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Old 15th Mar 2018, 5:07 am   #12
Radio Wrangler
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Fife, Scotland, UK.
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Default Re: Vintage Tape Machines and Attitudes

There is a bit of a reversal nowadays. Due to changes in technology, the early material of any future supergroup is going to be found originated on some computer application.

Digital material can be copied without progressive degradation and so can be stored in multiple locations to give safety against fire, flood, witchcraft and luddites. The physical media will progressively degrade and become obsolete, but the data can be regenerated accurately before degradation becomes too bad for error correction to not work. So a database needs periodic maintenance to fix errors and to keep moving it off of obsolescent formats. There is a non-zero risk of uncorrected errors, but that can be kept down to trivial levels. Remember that multiple copies can be compared.

Vintage tape machines are good fun, and some people would rather saw their own leg off than listen to anything not on 'vinyl', but the digital stuff is mainstream now and has mathematics as a strong supporter. My Revox still impresses the socks off anyone who meets it, But if I thought posterity would have any interest in my musical forays, I'd stick it on the internet to get the widest spread, and it would be preserved on a variety of flash drives, hard drives, DVD-R. In this race you don't know the outcome, but you can bet on all the horses at once ans still expect to win.

David
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