.wav as the archival standard

[sus4chord]

Actually, more like fading out about a minute before the end of the song, then the silence, then the ka-chunk, then a little more silence, then the fade in of the last 30-seconds of the song so it can just fade out on its own anyway. That used to just drive me batty.

Man, I hated 8-track tapes (I passed on 8-tracks and went straight to cassettes for my portable media).

[Craig Maier]

A friend had one and I heard it once; I never owned one! What a horrible concept! Ya can not get more musically insensitive than that thing.

[Dan McDonald]

I worked at "Burger Chef" in my last year in high school and bought an 8-track. It sounded pretty good, but within a year Cassette players for the car were out and I bought one of them to replace it. The first cassette I got for the car had a built-in microphone on the side so that you could use it as a dictation machine. Kind of cool, but I never used it. Of course, 18-year-olds don't usually have a lot to dictate. In any event, the cassette wasn't as clear as the 8-track, but it sure was nicer to have the 45 minutes of uninterrupted music.

Dan

[DougMac]

The first cassette I got for the car had a built-in microphone on the side so that you could use it as a dictation machine. Kind of cool, but I never used it.
Dan

Too bad. Think of all the Friday night memories you could have taped!

Doug

[Dan McDonald]

Too bad. Think of all the Friday night memories you could have taped!

Doug

True... but I have enough embarrassing tapes already.

Dan

[cromag]

Ahhh, memories. I never saw the sense of 8-tracks, either. I went straight for cassettes. My first player (1969?) was a very large Bell+Howell unit that I mounted on the floor (on the transmission "hump") of my old station wagon. It was completely independent of the existing radio, not unusual at the time, which was a good thing since the radio used a single 6x9 speaker in the dashboard.

I got a tip from a friend which I used for every stereo I installed in a car, up to the early '90s -- hook up a center channel speaker using the "hot lead" from both the right and left channels. I never saw that in any documentation, so I was always pretty cautious about it, but it made a big difference compared to just the two speakers.

[Craig Maier]

Quoting Cromag:

" - - - hook up a center channel speaker using the "hot lead" from both the right and left channels."

-------------------------------------------

That applies the difference signal to the center channel speaker. It was not an uncommon scheme and filled in the middle nicely provided that you used a fairly high efficiency loudspeaker in the middle. A more realistic technique is as follows and involves using two additional speakers with 4 total:

Take the left and right channels and add 8 Ohm resistors to the hot side of each amplifier outputs. Create a node consisting of the 2 x 8 Ohm resistors and connect it to the hot side of a center channel speaker and then connect the cold side of the speaker to the amplifiers common return. Put this speaker in the front middle of the system. That creates a more realistic front center channel because the summed signal (rather than the difference) is applied.

Then, connect a rear located speaker between the amplifier hot outputs; this difference signal usually contains the ambience information and thusly is quite realistic when its sound comes from behind the listener. This was an early and crude form of Quad.

[Geebster]

LOL - no, I do not. But, I always think about purchasing a new toy around this time of the year. Last year it was a Tbyte USB hard drive and this year Rick is thinking about getting one and we were just chatting about it. I also am considering purchasing another one too.

ps - if I recall correctly, you put me onto the idea of the Tbyte drive last year. It was an excellent purchase. Of course, I had to buy a second one to back it up. It really is great having my entire record collection right at the tips of my fingers. I love to take a challenge from friends (using the DCTune Library). I ask them to name a song and I will bring it up and start it playing in three seconds. Almost always, I can do that successfully.

Well, I must have been a good "little" boy this year. My Mother got me a flat phono preamp and my GF just told me I'm getting another hard drive.... just what I wanted!!!!

GB

[Craig Maier]

GB -

Yeah, those are great boys toys!

[Geebster]

GB -

Yeah, those are great boys toys!

How true.... You would have laughed the way my GF asked me about the hard drive.... She said... " You'll probably want another hard drive or some other crap for Christmas, won't you?"

When I said yes!!!! She said... "Figures...OK, then....that was easy enough".

Clearly, she wasn't too thrilled .....

GB

[Craig Maier]

It's worth noting that the Diamond Cut Productions Audio Software does support .flac. We just do not recommend using it for your archive, but it is your choice.

Craig

[Marc Hildebrant]

Fast forward to today. I have an 8 T byte drive that cost $100.00

Use .wav

Marc

[Craig Maier]

Indeed. I hope that a lot of people took the advice to stick with .wav for their archives. 8 Terabytes for 100 bucks - incredible, but not surprising.

Craig