best music to game by

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:06:03 -0700, Keith Davies hath written thusly
(in article <slrnevgsea.45d.keith.davies.TakeThisOut@kjdavies.org>):

> Eric P <ericpNOSPAM06.TakeThisOut@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:03:33 -0700, Some Guy hath written thusly
>> (in article <FLmJh.20758$Ko5.15074@newsfe08.phx>):
>>
>>> Eric P. wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> At 4 gigs, you might be able to burn that to a DVD.
>>>>
>>>> That much on a DVD? Holy Crack! How much data can a DVD hold?
>>>
>>> Unless I miss my guess, a DVD holds 4.74 GB of data normally.
>>
>> Beats the heck out of 640MB for a CD. I was unaware...but the storage
>> implications...most impressive!
>
> it's honestly closer to 4.5Gb ('4,700,000,000 bytes). A CD is pretty
> close to 700Mb (650Mb 'officially', but they seem to all hold 700Mb no
> problem).
>
> Keith
>

Spiffy! Now, as I'm studying to become an audio engineer, I wonder if
music labels will consider making the DVD the standard medium for
distributing "albums" at some point, or if they'll stick with CDs till
another innovation emerges. But, I digress

I'm also wondering about the cost-effectiveness of using DVDs as
back-up media...

Thanks,
Eric


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 >> Stay informed about: best music to game by 

On Mar 14, 4:55 pm, Eric P. <ericpNOSPA....RemoveThis@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:06:03 -0700, Keith Davies hath written thusly
> (in article <slrnevgsea.45d.keith.dav....RemoveThis@kjdavies.org>):
>
>
>
> > Eric P <ericpNOSPA....RemoveThis@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:03:33 -0700, Some Guy hath written thusly
> >> (in article <FLmJh.20758$Ko5.15...@newsfe08.phx>):
>
> >>> Eric P. wrote:
>
> >>>>> At 4 gigs, you might be able to burn that to a DVD.
>
> >>>> That much on a DVD? Holy Crack! How much data can a DVD hold?
>
> >>> Unless I miss my guess, a DVD holds 4.74 GB of data normally.
>
> >> Beats the heck out of 640MB for a CD. I was unaware...but the storage
> >> implications...most impressive!
>
> > it's honestly closer to 4.5Gb ('4,700,000,000 bytes). A CD is pretty
> > close to 700Mb (650Mb 'officially', but they seem to all hold 700Mb no
> > problem).
>
> > Keith
>
> Spiffy! Now, as I'm studying to become an audio engineer, I wonder if
> music labels will consider making the DVD the standard medium for
> distributing "albums" at some point, or if they'll stick with CDs till
> another innovation emerges. But, I digress
>

The innovation you are thinking of is called "The Internet" perhaps
you have heard of it.

- Justisaur
 >> Stay informed about: best music to game by 

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007 10:40:45 -0700, Justisaur hath written thusly
(in article <1173980445.922929.41290.TakeThisOut@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>):

> On Mar 14, 4:55 pm, Eric P. <ericpNOSPA....TakeThisOut@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> On Wed, 14 Mar 2007 15:06:03 -0700, Keith Davies hath written thusly
>> (in article <slrnevgsea.45d.keith.dav....TakeThisOut@kjdavies.org>):
>>
>>
>>
>>> Eric P <ericpNOSPA....TakeThisOut@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:03:33 -0700, Some Guy hath written thusly
>>>> (in article <FLmJh.20758$Ko5.15...@newsfe08.phx>):
>>
>>>>> Eric P. wrote:
>>
>>>>>>> At 4 gigs, you might be able to burn that to a DVD.
>>
>>>>>> That much on a DVD? Holy Crack! How much data can a DVD hold?
>>
>>>>> Unless I miss my guess, a DVD holds 4.74 GB of data normally.
>>
>>>> Beats the heck out of 640MB for a CD. I was unaware...but the storage
>>>> implications...most impressive!
>>
>>> it's honestly closer to 4.5Gb ('4,700,000,000 bytes). A CD is pretty
>>> close to 700Mb (650Mb 'officially', but they seem to all hold 700Mb no
>>> problem).
>>
>>> Keith
>>
>> Spiffy! Now, as I'm studying to become an audio engineer, I wonder if
>> music labels will consider making the DVD the standard medium for
>> distributing "albums" at some point, or if they'll stick with CDs till
>> another innovation emerges. But, I digress
>>
>
> The innovation you are thinking of is called "The Internet" perhaps
> you have heard of it.
>
> - Justisaur
>

In-ter-net...nope, can't say as I have. How does it work?

