I don't get the sense that anyone is arguing for the superiority of digital file storage over analog. Someone upthread "nothing has fundamentally changed in 20+ years" (or something to that effect), and some folks (me?) are taking issue with that statement.

20 years ago backing up your digital sessions meant a drawer full of consumer grade spinny drives (which were expensive, failed often, and connected in weird ways), now with barely any effort at all you can have stuff stored automatically, pretty much instantly in multiple locations in multiple formats. To me, personally, that seems like a big change.

Yes, you will absolutely be able to take a 24tk tape out of storage in 20 years and probably find a machine that will play it back. No argument.
But, you will also be able to open a folder of WAV files 20 yrs from now and open them in whatever metaverse hellscape exists.

The cost and inconvenience of tape as a storage medium means that I don't think people are (like Neil Young) printing backup copies of 2" 24tk tapes. So, if that tape is physically damaged or lost then it's gone forever. The fundamental change w digital storage over the past decade+ has been that stuff isn't stored in once place, and it's incredibly easy to store thing in multiple places. That's a strong argument for digital that didn't exist 20 years ago.

Again, this is not an argument of one thing in favour of another, just that it's not as cut and dry as it was a few decades ago.

mdc wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2024 12:53 pm I don't get the sense that anyone is arguing for the superiority of digital file storage over analog.

Flack is.

Someone upthread "nothing has fundamentally changed in 20+ years" (or something to that effect), and some folks (me?) are taking issue with that statement.

Yes and no. FM Kniferide admitted that it doesn't matter if DropCloud disappears in 5 years because then you just move it to a new provider. I agree, but that's the same digital dilemma that's always existed of "transferring shit every 5 years to the newest thing". It can be done, but honestly would all of the Sundazed/4 Men With Beards/Blue Note/Numero Group/etc etc reissues exist today if band members, label staff, managers etc. had needed to transfer stuff twice per decade? Probably not.

It's funny to think back on all the digital services that have existed since I started putting music out into the world:

mp3.com
Myspace
Pandora
last.fm
something called 8tracks I think very briefly?
Purevolume/Reverbnation (same time frame, similar interface)
Bandcamp (still around, but with recent acquisitions I wouldn't trust it long term)
Spotify/Tidal/etc

From Myspace onward, a lot of that material has been sitting in boxes waiting to be spooled up again, if it's ever needed.

A fun little example of the indurable nature of digital recording: I had to recall a mix of a song I did not even two weeks ago, and when I listened to it it sounded different from the mix I sent the band. It's been driving me crazy. I started going through the backups that the DAW created for me to figure out if there's a version that sounds like the mix I sent and was approved. It turned out there's one plug-in that when de-activated where it's used, the mix goes back to what it sounded originally. Then I realize that in the 12 days from when I made the mix I had updated that plugin. If I had to recall this mix a month from now, I doubt I would have been able to put that together. A year from now? Ten years? 20 years? You get the picture.

Anthony Flack wrote:

eliya wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2024 2:18 pm I have a lot to say about this subject but I will remind you all of the bi-annual Meta crash where Facebook, Instagram, and What'sApp are unavailable for hours. Not to mention a few weeks ago where entire industries were frozen due to some Microsoft updates. You really are putting a lot of trust in the most ultra capitalist companies to protect your data (and I'm not even talking about privacy) from being lost. Shit happens and it happens more often that we like to think.

This is what ultra-capitalist companies are good for.

No, they are good for trading your information. They aren't actually good for storing your data. Your data is not as much of a priority to them as your information.

Obviously there are benefits to digital. It's a very transparent medium. We can make endless digital copies without degradation. It's also a fantastic delivery format (think of all the music you found out about through the internet, stuff on youtube, etc.), but the workflow of digital as well as how we store it right now - those don't lend themselves for longevity.

Most people are still using spinning drives. SSD and PCIe storage is still expensive if you're continuously making records/art. My little fleet of drives is half SSD and half spinning drives. I use the SSDs for samples, the spinning drive for most of my work/backup. I only trust my work to be backed up and readable for the next couple of years.

I would never count on plugins (or even outboard gear) being available in the future. If you finish a mix and want to archive it digitally, bounce it to individual .wav files, all starting at t=0, and with the plugins and/or outboard gear printed to the track.

There's no way I would archive a tape mix without printing the outboard gear, because there's no guarantee you're ever going to find a working Eventide Harmonizer or Publison Infernal Machine or whatever in 20 years.

Nate Dort wrote: I would never count on plugins (or even outboard gear) being available in the future. If you finish a mix and want to archive it digitally, bounce it to individual .wav files, all starting at t=0, and with the plugins and/or outboard gear printed to the track.

This is something I would do after the project is wrapped up, but it's ongoing still. This is also a huge pain in the ass to do, and if the band doesn't ask me, I'd rather not spend the extra time to do this work gratis.

