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Topic: Archive as audio CD's or in lossless digital format? (Read 7068 times) previous topic - next topic
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Archive as audio CD's or in lossless digital format?

I have a few albums that are very hard to find in record stores in APE format + a CUE sheet.
I transcoded them to flac because it is a frendlier format for my Linux Desktop PC and I know it will be around for a while.

The problem is now I'm trying to decide what is the best way to keep this albums forever.

Most are double albums and one is triple.

Should I burn them as audio CD's using the CUE sheets? My fear is CD-R media is crappy over the years and I may not be able to rip them again in the future.
And burning 2 copies of each CD 'just in case' seems a bit expensive and will take up a lot of space on the shelf.

I can burn all the flacs + CUE sheets in one or two DVDs, but those are not playable without a computer.

What is the best way to archive music?

Archive as audio CD's or in lossless digital format?

Reply #1 –
1. Burning 2 CDs is hardly expensive (comparatively).

2. If you are archiving the fact that you can't play the files on a CD player (you can on a PC of course) is irrelevant.

I would say the most important thing is to back up to multiple medias in multiple places.  Keep them on a hard drive, burn to DVD with PAR2 data and give it to a friend to keep hold of, burn to CD - play it if you want - but look after it.  If you can burn to DVD I believe that they have better error tolerance than CDs.
I'm on a horse.

Archive as audio CD's or in lossless digital format?

Reply #2 –
dvdisaster kicks PAR2's ass.

If you want a reliable and user-friendly DVD backup, then copy the APE+CUE files into smaller-than-DVD5 ISO images, augment them with ECC data using dvdisaster's RS02 mode and write them to DVD+/-Rs.

edit: typos

Archive as audio CD's or in lossless digital format?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Synthetic Soul on
...If you can burn to DVD I believe that they have better error tolerance than CDs.

That's true, but to my experience DVD+/-Rs are rotting faster than CD-Rs, but that also depends on quality of  media.

Archive as audio CD's or in lossless digital format?

Reply #5 –
@Synthetic Soul: Well, my point/conclusion was (still is) that dvdisaster is more convenient to use, while I don't see any flaw in the RS02 mode.

A one-click-solution that simply works, so to say.

Quote from: naturfreak on
Quote from: Synthetic Soul on

...If you can burn to DVD I believe that they have better error tolerance than CDs.

That's true, but to my experience DVD+/-Rs are rotting faster than CD-Rs, but that also depends on quality of  media.

I don't know if the DVD mediums have better error prevention techniques... actually I doubt that.

In fact the structures of DVDs are much smaller than those of CDs, so DVDs should be more vunarable to errors according to the physical restraints.

And DVD writing is more tricky, I guess, the discussions at CDFreaks about high quality DVD-media and -writer suggest this. Whereas CD writing is also more mature since it's been around for longer.

A bad writer/media tandem in combination with the inevitable deterioration of the chemical can lead to very fast data loss.

That's why I don't create data DVDs without ECC anymore.

But DVDs hold 7 times more data than CDs, so personally I don't see any reason why I should stick to CDs...  and I don't worry about data loss anyway, since I also create ECC data.

Archive as audio CD's or in lossless digital format?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Fandango on
...and write them to DVD+/-Rs

You should have said DVD+R. It's definitely a better an more error-resilient format than DVD-R. For details take a look here
If age or weaknes doe prohibyte bloudletting you must use boxing

Archive as audio CD's or in lossless digital format?

Reply #7 –
Quote from: Fandango on
Quote from: naturfreak on
Quote from: Synthetic Soul on
...If you can burn to DVD I believe that they have better error tolerance than CDs.
That's true, but to my experience DVD+/-Rs are rotting faster than CD-Rs, but that also depends on quality of  media.
I don't know if the DVD mediums have better error prevention techniques... actually I doubt that.
According to this site, DVDs squeeze in four times as much data per square inch, but have "at least ten times better" error correction.  I've seen this touted elsewhere before.

There's also this, from the Pioneer site:

Quote
                The next issue that arises is compatibility with CDs. CDs use                  1.2 mm substrates while DVDs use 0.6 mm substrates, and the pickup                  must account for the difference in spherical aberration resulting                  from this difference in thickness. This can be accomplished using                  devices which have already been announced, such as dual-focus                  pickups, dual-lens pickups, or pickups which use liquid crystal                  devices to provide variable apertures.
               
                Finally, 0.6 mm substrates are at a disadvantage when it comes                  to surface dirt and damage. Since the pickup beam diameter at                  the disc surface is only one-half that of the diameter for the                  1.2 mm substrate, the DVD pickup is twice as sensitive to surface                  dirt and damage. This disadvantage is compensated for by using                  powerful error correction schemes. The CD format provides correction                  for error bursts up to 2.29 mm long, while the DVD format can                  correct for error bursts as long as 6.0 mm & more than twice as                  long. And when it comes to scratches, the CD information layer                  is covered only by protective lacquer and the printed surface,                  making the information layer quite vulnerable to scratches on                  the label side. The DVD, on the other hand, is actually composed                  of two bonded substrates. Since the information layer is protected                  by a full 0.6 mm substrate, it is much less vulnerable to label-side                  scratches than a CD.
I'm on a horse.

Archive as audio CD's or in lossless digital format?

Reply #8 –
There are online retailers (e.g. dvdshoponline.co.uk ) that sell Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs and DVD+/-R blanks (link to all Taiyo Yuden)

I understand they use the same kind of processes and dyes to make their DVD+Rs as their CD-Rs which have been well known for their stable low error rate in numerous tests on CDfreaks etc.
Dynamic – the artist formerly known as DickD

Archive as audio CD's or in lossless digital format?

Reply #9 –
Quote
I would say the most important thing is to back up to multiple medias in multiple places. -- Synthetic Soul


This excellent advice should be heard more often.  There's not much point having the best error correction scheme on the most robust media if the whole lot gets burnt or stolen.  Using different media types will also go a long way towards protecting your collection from unforseen hardware defects in the future.  What I mean by this is that as yet unknown fungus that eats the dye layer out of a particular brand of DVD.  Hard disk storage also suffers from this type of common mode failure but for a much simpler reason; if the disk fails you lose the lot.