Seriously, the current download method of delivery has people in
various aspects of the recording industry concerned about whether
albums will continue to be made and distributed, or if instead people
will prefer to buy and download songs or collections of songs of
various sizes instead. This is important because record labels like to
produce products in the form of albums, then have the artists tour to
support those albums. The trend of Internet download of music is
already having a significant impact on that time-honored strategy. I,
for one, want to see a physical collection of musical compositions
continue to be produced and distributed...and, of course, to have a
hand in producing some of them.

- E


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Eric P <ericpNOSPAM06.TakeThisOut@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Seriously, the current download method of delivery has people in
> various aspects of the recording industry concerned about whether
> albums will continue to be made and distributed, or if instead people
> will prefer to buy and download songs or collections of songs of
> various sizes instead. This is important because record labels like to
> produce products in the form of albums, then have the artists tour to
> support those albums. The trend of Internet download of music is
> already having a significant impact on that time-honored strategy. I,
> for one, want to see a physical collection of musical compositions
> continue to be produced and distributed...and, of course, to have a
> hand in producing some of them.

The ones most concerned about it? The labels -- the companies that
largely control the distribution and promotion of the albums. They are
worried that their effectively near-monopoly might actually fall down.

With some justification. Their rate of profit increase has actually
slowed down!


Keith
--
Keith Davies "Sometimes my brain is a very strange
keith.davies.TakeThisOut@kjdavies.org to live in."
keith.davies.TakeThisOut@gmail.com -- Dana Smith
http://www.kjdavies.org/
 >> Stay informed about: best music to game by 

Eric P <ericpNOSPAM06.DeleteThis@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Spiffy! Now, as I'm studying to become an audio engineer, I wonder if
> music labels will consider making the DVD the standard medium for
> distributing "albums" at some point, or if they'll stick with CDs till
> another innovation emerges. But, I digress

I have seen some albums distributed as DVDs, years ago. Most people are
unable to hear the difference between CD-size sampling and DVD-size
sampling -- and I suspect most of those who claim to be able to are
fooling themselves.

> I'm also wondering about the cost-effectiveness of using DVDs as
> back-up media...

Not exceedingly great. Hard drives are big enough that effective backup
is becoming a big problem. To back up my server takes almost an entire
spindle of DVDs, and I've got only a small server. The ones at work?
Forget it.

IRL, probably the most effective means of backup is mirroring. Use a
RAID in the machine (so if you lose a drive you can replace that drive
and the RAID'll 'repair' the data onto the new drive), mirror the
contents of your server to another machine (preferably at another site),
mirror the machine contents onto an external drive and carry it to
another site, and so on.

DVDs are great for archive, as long as they don't degrade.

They are an immense pain in the ass for operational backup. Too many
disk changes to back it up (unless your server with less than half a
terabyte of store -- just a wee thing -- has a burner that'll handle
*100 DVDs at once*), and if you ever need to restore from it you'll be
there for *hours*, if not *days*, reloading data.

Tape? Tape can be doable if you're willing to shell out the sheckels to
get a good tape drive. Again, store is getting big enough this isn't
always feasible, and tape has been found to be startlingly fragile.

Really, the only practical means of operational backup is using drives.
RAID to protect against single-drive failure, removable to backup and
move offsite, or mirroring to offsite storage. Tape can be done if you
can get the speed and data density you need, but that gets *expensive*.


