are made out of is metal and glass and will last a lot longer then tape

The failure rate of hard drive is very low. The servers i take care of have HDD's with 1000000 hours on them. And that's considered average. And even when a disk fails. It is still recoverable. Hard drives are actual fairly future proof. The Parallel ATA stranded invented in 1986 is still in use today.

[Md2802]

@wado1942 Right, and when it comes time to re-archive the material which format suffers from generation loss?

There are approx. one billion PCs in use around the world and that number is expected to double in the next two years (Gartner, Inc). I have no doubt that there will be enough of these around to decode digital formats for centuries. On the other hand, reel to reel tape recorders have been largely phased out and are no longer manufactured in significant numbers.

[wado1942]

@Md2802 Right, if you can reproduce the digital copy at all, it should sound the same as it did 100 years ago. Digital archives just don't last though, despite what they advertise. You won't be able to read that HDD in 100 years, forget software/hardware to make sense of it. DASH or R-DAT and optical formats, often will play but crackle really badly. No matter what format, A or D, there will be issues so you have to have different types of backups and re-archive them periodically.

[Md2802]

@wado1942 Touché. I use at least two drives when recording for the same reason. If one of the drives fails, an exact duplicate of the data still exists.

Even though both deteriorate over time, the digital back-ups will still sound exactly the same in a hundred years. That said, after nearly fifty years the Beatles remasters didn't sound half bad!

[wado1942]

@Md2802 Hydrolysis can be temporarily fixed with baking. Optical media can be damaged by light exposure, so that's just like EMI damage for tape. Storage like HDD and data tapes can also be harmed by EMI, but a damaged tape will still play, albeit badly. A damaged data disk is unusable. It's one of the reason I refuse to record bands on computer anymore. I try to always have SOME sort of analogue tape generation on every project. They key for longevity is multiple, different media.

[wado1942]

@Md2802 I didn't say tape was perfect, but I've successfully restored 45+ year old tapes without problem. I SERIOUSLY doubt anybody would be able to resurrect any DVD-R, CD-R, HDD or DAT/ADAT media in so long. I have DVD-Rs & CD-Rs burned only a few years ago that never saw light that failed upon loading. HDD platters often freeze from hardened grease. Plus, the technology is always changing so that's also non-future proof. Anyway, I said shelf-life, not active use, which causes stretching.

[Md2802]

@wado1942 Not true. Tape is inherently unstable. The substrate (backing) is susceptible to stretching, EMI affects the magnetic particles, and over time the binder becomes sticky. The biggest problem, though, is any duplicates will suffer from generation loss. Even with volatile digital formats (i.e. flash drives), copies can be made without degredation.

[thebigvahjayjays]

audio heaven!

[wado1942]

@dhampex Yeah, except you get digital sound, passed through analogue and back to digital. That's a lot more loss than just recording analogue.  Record analogue, mix analogue, master to digital. That's where the best sound is IMO. Tape also has the longest shelf life of all rerecordable media, I can't say the same for hard drives or DVDs.