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[George Massenburg]

Peter  Oxford wrote on Fri, 24 September 2004 07:05

Sorry to mention this George, there's a problem with the link. Forbidden You don't have permission to access /sm/NARAS/030609.31_Delivery_Recs.pdf on this server. Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

The link is now fixed!  Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Eric Bridenbaker]

Thanks George, will have to read on a bit. In general, overtly deterministic viewpoints don't gel with me...  Freewill and unpredictability are more fun.
Cheers,
Eric

[electrical]

The delivery document is enlightening. I'm glad George posted it.

The table of "Primary Master Delivery Media" is basically my distrust of digital media and technologies reduced to a point.

To specify the analog tape delivery, it has listed merely the tape width and track number. No manufacturer, nothing proprietary, no date of expiry. Basically expressing the universality and interchangeability of the analog standards.

To specify digital delivery, there is a nest of proprietary formats and technologies, many of which are (since the date of this document) literally unuseable, as the proprietary company has ceased support or gone bust all-together.

The successive pages are basically the Broadcast Wave with Time Stamp regimen, and a provision for putting a hard drive in a suitcase.

I agree that this would provide a little more security than the present chaos. I think very few people will persue this regimen, precisely because it will take time, money and suitcases to do it, and I don't believe the class of engineers who will benefit from it (digital engineers) has either enough patience (digital is right now! remember) or suitcases.

So, analog tape recording has been around since the late thirties, and still works fine. I make a living (of sorts) using it every day. My clients' masters are sure to last, and require no special attention or extra exertion on their part or mine. And I can make any kind of record I am asked to.

But if I "go digital," I will need a lot of extra studio time (who will pay for it?) to make Broadcast Wave copies of everything after it's finished, and a lot of hard dives and a lot of suitcases. To make a copy that has no certainty of lasting long enough for the drive technology to become obsolete and have to be re-copied to something else. But I'll get to re-use the suitcase.

Stick a fork in me.

[Wyn Davis]

Anyone,

I do not have access to nor do I know of a working 3M open reel digital multitrack. Aside from that, what digital formats that gained any reasonable level of acceptance cannot be played back today? Leaving out storage media issues, (bad DAT shell design, bad magnetic tape formulations, etc)which digital encoding methods are no longer able to be played back due to an absence of the technology that created them?

[electrical]

Wyn Davis wrote on Fri, 24 September 2004 14:28

Anyone, I do not have access to nor do I know of a working 3M open reel digital multitrack. Aside from that, what digital formats that gained any reasonable level of acceptance cannot be played back today? Leaving out storage media issues, (bad DAT shell design, bad magnetic tape formulations, etc)which digital encoding methods are no longer able to be played back due to an absence of the technology that created them?

I don't see why we should leave out media issues, as they are at the heart of the problem (hint: metal oxides are more stable than metal particles), but okay. Try to get a session running (right now!) with any of the following:

DBX Digital, Bitstream, JVC, 3M, ProDigi, Mitsubishi X80, X850, F1 (including 501, 601, 801), Akai ADAM, 20-bit DAT, PaqRat 20-bit...

Off the top of my head. There are more.

[George Massenburg]

Wyn Davis wrote on Fri, 24 September 2004 13:28

Anyone, I do not have access to nor do I know of a working 3M open reel digital multitrack. Aside from that, what digital formats that gained any reasonable level of acceptance cannot be played back today? Leaving out storage media issues, (bad DAT shell design, bad magnetic tape formulations, etc)which digital encoding methods are no longer able to be played back due to an absence of the technology that created them?

Glad you asked, because we dug into this.  Right now, if you really work at it you can still play just about anything back.

That having been said Soundstream, 3M, ProDigi (Mitsubishi X-80, X-800 X-850 and Otari 32tk), JVC Digital (3/4" video decks) are each getting harder to play back, to different degrees,   Machines that will play back the ProDigi format are relatively unstable, and at some point one can imagine that there won't be a tech that will understand how to line a ProDigi machine up (optimizing the "eye" pattern in the playback amps' driving the codecs).

DAT machines are, to my way of looking at them, hopeless.  It's been years since I've had a working DAT machine around the place.  I don't know what we're going to do when they're no longer available.

Sony 3324 330x 3348 are still around.  Even Sony PCM-9000's are available and working.  PCM 1610 & 1630's are still around most of the established mastering houses, although the industry has moved for the most part to DLT and now WAMnet.

