Is it? I’ll do some serious digging into this later, but a rushed and in-exhaustive google search later I’ve got this:
- Compression
The conversion of analogue audio into digitised form determines the available digital audio
quality forever.
The use of digital compression at the time of conversion must be understood in terms of the
compromises between saving expense in data storage, the sound quality that is made available and
the possibly disastrous longer-term implications of some decoders not remaining available over
time.
It is clear that the IT data storage cost presents a variable with descending tendency whilst the
audio quality represents a constant value. In light of this simple consideration the following very
important declaration can be made:
The audio archive should, whenever possible, avoid the use of audio compression and it
should preferably be organised in PCM audio format
There is no possible reason why an audio archive should be at the mercy of the continuing
availability of a decompression codec with which to access its contents.
I don’t mean its not good enough for its purposes, I only mean that using the format for archival purposes doesn’t make sense if you have to encode and then decode to retrieve. There’s an inherent risk in adding points of failure in order to save disk space.
Edited for spelling.
