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From: Mike Rivers on 6 May 2008 08:55
geoff wrote:

> You don't need to lose the data. The drives are so cheap you get a second
> one and mirror the data !

That's part of the annoyance. I have to get the second drive, connect
it, transfer the data, label it, then store it, and wonder if the rumors
that a drive that's not been run for a couple of years won't start up
because lubricants have gone sticky. I haven't heard that story for
years, but one never nows.

I just put tape on the shelf and it plays 50 years later - maybe not as
good as new, but at least it plays and I can find it easily.


--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me here:
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
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From: Soundhaspriority on 6 May 2008 10:56

"Arny Krueger" <arnyk(a)hotpop.com> wrote in message
news:o96dnVBO1fjOor3VnZ2dnUVZ_rOqnZ2d(a)comcast.com...
> "Romeo Rondeau" <eveyone(a)ease.com> wrote in message
> news:KkPTj.2370$3O7.1254(a)newssvr19.news.prodigy.net
>
>> You don't buy an iPod for quality, you buy it for
>> convenience.
>
> What you get with at least the larger iPods is an audio playback device
> whose electrical output is about as clean as a CD player, but that has a
> low source impedance designed for driving headphones. If you load it with
> uncompressed audio files, it is the functional equivalent of a high
> quality portable CD player.
>
>> If you want quality buy something that was designed for it.
>
> IOW, an iPod or high quality competitive product.
>
> Several of us enjoyed the use of the Nomad Jukebox 3, which was a logical
> predecessor of either the iPod or the Microtrack.
>
> At this point I don't think that the professional utility and perhaps even
> the professional stature of the Microtrack and competitive products are in
> doubt by many.
>
> Technically, the larger iPods are just Microtracks without the extensive
> facilities for location recording, but with a more user-friendly file
> system.
>
The zeitgeist manifests not in the hardware platform, which is decent, but
in the mastering and the compression. The hardware is equivalent or better
than a typical CD Walkman of the 90's, but the sound is not. But the
zeitgeist also manifests in the market share of flash player music, which
occured with the changing role of music in our society. In the past, music
was marketed as a performance. High fidelity was a privilege equivalent to a
good seat in the hall. That is now quite secondary. Music is now principally
a pacifier, an auxilary brainwave. I would guess that most audio
professionals hear music fewer hours of the day than the typical flash
player addict, but we listen more intently.

Bob Morein
(310) 237-6511


From: Richard Crowley on 7 May 2008 00:53
"Green Xenon [Radium]" wrote ...
> Huh?

May we quote you?
From: Mike Rivers on 7 May 2008 07:18
Doug McDonald wrote:

> Well, if you use "song" literally that's true. But I don't listen to
> songs, I listen to music. I already have 30 gigabytes (at an average
> 170 kByte/sec). And I don't have even a modest CD collection.
> I suspect that I will eventually reach 110 gigabytes.

I fill up my 1 GB MP3 player with about 8 hours of music radio programs
and listen to them when I travel. Next trip, I dump those and fill it up
with new programs. I don't save these things, though, so I only need
enough storage to keep a "buffer" to draw from when loading up. The MP3
player is find when I'm driving or flying, but I'd rather play my CDs,
tapes, and records from their original media when listening for the sake
of listening.

--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me here:
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
(mriv...(a)d-and-d.com)
From: Mike Rivers on 7 May 2008 07:30
Romeo Rondeau wrote:

> What have you been smoking, Mike? Are you stating that analog tape is
> cheaper than hard drive storage? Gimmie a break :-)

Not on a per hour bases, if you're willing to put all your music on as
few large drives as possible. But for convenience the way I work, I
prefer to keep separate projects on their own disk drives. Bare drives
are economical, and I store them in fifty cent pencil boxes from
Staples. I have a few cases for active projects. But it takes me a few
minutes to get one of those bare drives up and running when I need to
take it out of storage.

As far as cost goes, a couple of years back, I was buying 40-120 GB
drives for as little as $20 after rebates, and that's a reasonable size
for a single project that might take 6 (or 30 if you're Van Morrison or
The Rolling Stones) reels of 2" tape. But when I needed a "fresh reel" a
couple of months ago, I paid $60 for a 200 GB drive and used about 30
GB. Still considerably cheaper than 2" tape, but more expensive on a
per-project basis than a couple of years ago. And if I had bought a
ready-made, cased, USB drive (which I couldn't use in my Mackie HDR
anyway) it would cost close to $100, and I'd not be sure of the quality
of the drive in the case. Bob Smith (among others) has reported some
reliability and overheating problems with even "good brand names" of
such drives that he's used.

> Everything's a trade-off, Mike.

Only if you can't continue to do what makes you comfortable.

> You can put a label on the front, if you didn't do that, it's your fault.

I actually haven't found a very good way to label a bare drive, or even
a "mobile rack" such as the Mackie recorder uses. And have you ever
tried to label an SD memory card? ;)




--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach
me here:
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers
(mriv...(a)d-and-d.com)
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