Nate Dort wrote: There's no way I would archive a tape mix without printing the outboard gear, because there's no guarantee you're ever going to find a working Eventide Harmonizer or Publison Infernal Machine or whatever in 20 years.

You'd be surprised. I know someone who's rebuilding Publisons...

Nate Dort wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2024 2:36 pm There's no way I would archive a tape mix without printing the outboard gear, because there's no guarantee you're ever going to find a working Eventide Harmonizer or Publison Infernal Machine or whatever in 20 years.

Maybe more of a human nature factor than tape vs. disc, but I like that the former encouraged committing to sounds more. You want that super-fried Ampex 351 dime'd guitar lead? Do it up front and own it forever!

penningtron wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2024 1:52 pm Yes and no. FM Kniferide admitted that it doesn't matter if DropCloud disappears in 5 years because then you just move it to a new provider.

Yeah, my position is basically an archive that isn't looked over and maintained isn't an archive at all. Digital or Analog. A thing that exists in singular form is not protected just because you put it somewhere you think is "safe" all by it's lonely self. Digital or Analog. There seems to be 2 things talked about here too, the archive of the session (digital DAW file or Multitrack Tape) and the archive of the finished work (Final mastered bounce vs. a master mix down reel). These 2 things require WAY different attention if you are going to create a "archive" of the work that can be accessed and revisited. The Session master is a total fucking pain in the as D or A cause you have to basically create a new project/multitrack tape with all your mix moves FX and other horse shit. In analog, how do you account for it being next played on a totally different machine, console, processing etc? Digital has that covered but does fall into the "every fucking DAW and every fucking plugin is definitely going to go extinct someday" problem. I guess we just do what we can. I personally find zero value in archiving the session accurately. The finished mix is all that maters to me, warts and all. I don't want to open the wormhole of revisiting and re mixing shit, I already never finish the shit I need to now.

Kniferide wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2024 6:04 pm The finished mix is all that maters to me, warts and all. I don't want to open the wormhole of revisiting and re mixing shit, I already never finish the shit I need to now.

I have some 2" tapes around and some bandmates have hard drives from the last decade but yeah multi-track archiving isn't something I actively do. Once I finish a record I don't really want to deal with it again.

I guess there are other scenarios like karaoke mixes and Guitar Hero and stuff but that will not likely happen with my music. If music AI takes off (doubtful) the learning models would probably benefit from individual tracks and not just finished songs.

Amazon/GOOG/Apple/ATT/VZ/insert whoever here are all completely interdependent on each other in ways that they don't even understand. Your data lives in places that are maintained by multiple 3rd parties all over the world unless you have specific contracts to identify particular telco hotels or locations, farms, etc. Expecting all of those companies to behave in ways that benefit the user over the company isn't realistic, and has been borne out time and time again throughout the history of capitalism.

My position has been and remains that there are risks associated to this that need to be understood and really, for most they aren't.

People like many of us here who are conscientious and diligent about their data and it's accessibility will probably be just fine even in a catastrophic event. This is the same with tape, so that point is really a wash and I think people who keep making that point aren't considering that. For instance, a lot of my shit is in the cloud, it's stored locally, and it's also stored physically in a site I own and have access to where I do monthly back ups.

I would also consider that there are restricted file types and extensions that are purged from your cloud accounts if the providers "intelligence" sees it as a problem. One drive and drop box both do this. Corrupted txt and wav files can be targeted and smoked to eliminate a perceived threat. If that cloud provider is the only place for your data, well, good luck. Payment plans can become unaffordable if the provider decides your services aren't profitable anymore. This has happened countless times in all forms of service.

TLDR - I don't trust the fucking capitalists to ensure my shit is well maintained. They barely take care of their own shit.

People often seem to get prickly like they feel I am envangelicising here when I am just trying to look at the world as it is today and likely will be in the future. I'm not trying to snatch anyone's tape machine away. I'll dispute some statements that I don't think are true though. Like the idea that computers might forget what to do with a WAV file one day.

20 years ago we were discussing the relative permanence of optical discs and magnetic hard drives. Now that's not even relevant. We have ubiquitous wireless broadband internet. The way we did things before that is not going to be the way we do things after that. The video rental stores have all closed down. We have ubiquitous wireless broadband internet.

I can transfer gigabytes of data all around the world in minutes, if not seconds: just like that.

I suspect our future is going to be drowning in data, all the detritus of our lives piling up in ever-cheaper digital storage. We're going to need AI just to help us sift through the mountains of digital shit we leave behind, a little WALL-E cleaning up after us. It's bound to change the way we look at things.

And yeah, capitalist systems, but we already rely on them to do things like putting power in our sockets and food on our shelves, because of economies of scale, and because here we are in a capitalist society. Likely in the future data centres will be considered critical infrastructure and there will be more regulation. Maybe more public ownership, who knows, that's an argument about capitalism rather than about data centres.