SACD's Survival

[ManWhoCan]

Yeah I get all that [as I explained, I work in IT]. What I don't understand is how an average surround music consumer has 60TB of data. You're kinda the exception to the rule.

Not that exceptional. I have a PC with a JBOD 40TB space, Plus 3NAS boxes with 40TB of available storage in each. Not all the space is occupied, but just yesterday I had to transfer just under 1TB from 1 NAS that had only 3.65GB space left on it. My PC's music is backed up to 1 of the NAS boxes. The other 2 NAS boxes each have about 30TB of content not on the PC: 1 NAS is backed up to the other. I also have 10TB of my most important music backed up to a cloud service.
I use WDPR4100 Nas Boxes (4 bays populated with 4x12TB WD RED HDDs in 1 big space because redundancy is having the other same NAS with the same content copied to it ). I make instant, small backups, to stay on top of it all. As soon as I have new content, say an album ripped to my PC, the moment I have completed all that I want to do with that 1 album's folder I copy it to 1 of the NAS boxes. If it is really important I aslo upload that 1 album to my cloud storage. So backup is small at any time.

 

[ManWhoCan]

To get back on the OP's topic. There may be a dearth of new Pop music on SACDs, but there is still plenty of Jazz & classical. The former tends to be 2ch only but the latter is mostly Mch., & actually recorded in DSD. I doubt any of the new Pop music is ever recorded in DSD so putting it out on SACD is not the best solution. Better to use BD or DVD for non DSD recorded stuff.

 

[zdjh22]

A whole bunch of disparate remarks in response to various messages upstream.

I love SACD as an audio medium and wish it a long and prosperous life. The best part is versatility - MCH, Stereo, and Redbook CD in a single hybrid disk. The worst part, like all physical media, is the gradual but steady disappearance of support (availability of players, availability of both new and old pressings). On a different thread about Oppos, there was a depressing industry magazine link from 2017 that showed how much of a decline there had been in purchases of physical media. Together with the rapid rise in secure streaming of high quality audio and video formats, we will surely see an acceleration in the already currently declining physical media/player marketplace.

Which returns me to the need for archival backup of my physical media, the DMCA be damned. We should all keep in mind the tenuous thread of work and luck that led to our ability to backup SACDs (the person who reverse engineered it all on the PS3 thanks in huge part to the leak of master keys; the features in a certain Mediatek chipset and the open Linux environment running on them that allowed the exploit on a small subset of universal drives for extraction of DSD bitstreams). Similar stories exist for the other formats. I hope none of us pirate music or video, yet any of us who backup our own entertainment media are in violation of existing law (but unlikely to be held to account).

I worked professionally in physics with a lot of IT my entire career. Regarding backups, a backup is only a copy of unknown quality unless you periodically verify the contents. That can be casual (playback the audio or video and note problems) or rigorous (compare CRCs or md5sums, use an advanced filesystem like ZFS or btrfs and periodically perform scrubs, on hardware RAID schedule periodic scrubs).

SSD (flash memory) is not an archival medium! The charge in the individual cells of an SSD will leak out (quantum tunneling) over time. Your USB stick or fancy SSD drive is convenient, fast, and will fail to return your data if you wait a number of years. Magnetic disk is better for longevity, but I also have a number of older disks that have interfaces (SCSI, IDE, ATA) that are increasingly inconvenient to access on new computers due to lack of matching hardware. It’s unfortunately necessary to periodically migrate data from old to newer technology devices.

The various optical media (mini disc, magneto-optical, phase change, [CD,DVD,BD]-R/RW) all failed as viable storage for backup mostly because areal densities were limited by the wavelength of light used. Magnetic domains were (and are) steadily pushed to small fractions of those wavelengths. So you can cheaply buy a magnetic disk with 10^12 bits/in^2 storage density, but the best multilayer BD is stuck at 1/100th of that. Your hybrid SACD is roughly 1/1000th of that. Data rates (latency, bandwidth) are also tied to densities. That said, I do like and trust M-disc for long term archival storage of critical personal data (multiple copies).

I have a long, painful (as a programmer), and boring history with tape (7- and 9-track, QIC, 8mm, DLT, LTO, STK Redwood/Eagle/etc.). Tape is critical to large scale industrial computing (my last employer, Fermilab, had over 600 petabytes of online robotic storage by the time I retired). Other than the mini-QIC drive I used for a few years in the mid-90s, I’ve not since been tempted as a consumer to buy a drive and use tapes at home. I’m comfortable using the various data wrappers required for tape (tar, cpio, etc.), but I doubt that many here are.

For folks interested in DIY NAS, yes, RPI and similar SBCs work (after all, many Synology systems have been based on MIPS or ARM processors). I use SBC hardware from Radxa; they sell quad-SATA (raspberry pi) and penta-SATA (Rock PI) interfaces that can be used. I now have 4 DIY penta-SATA based ZFS systems that have been running for up to several years and have had no failures and no complaints. But this is not for the casual computer user.

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

But this is not for the casual computer user.

And we are not the casual music listeners. In all seriousness, yes, my tape comment wasn't directed at most people. I PROBABLY should have made that clearer.

 

[atrocity]

Look at Google Drive changing the storage limits recently of enterprise accounts, and before that saying they were going to comb through user folders (using who knows what algorithm) looking for copyright infringing files. You'd hate to rely on something like that in an emergency only to find they've deleted or otherwise restricted access to your data based on some arbitrary corporate policy that came into effect after you signed a storage agreement.

One thing I really like about rclone is the ability to encrypt the cloud backups.

 

[zdjh22]

One thing I really like about rclone is the ability to encrypt the cloud backups.

Any of the “zero knowledge” (where only the user has the keys) encrypted cloud storage services are probably a really good idea. I know of SpiderOak but there are surely many others.

 

[gene_stl]

I find the notion of a cloud storage company going through your files to see if you have anything copyrighted to be chilling.
EDIT: I am sure the next step is that they will send out bots to check your local files and you will have agreed to in some clause of the EULA of windows or IOS

I presume our group here has a number of fans of Dr. AIX , Mark Waldrep. I certainly am. In his last email blog he declared the death of physical media which really really depressed me since he was somebody that pushed it to its limits. He is in the process of putting all of his AIX works up on YouTube.
He made reference to discarding large quantities of unsold discs.
https://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=7321
While I do not currently stream and don't like the business model at all, I could see possibly doing some streaming, possibly to get some Atmos content and it may end up the only way to get certain things. But the more I learn about "the music industry" the more I think that if one pirates music one is doing the artists less harm than the so called legitimate music industry. This position has hardened lately by watching the YouTube videos of Benn Jordan whom I recommend. He and other producers are producing anti Atmos for music videos.





Like so many threads here , this one talks about questions you may never have thought to ask and problems you could blunder into. It is always good to share our experiences. My back up and NAS stuff right now is small and simplistic but will likely need to grow greatly.

 

[stoopid]

He and other producers are producing anti Atmos for music videos.





Like so many threads here , this one talks about questions you may never have thought to ask and problems you could blunder into. It is always good to share our experiences. My back up and NAS stuff right now is small and simplistic but will likely need to grow greatly.

I'm not familiar which is odd as I'm an avid youtube watcher (even pay for premium). Added to my watch list.

 

[stoopid]

I'm not familiar which is odd as I'm an avid youtube watcher (even pay for premium). Added to my watch list.

Super solid dude. I subscribed.