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[TheBoy]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

And my photos are copied onto 3 or 4 DVD-Rs each, and two external hard drives

My father, bless him, used to have a little saying - there's a difference between scratching your bum and tearing it to bits....

[Martin_1962]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

And my photos are copied onto 3 or 4 DVD-Rs each, and two external hard drives

My father, bless him, used to have a little saying - there's a difference between scratching your bum and tearing it to bits....

Ever had data loss?

Can't be too careful with pictures

[TheBoy]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

And my photos are copied onto 3 or 4 DVD-Rs each, and two external hard drives

My father, bless him, used to have a little saying - there's a difference between scratching your bum and tearing it to bits....

Ever had data loss?

Can't be too careful with pictures

Does it really matter if you lose a few pictures? I suspect not really.


I've never lost data at home. Lost plenty at work, but thats the way our disk subsystems get thrashed to bits.  Also, local ops think its a good idea to reseat all disks in an array when replacing a disk.  Needless to say, the array controllers mark them as bad, and lose the array.

[Martin_1962]

oops meant solid state....

I have found flash great for short term memory card use... and thats what its for at the end of the day, and with 64Gb SD.... can take a whole load of pictures.

Just back it up to HDD when done....

And HDD is probably as bad or even more unreliable

And my photos are copied onto 3 or 4 DVD-Rs each, and two external hard drives

My father, bless him, used to have a little saying - there's a difference between scratching your bum and tearing it to bits....

Ever had data loss?

Can't be too careful with pictures

Does it really matter if you lose a few pictures? I suspect not really.


I've never lost data at home. Lost plenty at work, but thats the way our disk subsystems get thrashed to bits.  Also, local ops think its a good idea to reseat all disks in an array when replacing a disk.  Needless to say, the array controllers mark them as bad, and lose the array.

Children growing up?

I am rather careful with photos, also DVDs can fail - hence multiple backups

[TheBoy]

Children growing up?

I am rather careful with photos, also DVDs can fail - hence multiple backups

Would it matter if you lost a few? It really wouldn't make much difference, would it.

When you were young, I bet your parents had no 'backups' of your pictures, and I bet she lent and lost a few.

Additionally, I suspect you have plenty of piccies of your kids, far more than your parents had of you?


You are right to take the precautions you do (though I seem to recall you use naff DVDs?), as the pictures are fairly important. But not critical...

[Kevin Wood]

I wish my Dad had used a slightly less secure storage medium for all the 8mm film of me thro-gro-wing up. And mother KW senior in a mini skirt.

 

Still, at least his projector's broken, but he is talking about getting it transferred to DVD.

Kevin

[Marks DTM Calib]

The only reliable storage medium for photos is to print them using a wet process!

Flash can also suffer short term failure to, I have cases of field failures after anly 1 week!

Of course it makes bugger all difference in most cases i.e. jpg and MP3's as you wont notice the odd few missing pixels and MP3 quality is naff at best anyway but, is probably still happening without you knowing it.

The flash drives have some protection for this by using FEC to compensate for some of the errors and they try (but not well) to wear level (flash wears out quite quickly!).

The key thing is to not use flash for storage of bit critical and important info as a single error can totaly knacker say an exe file or config file.

One other thing I have seen on more than one occassion with flash is the FAT getting corrupted, when this happens its bye bye the lot!

[Kevin Wood]

The key thing is to not use flash for storage of bit critical and important info as a single error can totaly knacker say an exe file or config file.

One other thing I have seen on more than one occassion with flash is the FAT getting corrupted, when this happens its bye bye the lot!

Been there on both counts.

Fortunately a once-expensive flash device seems to become both laughably small in capacity and cheap to replace at about the time it dies. The data on it may still be valuable, of course..

Certainly wouldn't trust them for storage long-term but they are very convenient short term.

Kevin

[x25xe]

Going back to the main subject of this thread, I am sorry, but I am with Martin on this.  I have a MD head unit which could record as well.  I found this really useful.  Unfortunately, the MD section of the Head Unit has failed and I really miss it.

I have a full size MD deck as part of my HiFi setup and still use it although only occasionally.  IMO, MD deserved to do better.

[Martin_1962]

Children growing up?

I am rather careful with photos, also DVDs can fail - hence multiple backups

Would it matter if you lost a few? It really wouldn't make much difference, would it.

When you were young, I bet your parents had no 'backups' of your pictures, and I bet she lent and lost a few.

Additionally, I suspect you have plenty of piccies of your kids, far more than your parents had of you?


You are right to take the precautions you do (though I seem to recall you use naff DVDs?), as the pictures are fairly important. But not critical...

Nope negatives and slides were carefully stored.