Keith
--
Keith Davies "Sometimes my brain is a very strange
keith.davies.DeleteThis@kjdavies.org to live in."
keith.davies.DeleteThis@gmail.com -- Dana Smith
http://www.kjdavies.org/
 >> Stay informed about: best music to game by 

On Mar 15, 10:12 pm, Keith Davies <keith.dav....RemoveThis@kjdavies.org> wrote:
> Eric P <ericpNOSPA....RemoveThis@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> > Spiffy! Now, as I'm studying to become an audio engineer, I wonder if
> > music labels will consider making the DVD the standard medium for
> > distributing "albums" at some point, or if they'll stick with CDs till
> > another innovation emerges. But, I digress
>
> I have seen some albums distributed as DVDs, years ago. Most people are
> unable to hear the difference between CD-size sampling and DVD-size
> sampling -- and I suspect most of those who claim to be able to are
> fooling themselves.
>
> > I'm also wondering about the cost-effectiveness of using DVDs as
> > back-up media...
>
> Not exceedingly great. Hard drives are big enough that effective backup
> is becoming a big problem. To back up my server takes almost an entire
> spindle of DVDs, and I've got only a small server. The ones at work?
> Forget it.
>
> IRL, probably the most effective means of backup is mirroring. Use a
> RAID in the machine (so if you lose a drive you can replace that drive
> and the RAID'll 'repair' the data onto the new drive), mirror the
> contents of your server to another machine (preferably at another site),
> mirror the machine contents onto an external drive and carry it to
> another site, and so on.
>
> DVDs are great for archive, as long as they don't degrade.
>
> They are an immense pain in the ass for operational backup. Too many
> disk changes to back it up (unless your server with less than half a
> terabyte of store -- just a wee thing -- has a burner that'll handle
> *100 DVDs at once*), and if you ever need to restore from it you'll be
> there for *hours*, if not *days*, reloading data.
>
> Tape? Tape can be doable if you're willing to shell out the sheckels to
> get a good tape drive. Again, store is getting big enough this isn't
> always feasible, and tape has been found to be startlingly fragile.
>
> Really, the only practical means of operational backup is using drives.
> RAID to protect against single-drive failure, removable to backup and
> move offsite, or mirroring to offsite storage. Tape can be done if you
> can get the speed and data density you need, but that gets *expensive*.
>

Mirroring is great for data redundancy, but archival is another
issue. Last time I was dealing with backup solutions, the company had
mirroring for data redundancy, and I whole heartedly agree it's the
only real solution at this time, drive goes out, you just pop another
in and on you go.

However they also had to maintain records of all transactions, so
basically had to have a backup of every file change, and they used a
very expensive tape solution for that. The HDs would fill up every
day with log files that had to be backed up and deleted just so the
system could have room to do it again the next day. It had about a
50% failure rate on trying to recover anything from it. It was
awful. Unfortunately there was so much data they would have been
going through so many hard drives it would have been prohibitively
expensive for the relatively small company, and required a large room
to store what fit on the tiny tapes. I still think they would have
been better off doing that though, but perhaps they had to do it for
legal reasons and just had to have a solution in place even if it
didn't work very well.

I'd certainly never recommend tape after that experience for anything
but archival data that you don't really care a whole lot about, but
then why bother with it at all, unless there was a legal reason to
have to make the backups.

- Justisaur
 >> Stay informed about: best music to game by 

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007 22:12:40 -0700, Keith Davies hath written thusly
(in article <slrnevk9q7.3l0.keith.davies.DeleteThis@kjdavies.org>):

> Eric P <ericpNOSPAM06.DeleteThis@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>> Spiffy! Now, as I'm studying to become an audio engineer, I wonder if
>> music labels will consider making the DVD the standard medium for
>> distributing "albums" at some point, or if they'll stick with CDs till
>> another innovation emerges. But, I digress
>
> I have seen some albums distributed as DVDs, years ago. Most people are
> unable to hear the difference between CD-size sampling and DVD-size
> sampling -- and I suspect most of those who claim to be able to are
> fooling themselves.

Perhaps those DVDs were made using Red Book Audio standard (16-bit,
44.1 sampling rate), just as music CDs are. I do know that, with DVDs,
many bonus features can be added...which would, unfortunately, drive
the price up.

>> I'm also wondering about the cost-effectiveness of using DVDs as
>> back-up media...
>
> Not exceedingly great. Hard drives are big enough that effective backup
> is becoming a big problem. To back up my server takes almost an entire
> spindle of DVDs, and I've got only a small server. The ones at work?
> Forget it.