The fear that some or all of these playback machines won't be accessible at some point in the future is somewhat well justified.

The point that Steve made about Broadcast Wave format itself being unreliable is less well founded, although the media on which the files are put are to varying degrees still volatile.

George

[George Massenburg]

electrical wrote on Fri, 24 September 2004 13:24

The delivery document is enlightening. I'm glad George posted it. The table of "Primary Master Delivery Media" is basically my distrust of digital media and technologies reduced to a point. To specify the analog tape delivery, it has listed merely the tape width and track number. No manufacturer, nothing proprietary, no date of expiry. Basically expressing the universality and interchangeability of the analog standards.

I would think you'd be happy that there's an analog format listed at all.  Several record companies wanted to eliminate it altogether.

Quote:

To specify digital delivery, there is a nest of proprietary formats and technologies, many of which are (since the date of this document) literally unuseable, as the proprietary company has ceased support or gone bust all-together.

"[M]any of which are [...] unusable"?  I don't think so.  Which ones?  

Our ace-in-the-hole, if you could possibly call it that, is the "Long-Term" deliverable, which I'm counting on as the one that's going ot survive.  I believe that Broadcast Wave files are well-enough specified and broadly-enough supported (think enterprise-class computing) that both the specs and the files themselves stand a very good chance of surviving for a long time (30 years+, if you held me to a number).  And whether you want to consider it reliable or not, format migration (physical as well as media) is the most reliable alternative right now.

Quote:

The successive pages are basically the Broadcast Wave with Time Stamp regimen, and a provision for putting a hard drive in a suitcase.

You are too kind.

Quote:

I agree that this would provide a little more security than the present chaos. I think very few people will persue this regimen, precisely because it will take time, money and suitcases to do it, and I don't believe the class of engineers who will benefit from it (digital engineers) has either enough patience (digital is right now! remember) or suitcases. So, analog tape recording has been around since the late thirties, and still works fine. I make a living (of sorts) using it every day. My clients' masters are sure to last, and require no special attention or extra exertion on their part or mine. And I can make any kind of record I am asked to. But if I "go digital," I will need a lot of extra studio time (who will pay for it?) to make Broadcast Wave copies of everything after it's finished, and a lot of hard dives and a lot of suitcases. To make a copy that has no certainty of lasting long enough for the drive technology to become obsolete and have to be re-copied to something else. But I'll get to re-use the suitcase.

You're right to be skeptical, but these are questions that we've heard and responded to.  Making BWF's isn't particularly complicated if you're already up and running on any current DAW.  

Paying for the work is a done deal at the majority of major labels, and quite a few others.  Record companies are currently paying for it, and at least right now most companies don't take archiving out of artists' recording funds.

There are enormous gaps in any number of areas, but it's a start, and I have to believe that it could have been done far worse.

Quote:

Stick a fork in me.

OK, but you asked for it.

Steve, it's naive of you to think that "going back to analog tape" is in any way constructive and/or useful as a response to the present challenges (call it "the mess we're in" if you wish).  What do you want to do?  I had - and have - the strongest sense that doing something is preferable to doing nothing. Doing something as right as it can possibly be done having worked as hard and with as little self-interest as one possibly can is not unredeemable because you see flaws in the construction.  

And - here's another fork - trumpeting how technology has "wronged us" oversimplifies the myriad of plainly wrong decisions that have been made.  Why not help me - help us - deconstruct the issues and figure out solutions one by one?

Kindly & warmly,
George

[electrical]

I would love it if I could use digital technologies like everybody else. Honestly. I even wish I didn't get involved in the same conversation every few months (going on 20 years) about why I don't. I have been following the technology for a long time, and I would love it if I didn't have the reservations I do.

I am in no way sniping at The Document -- it is a start, as George has said, and that is better than nothing. But I don't believe it will be obeyed. The fragility of digital masters and the lack of archival options has been sadly ignored in the hype around the potential and actual benefits of digital audio, and so many of my colleagues simply don't believe they have anything to worry about. Additionally -- separately -- I believe analog tape is superior to this protocol.

I believe digital recordings principle strengths (A: It facilitates heavily-edited/manipulated sessions and B: It changes quickly to suit customer demands and take advantage of available computer  advancements) make a "standardized session" impossible.

A "work-around" for this is making a mock-multitrack out of individual Broadcast Wave files from rendered tracks and storing them on a "robust" storage medium.

