As promised, I will respond to some questions that are asked via email by answering here in the Blog.

One of the things I’m most concerned with is the appropriate use of digital processing in transcription for cleanup or remastering of digital archival copies.  This includes both questions of when (if at all) processing beyond the actual A/D conversion is appropriate, and which are the techniques and currently available tools best suited to archival audio.

It’s a good question. To some extent, it depends on the client and the final use.

If the restoration/preservation reformatting is for an institutional client, then the first transfers should be as unprocessed as possible — at least the initial copies that are archived should be done that way. The main reason for this is that processing algorithms will always get better and they may hide some information that is useful to future researchers–information that today we consider “noise.” (more…)

Large-scale, enterprise-class storage is using combinations of both disc and tape. LTO tape appears to be growing more than any other format.

For those of us who are working at a much smaller scale, I have provided references on what I do for fairly robust storage on a budget. Please see these two attachments: description and map. It shows a unified (I hope) approach useful to small archives and businesses.

On March 12, 2006, Chris Goosman asked:

What does it take to point the family logins to the centralized “My Documents”? Does each user get their own “My Documents” folder or is it truly a central space that all users share?

Your page has inspired me to write up a similar document for the home/studio/office network here including my backup strategy.

I currently use a backup server with 750GB of Raid-5 running Retrospect, but I need a longer term archive storage and I found one of those LaCie NAS boxes like you use (the local one, with the 10/100 and firewire interfaces, not the newer one with gigabit and USB 2.0) for a great price and it’s on the way. I will be trying out ViceVersa which looks neat.

For the network, is your Netgear switch a layer 2 switch? I think I’ll be moving toward a layer 2 switch to handle a few different VLANs. I’m using Vonage for my own voice service which I’d like on it’s own VLAN, plus my wifes office computers on their own VLAN, my studio on a VLAN, and then soon I plan on putting together an Astrisk PBX and would want it on it’s own VLAN. But this is too much computer geek talk and not enough audio geek talk, so I’ll stop now.

I replied:

Hi, Chris,

Each “My Documents” is a separate “My Documents” folder in each user’s own logon – as is a “Favorites” which includes “Links” so no matter where you log in your IE looks the same. I move: “Favorites” and “My Pictures” and “Desktop” into the root of “My Documents” so they’re visible. Also move “Music” and “Videos”. I use Microsoft’s TWEAK UI PowerToy http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx to do this.

My hierarchy is root/family/person

That way, I can back up root/family and get everyone. I also have set permissions so my wife and I can see everyone’s space. My wife is worried about deleting stuff, so I made mine read only to her.

I am not using any managed switches, and don’t intend to go VOIP in the near future, but Skype may be in my future for long calls. The only thing I have (that I’m not using) that is at all fancy is the Netgear FVS-318 firewall which also has VPN capabilities, but I don’t have a VPN client installed (and yes, I know VLAN and VPN are different things).

Since I currently have dual firewalls “in series”, my kids’ laptops when they get them (years) will be connected between the two firewalls and I’ll have a small NAS box at that point to house their documents, and then pull it across the firewall with VVPro.