A Comprehensive Recording Media Review - Circa October 2000
by Terry Friedman - Tucson, AZ
tzf@lpl.arizona.edu

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Gang:

We've had a few threads over the years on what medium to use to for groups and archives. I just spent a couple of late nights surfing to evaluate the options, which are changing rapidly, and thought I'd share what I've come up with. (Prodded by the "Where to get folk dance tapes" thread, and especially planina's posting:)

A few years ago, we switched to minidisks, where you can record a whole 74 minutes worth of songs and instantly access any of them. The Albuquerque group recorded all their songs onto writable CDs and uses a 200-disk CD changer for programming. I am now slowly recording our collection onto MP3 and find it is the most convenient way to play it. Instant access, search, and programming, and all I carry is a laptop or Nomad Jukebox (size of a CD walkman, but holds many hundreds of songs) and powered speakers.

List-Angels: a quick decision please as to whether this is a legitimate list thread.

Others: please wait or send replies/comments to me until the angels have spoken. If they decide the thread is kosher then I'll repost them all, otherwise I'll digest them and forward to any interested parties.

The main current options are:

But also on the horizon: A. Cost considerations.


MD: This has changed rapidly since a year or so ago when we were discussing MD vs tapes for group use.

CD-Audio: MP3-CD: DVD-R: Super-CD: B. Convenience & other considerations.

MD:

CD-Audio:
 
 

MP3:
 


MP3/DVD - see below.

DVD-R & variants
 


 

Apology ....

Sorry this is so long. Condolences if you've read straight through. But I hope it may be helpful to those considering changing media for their collections.

Most of my info on MP3 variants was from http://www.mp3.com. They seem to keep quite up to date, with exhaustive reviews and links. Once I dove into their site it took about four hours before I came up for air.

I've got maybe 20,000 lines of information & reviews about MP3s, Audio-CDs, related computer programs, etc. not very well organized in 3 text files [NOT word, NOT html!]. I would probably be thrown off the list if I tried to post them as attachments, so email me if you'd like copies.

terry friedman
tzf@lpl.arizona.edu

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