Since the time stamp is critical, each song, each outtake and each mix would need to be copied to this format individually, and documented in a way that makes retrieval possible. This is an enormous amount of work, regarless of how "easy" it is on an individual track basis.

I cannot expect my clients to pay for the studio time and materials to create this "safety," as I don't work on major-label records regularly. All-in budgets of $2000 - $4000 are my norm.

The storage medium will require maintenance forever in the form of migrating to new storage media as the old ones become unuseable, or the device (in the case of a hard drive) deteriorates mechanically.

I cannot expect my clients to do this kind of maintenance. In fact, I am sure they would not.

I will risk tweaking at one of my heros by suggesting that all this is unnecessary if the original physical recording format will survive intact for the forseeable future, and the playback is not beholden to any proprietary secrets or individual companies. If it is analog tape.

If you (not you, George, but the great non-specific second-person pronoun "you") are unable to make the record you want on a tape machine, then fine; use a computer. You pays your money and you takes your choice. In the words of Albert Brooks, "I misjudged you. Get the box."

But I do not make records on a computer, and I see no compelling reason to do so. If I had ever felt frustration at the "limited" capabilities of a tape machine, then I might be in a different position, and I would be trying to help find a solution. But I haven't. I cannot help but notice that The Problem is keeping me out of The Paradigm, and by explaining myself, I appear to be picking on The Paradigm. This is not my intent. I am merely explaining why I'm not In.

This discussion started with a comparison between Big Consoles and No Big Console. Then it went to Old Paradigm and New Paradigm. Then it became Digital Storage Options. I believe all such discussions eventually cross this point: What do I put on the shelf when the session's over, and what can be done with it in the future?

I applaud George and the rest of the working group for getting started on a solution. I still believe it to be impossible at worst, impractical and ignored at best, but it would be great to be wrong.

Honestly, I salute the effort.

[ted nightshade]

While it's too too true that there is no clear and definite course for digital archiving, the limitations of tape archiving are a bit nerve wracking for me. You only have one original, and all other tape copies will be degraded significantly. Of course, better to be able to play it back whenever years hence with a generation loss than unable to play it back at all! Still, the original must be stashed somewhere safe, which is exactly where in this fucked-up violent world? So stash it in what seems like the safest place, and stash a couple tape or digital copies, or both, in some other possibly safe places. Or, take your digital copies and stash several of equal quality to the original (such as that may be , subject to engineering of course), in as many places as you choose.

I like being able to make 3 full-quality copies and immediately put them in 3 different places- a lot less nervous (for me) than handling the one and only master tape.

And I do wonder if current tape formulations are as stable as the best of the old ones...

[Wyn Davis]

Steve,

Flattening a session as described in "The Document" on the most widely used platforms today is a very very simple procedure. Of course, prior organization of your work is required but this is true with ANY format including analog. I'm sure you have, (as have I), sorted through 50 reels of poorly documented analog balls of string to find "the masters".

Your tolerance for how much time it takes to archive digital masters might be different from mine. After all, your output of work is extraordinary by my reckoning. But for a typical song in my world the method George's team predicts will have the best chance of long term survival (flattening out tracks to BWAV) takes about 10 minutes per song or less to complete transfer AND archive.

The "time-stamp" is NOT critical with respect to a "Flattened" digital master. I am guessing this is one of the reasons this method was suggested as the most universal.

electrical wrote on Thu, 23 September 2004 13:56

Old school technologies can take advantage of decades of accumulated experience that remains applicable.

This is true with ANY accumulated knowledge base. Are you asserting there is no accumulated experience that can be applied to working with these new technologies?

Quote:

Because of this rapid rate of change, there can be no archival format or storage, as the rest of the computer industry changes in a similar fashion, making old sessions irretrievable.

Even audio on some of the most obscure and early digital editors can still be played back. Not conveniently but nevertheless they are still recoverable. This is true with early versions of analog and video tape as well. For example, it is inconvenient now for me to playback some early 1/2" three track recordings, but I can do it if I have to.

Quote:

There are also hardware problems with obsolete subordinate technologies that are just as crucial, like data storage drives, device drivers, port types, communication and interface technologies -- even the goddamn connectors and power supplies.

These ARE problems with computers but it is not unique to computers. I own (love and cherish) three Ampex ATR-124 tape recorders. Shall we have a discussion about "communication interface technologies (the remote), connectors and power supplies"? You see where this is headed, right?

Quote:

I want to give them a permanent master that will outlive them. This is impossible in the new school paradigm, but it is inherent in the old school one.