Probably not efficient, then.

> IRL, probably the most effective means of backup is mirroring. Use a
> RAID in the machine (so if you lose a drive you can replace that drive
> and the RAID'll 'repair' the data onto the new drive), mirror the
> contents of your server to another machine (preferably at another site),
> mirror the machine contents onto an external drive and carry it to
> another site, and so on.

That strikes me as a good business solution, but for personal home use?
Perhaps excessive.

> DVDs are great for archive, as long as they don't degrade.
>
> They are an immense pain in the ass for operational backup. Too many
> disk changes to back it up (unless your server with less than half a
> terabyte of store -- just a wee thing -- has a burner that'll handle
> *100 DVDs at once*), and if you ever need to restore from it you'll be
> there for *hours*, if not *days*, reloading data.

Yikes! Not to be attempted unless you have multiple drives, and even
then...just not practical.

> Tape? Tape can be doable if you're willing to shell out the sheckels to
> get a good tape drive. Again, store is getting big enough this isn't
> always feasible, and tape has been found to be startlingly fragile.

With tape, you have the probem of domains flaking off over time. Then
there's the need to maintain the tape drives.

> Really, the only practical means of operational backup is using drives.
> RAID to protect against single-drive failure, removable to backup and
> move offsite, or mirroring to offsite storage. Tape can be done if you
> can get the speed and data density you need, but that gets *expensive*.

Audio tape is expensive as well. A reel of 2" tape (yes, it's still
used in the industry, though many folks favor DAT/ADAT or HD24) costs a
bundle, and using an MTR with 2" tape is a bit of a chore, but tracking
to it has advantages over tracking to a digital medium.

Then there's the issue of archiving tape. Some companies find the need
to store theirs off-site, which also gets costly.

- E


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Justisaur <justisaur RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'd certainly never recommend tape after that experience for anything
> but archival data that you don't really care a whole lot about, but
> then why bother with it at all, unless there was a legal reason to
> have to make the backups.

'Disaster recovery'. This can mean recovery of operational records
(current view of the data in the event of fire or the like) or
historical data (somebody pooched the BigProject and you need to roll
the entire thing back... SVN is good, but there are times it's not the
appropriate answer).


Keith
--
Keith Davies "Sometimes my brain is a very strange
keith.davies RemoveThis @kjdavies.org to live in."
keith.davies RemoveThis @gmail.com -- Dana Smith
http://www.kjdavies.org/
 >> Stay informed about: best music to game by 

Werebat wrote:
> Shawn Roske wrote:

>> Be great if you could wrap that up and put it on a torrent.
>
> I'd really love to just make it all available online, but 1. I'm not
> that savvy to setting such things up yet

Piece of cake these days, point ­utorrent (all 173k of it) to the
directory, upload the resulting foo.torrent to a server. Connect.

Before you know it your internet connection has created 100+ backup
copies of your data. OK, they're not that easy to retrieve if things go
bad some time later, but they are out there.

> and 2. some of the material is of questionable legality (to put online).

In a torrent? Never. 8]

--
tussock

Aspie at work, sorry in advance.
 >> Stay informed about: best music to game by 

At Tue, 13 Mar 2007 15:05:05 -0500, Werebat wrote:

> >>>> So, what is your favourite selection of music to game by? What do
> >>>> you do for action, drama, suspense, or other?
> >>>
> >>> Lord. I have a 20 Gig iPod that is about 20% full, and 90% of that
> >>> is D&D music and little quips I've ripped from video games, movies,
> >>> etc. The files are organized into categories like "Background",
> >>> "Combat", "Alien/Creepy", and "Quips". I DM one game and play in
> >>> another, and when I play I have plenty of time to fiddle with the
> >>> iPod but not so much when I DM.
> >>
> >> Wow. I'd like to get my hands on that iPod.
> >
> > At 4 gigs, you might be able to burn that to a DVD.
>
> Hm... After March ends, I'll have a little more time on my hands.
> Jasin, remind me on April 1st or so and I'll try to see if I can do this
> and send it to you.

Hey, that'd be really cool! Thanks. I'll be sure to remind you.


--
Jasin Zujovic
 >> Stay informed about: best music to game by