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Your Masters Matter
As usually happens, it all started with a crazy idea. For a while now I had been considering changing all of my copies of the tracks I had written to AIF files, instead of wav files like I had been using for…. well, ever. The main driver was that I wanted a better way to make sure all the graphics I had created for my releases stayed with the audio files. And as the DJs among you might already know, AIF files support not only embedding artwork, but also meta-data.
And speaking of DJs, I wanted to convert all of my Tarekith DJ and live sets as well. Not just for the artwork aspect, but also because I could then embed the tracklists in the files as well. Just makes it easier to ensure all the relevant info is there when I need it.
And just for fun, I figured I would also do the same for all the MP3 versions of my songs, except I would create 320kbps AACs as the compressed format. I’ve already been releasing all my tracks online as AAC’s over the past year, and so far it hasn’t been an issue for anyone. Why AAC? Read my blog post on the subject here: http://tarekith.com/mastered-for-itunes/
Of course, nothing is ever easy is it?
The plan had been to first create all the different formats I needed from the original wav files, and then bring everything into iTunes to do all the tagging and artwork embedding. But as I started collecting all the current files I had, I realized that somehow things had gotten sloppy over the last 20 years. Sometimes I might have a wav version of a song but no MP3 version (not a problem), other times I might only have an MP3 version of one of my DJ sets, but I didn’t have a wav version saved on my hard drive (problem).
I’m normally really organized when it comes to my own music, but over the last 20 years I’ve written over 130 songs, as well as dozens of live and DJ sets. Somehow a few tracks didn’t get copied to the right folders I guess. I wasn’t too stressed about it though, because I ALWAYS make physical back ups when I finish a track as well, typically to CDR or DVDr.
As I started going through my stacks of CDR backups however, I began to realize that some of the really old ones had hit that point where they were no longer readable. Or maybe I had saved the DAW project files for a song, but no longer owned that DAW (Cubase, Reason, etc). Either way, quite a few of the back ups were either unreadable, or I couldn’t access the data easily which really defeats the purpose.
That’s when the fun started. 
Continue reading -> http://tarekith.com/your-masters-matter/
Comments
Great post!
Sadly, I'm quite sure I'm in the same boat. I totally fear checking many of the CDs. Similar back up strategy, similar timeline. Plus, I don't even own a windows machine anymore, let alone cakewalk 7 or sonar 2 or whatever. How about all of those old Voyetra midi files? Goners. And those tunes recorded to zip from my br-8? Same. Then there is the shoe boxes of 4-track cassettes.
Actually, it was part of the reason I eventually drank the ProTools kool-aid. With so much music recorded to ProTools I felt reasonably sure that in 10-50 years, there would be a chance of opening the projects.
Still, ProTools or not when I was doing client work I'd always give them track bounces from 00:00. It's really the only safe bet.
I hear you, I have a bunch of old Wavelab files from when I was on XP way back in the day too
Agreed on your last point too, and one thing I meant to include in the post. The only sure way to back up your projects is to bounce every track as an audio file.
God. I forgot about the wavelab audio montages.
I knew HOW to use the Montage, but it was something I never really needed to dive into myself. Always seemed quicker to use Cubase for that kind of thing.
Backups to optical discs are worthless, something I realised a long time ago. I backup to multiple hard drives, including one off site. A large Dropbox account is also a great idea.
@richardyot said:
That's a little OCD
Well, maybe, but in over 20 years of making my living from computers I haven't ever lost any work. I still have the very first artworks I created in Photoshop back in 1994. It depends how important being able to retrieve past projects is to you
I'd agree, if you're doing digital stuff for a living, hard to be too OCD about this.
I'm all redundant hard drives these days but I haven't transferred all of the old optical stuff.
Here's a question that pops into mind: not knowing the technical side of various file formats, one might think (hope?) that there might be some sort of standard tag format or encryption in mp3 files that would provide a roadmap back to recreating the original .wav file from which the mp3 came... am I dreaming of pipes? This IS the 21st century...
Nah, once the data is gone, it's gone. You'd need something night like FLAC for that.
I have a feeling we're going to hear about an Apple version of lossless audio files soon.