This could not be further from the truth. New technology storage strategies allow for the stored material to be migrated as time and technology march forward. Play a reel of Ampex 456 recorded in 1985 ONE TIME without careful preparation and it is ruined. I can't tell you how many times I've had someone come to me with a moldy piece of 2" tape and a story of how the last guy played the tape until "the machine stopped running." Some responsibility has to rest with the archivist for keeping the masters safe and playable.

Quote:

The continued defense of digital recording hinges on the canard that it is "young" and "still developing the answers." I suggest that it is always to be so, and that a solution to my principle obection to it is impossible, as the preceeding 30 years of development have borne out.

Well it IS still young! Analog was around for 30 years or more before I was born. It went through a LOT of growing pains. I went to the LAST Ampex sponsored support seminar for the ATR-124. There were some very interesting folks there basically saying goodbye. These were people with true passion for and pride in what they had accomplished. I can tell you with a certainty that when they started the 124 project(in the early 70s)those engineers and designers did not feel analog was "figured out".

I honestly believe you may be tying your clients to a technology that is disappearing. In my neighborhood, the places a person can go to play a 2" analog tape on a machine that is maintained and cared about are getting harder and harder to find. As of today, it is MUCH easier for someone with a Pro Tools session to find a playback machine. This trend will only continue. We are absolutely past the tipping point.  

Respectfully,

Wyn

[Curve Dominant]

Quote:

posted by Eric Bridenbaker: Eric Vincent wrote on Fri, 24 September 2004 04:02 Quote: Personally, I store FireWire drives in a big shiny bank vault in the heart of the financial district. Ahhh... this is on to something. The future of digital archiving may not rest with studios, their clients, or any "Media Format" as we know it at all - it could end up being third party security companies that store our sessions for us. ... I guess this would probably qualify as "New Paradigm" for us audio people, though other industries have already embraced this approach.

Mr. Bridenbaker,

This is a service my company offers to my clients, inclusive of production fees.

I started doing this because I saw an "opportunity" in regards to the way master recordings are "handled" by clients. I felt my clients would appreciate the extra attention to detail in MANY areas, and storage was one of them, so I went to the trouble of procuring a safe deposit box in a secure bank vault, and using what I felt was the most stable and secure platform available to date for storage, thus un-burdening my clients of this responsibility, and instilling in them a sense of confidence that the long term viability of their works would remain secure.

And, yes, other industries have adopted this service-oriented and quality-driven approach.

So, although some of Mr. Albini's concerns regarding digital storage are indeed valid, MY approach is to address those concerns in a proactive manner, with the focus on satisfying my client's needs. Curve Dominant offers many outside-the-box services to its clients. Delivering and maintaining long-term storage solutions is just one of them.

Your view that this is a part of the "new paradigm" for recording studios is one which I will not argue with. On the contrary: I would encourage it.

[PP]

[JanF]

The problem of digital storage is not unique to our industry, others have far greater problems. The company I worked for before moving to audio needs to store CAD data for 20 years, by law. So they must(!) store an entire Catia workstation to ensure that the 3D CAD data can be read in 20 years time. So instead of putting hard drives in bank vaults, put your DAW in there.

Jan Fuchsmann

[Eric Bridenbaker]

Eric Vincent wrote on Sat, 25 September 2004 03:06

Quote: posted by Eric Bridenbaker: Eric Vincent wrote on Fri, 24 September 2004 04:02 Quote: Personally, I store FireWire drives in a big shiny bank vault in the heart of the financial district. Ahhh... this is on to something. The future of digital archiving may not rest with studios, their clients, or any "Media Format" as we know it at all - it could end up being third party security companies that store our sessions for us. Mr. Bridenbaker, This is a service my company offers to my clients, inclusive of production fees. I started doing this because I saw an "opportunity" in regards to the way master recordings are "handled" by clients. I felt my clients would appreciate the extra attention to detail in MANY areas, and storage was one of them, so I went to the trouble of procuring a safe deposit box in a secure bank vault, and using what I felt was the most stable and secure platform available to date for storage, thus un-burdening my clients of this responsibility, and instilling in them a sense of confidence that the long term viability of their works would remain secure. And, yes, other industries have adopted this service-oriented and quality-driven approach. So, although some of Mr. Albini's concerns regarding digital storage are indeed valid, MY approach is to address those concerns in a proactive manner, with the focus on satisfying my client's needs. Curve Dominant offers many outside-the-box services to its clients. Delivering and maintaining long-term storage solutions is just one of them. Your view that this is a part of the "new paradigm" for recording studios is one which I will not argue with. On the contrary: I would encourage it.

