September 30th, 2005
I've got this media storage problem going on lately. [Cue the blues song]
Really, it started with the discovery that there are some really good freeware programs out there (and subsequently installed right here) that can take a digital transfer of an old cassette tape and remove hiss, reduce pops, and compensate somewhat for flutter. It is a revival of old neglected songs, and a nice way to recover those songs that were on the road to oblivion through signal loss. That's what happens to old magnetic media, after all.
And along the way I've been able to drag back some memories that had nearly marched down the gutter into obscurity as well:
- Like an old drinking song about Ezra Pound that my old band recorded live in a practice room upstairs from a music store (the patrons of which were invited up to participate in the chorus)
- Or this charming garage-band punky cover of the song Windy that features shouting and belching at the end. In the MP3 of it that I made up, I didn't fade the song (though I think it was meant to be faded) so that we can hear a disenfranchised Jennifer remarking on the crudity of the song.
OK, but now back to the problem: I had all these old tapes kicking around taking up a lot of space, and I've been recording them digitally into WAV files, and I am storing them on CDs—a less impermanent medium than tapes (though not an eternal casting either).
But the problem has gone from a physical space problem (storing relatively bulky and finicky cassette tapes) to a more abstract problem of losing track of the data as it piles up. You see, if I was losing track of songs when they were stored on tapes, how well am I going to keep track of them when there are more of them per CD ... and the CDs themselves are more store-and-forgettable? Also, CDs are maybe not as finicky as tapes, but one crack and the whole shebang is useless. Whereas with tapes, I used to sometimes transfer the tape itself to another shell, or splice damaged tape together with Scotch tape ... damage to the song, but still something was recovered. So CDs are maybe more durable, but there's more at stake as well.
So, this is the media-storage dilemma I find myself faced with now: Should I continue to waste space and effort keeping the old and deteriorating cassette tapes around as long as possible? Or do I make two copies of everything digitally and toss the tapes away?
* * *
Note: When I made up the two above-mentioned MP3s from the WAV files, I invented an imaginary album from one of the proposed (but rejected) names for the band:
Band: The Toe Pyjamas
Album: Mummy My Tummy
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