[MaxV6]

 IMO, MD deserved to do better.

yeah,, OT a sec, but what REALLY should have done better was DCC.

In it's later generation, it sounded nicer than ANY other consumer Digital format, CD included....  technically, although there were data compression aspects to it, it was actually 18 bit, so had a much greater dynamic range available to it than the other formats, all of which were (are) 16 bit...  and the data compression was the most benign anyone;s come up with yet....

sorry.... i'll get me anorak.

[Marks DTM Calib]

 IMO, MD deserved to do better.

yeah,, OT a sec, but what REALLY should have done better was DCC.

In it's later generation, it sounded nicer than ANY other consumer Digital format, CD included....  technically, although there were data compression aspects to it, it was actually 18 bit, so had a much greater dynamic range available to it than the other formats, all of which were (are) 16 bit...  and the data compression was the most benign anyone;s come up with yet....

sorry.... i'll get me anorak.

Max, the number of bits does not affect the dynamic range, its the sampling rate that does.

[MaxV6]

 IMO, MD deserved to do better.

yeah,, OT a sec, but what REALLY should have done better was DCC.

In it's later generation, it sounded nicer than ANY other consumer Digital format, CD included....  technically, although there were data compression aspects to it, it was actually 18 bit, so had a much greater dynamic range available to it than the other formats, all of which were (are) 16 bit...  and the data compression was the most benign anyone;s come up with yet....

sorry.... i'll get me anorak.

Max, the number of bits does not affect the dynamic range, its the sampling rate that does.

I trust you're deliberately trying to wind me up Mark...


errr...  just in case...     Audio&Acoustic engineering IS my job mate....  

Sample rate determines the bandwidth of audio available...   and thus the upper limit of the frequency response , See "Nyquist theorem".



In Fixed word length digital audio (16 bit, 24 bit etc as opposed to DSD type bit streams)  the bit depth determines the smallest signal range reproducible, (they all share a common maximum of 0 dBFS), therefore determining ,  the dynamic range available (144dB for 24 bit, 96dB for 16bit) , and the format noise floor (relates to SNR)  


anyone wanting to know more than they'll ever need to about digital audio would do well to read this series of articles written by Sound On Sound's technical editor (a Colleague/Friend  ) Hugh Robjohns

http://www.soundonsound.com/search?url=%2Fsearch&Keyword=%22All+about+digital%22&Words=All&Section=8&Subject=13&Summary=Yes


Note that the article pre-dates the Pro-audio industry's move towards 96K and 192K sample rates...  , and, offhand I think DSD and other bit-stream very high sample rate (we're talking 2+ Ghz, as opposed to KHz...)   systems.

none of which have much import on the substance of the theoretical basics of digital audio....  

[Marks DTM Calib]

On the hook Max  

You do realise what little it truely means in real world electronics though with supply noise, schott noise etc which totaly out weighs the significance of the LSB.......

[MaxV6]

On the hook Max  

You do realise what little it truely means in real world electronics though with supply noise, schott noise etc which totaly out weighs the significance of the LSB.......

actually it means a great deal....   you need to live in a world of ubergeek audio electronics mate....   there are mixing consoles and mic pre-amps out here with who's designers are aiming for noisefloors approaching that of  a piece of bare wire......   8-) (Re : Johnson noise)

real world figures for 24 bit systems using professional grade converters , are a typically of the order of 112-120dB  (A-weighted) useable , linearly accurate Dynamic range, some claim better than that, ( but my god you really don't want to know the price !)

domestic/semi-pro is usually more like 101-110 dB (A-weighted)

SOME manufacturers put it a little differently, dCS for example...   won't happily refer to a product as being capable of 24 bit resolution, unless the LSB is of some demonstrable use.....     and other foibles, like insisting on using the more technically accurate description of Sample rate " Kilocycles per second" as opposed to a KHz figure...

http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/technical_papers/bits.pdf



others have shown ways of dithering the audio data stream to allow perception of signals  theoretically below that of the applicable system noise.. effectively, (according to some) getting 20 Bit performance from a 16 bit media. ( Apogee UV22 for example, Prism-Sound also have similar technology )

the use of balanced signal paths,  proper power supply implementations, and all sorts of other silly tricks get thiese guys in to noise performance territories that domestic manufacturers don't even dream about....  


bear in mind , for example that the Pro-audio market generally uses balanced connection protocols, and, further example,  Schott noise is a "Common mode" form of noise, and therefore theoretically rejected at the receiver end of a balanced connection.

not to mention intelligent installation design ....  


there's lots of interesting stuff being done at the far edges of the audio geek universe (and i'm NOT talking about bloody snake oil Hifi 'dangle berries' like Russ Andrews and that lot purvey... )