Mr Vincent,

Good to see that there are people out there actively working on the solutions - Improving and refining the way things can be done.

I see this sorage concept eventually evolving into a web based ftp access type of system. Sort of like web hosting for your audio archives. You could access your masters anytime, anyplace with web access. (I actually just fininshed mixing a record where the producer simply put the audio on his server, and I ftp'd the tracks onto my system).

Sure there would be concerns, and plenty of issues to sort through, but it would be worth the effort in the long run.

BTW - Be very careful about idle hard drives - They have bearings, and mechanics inside that limit their longevity as a storage medium. It is entirely possible that a hard drive just won't come back after a few years of storage. Might want to throw an optical DVD copy in the vault alongside the HD, to be safe.

Cheers,
Eric

[TotalSonic]

Steve makes some incredibly valid points regarding the cons of digital archiving.  I have horror stories to tell regarding drop outs from just 15 year old 1630's - or Jazz drives & Syquests being completely corrupted, of DAT's being eaten, or CD-R's that have had been damaged beyond repair.  

However - a huge factor which is in a digital archives favor over analog methods is that redundant copies can be made quickly, economically, and with no audible loss from the transfer. Any librarian can tell you that redundancy is one of the best preservation methods there is.

I also feel that the assumption that analog tape and playback devices will be readily available in 100 years is certainly not a sure thing - the way things are going we can't even guarantee that the electrical grid will operable in 100 years! (if you think I'm joking check out http://www.dieoff.org for the worse case scenario).  As analog decks are simple mechanical devices this gives a lot in their favor for them continuing well into the future - however the writing is on the wall that production for analog decks and parts will fade just as DAT players have - and most likely parts in the far future will have to be machined as custom orders and the economics of maintaining them will confine them to be niche items (much as Edison cylinder players are today).  The only sure fire method I've seen so far for future-shock proof archives is being done by the Scientologists - they are archiving speeches onto Direct Metal Masters and including specially made hand cranked turntables in time capsules along with these (I jest you not about this!)

For those that care about having their digital production work back ups truly continuing as an archive will accept that approximately every 10 years they will need to transfer it yet again to another format.  As an example - there are 2 albums worth of material that I actually care to have available to me in  the future that I had tracked 10 years ago on the original SAW workstation - I now have to load my old version of the program back onto my computer - open an .edl and an .ark file off of a floppy disk and read each tracks audio (with timing click headers) off DAT's - and then create new backups with wav files onto DVD-R's.  It is indeed a PITA.  However - while it costs me in time it costs substantially less (i.e. $1.00 each per DVD-R) than a similar number of analog reels would.

There are certainly some horrible sounding digital recordings out there (and I'd agree that the majority of digital productions these days don't sound all that great) - but this misses the fact that there are also some truly wonderful ones out there too.  I happen to find that both analog and digital have application which one seems suited better than the other. I can not possibly see how something like Led Zeppelin II would benefit in any way shape or form from being tracked digitally.  Conversely - I can not see how something like Rabih-Abou Kahlil's "Yara" could benefit in any way at all from being tracked to analog as opposed to the digital recording it is.  Digital also opens up some creative possibilities that are simply not available from analog methods.  Yes - these possibilities have been extremely abused -  but that can not discount that when they are used well they can achieve results which allow the artist to truly get as close as possible to their vision.

An example of this would be my string quartet's recent CD - everything was tracked live, all bleed, with multiple takes of each track - we then did an amount of splices that would have been impossible to achieve using razor blades in order to create a composite performance that came closest to how I was hearing the pieces in my head.  Analog dupes off of the final mixes & masters would simply not reflect the level of pristiness that I would want to have available to me in the future - so the basic tracks and masters live on a digital archives (CD-R's & DVD-R's - lots of redundant copies).  

If anything - digital archival methods have gotten substantially better in the past few years and I think we can see continued improvements.  But Steve does present his case well that there is  still a lot to be desired with these.  However - I certainly don't think that this case is presented in a way that it makes a case for choosing analog methods over digital ones in all cases.  Both formats have their places and - for those who give a damn - it certainly is possible to easily maintain a digital archive as long as the archiver accpets that they will most likely have to migrate formats every 10 years of so.  

Best regards,
Steve Berson