One thing for dvd storage is to use the gold disks that are labelled as archival. As for harddrive data quality should not drop. If anything the file becomes corrupt. It either works or it doesn't. The CD rot is a factor. However, digital rot doesn't really exist. A file either works or it doesn't. Aside from the rare corruption of a file, which is likely to make it unreadable, the typical degradation of image files occurs when it is stored as jpeg, read, and saved (not merely closed.) Each instance of saving a jpg file brings about a new lossy compression, so that the image will degrade visibly if enough reads and saves are performed. This does not happen when lossless compression such as tif is used. Here have a read here as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rot
So your telling me that a MP3 files do not lose KBs over time? I swear this is true. It would explain alot as my old Mp3 songs are a much lower quality than they were afew years back. If you have them on CDs that degraded, or the disk got corrupted, or similar, then yes. Also, Another possibility is that old mp3s used inferior encoding techniques, which resulted in worse sound quality. As drivers and software evolve, the psychoacoustic profiles might be getting mismatched, or the poor quality of original compression (mp3 is lossy after all) becomes more perceptible. As you listen for more recent recordings which make up quality via volume, listening to older recordings raises your attention to subtle anomalies that you never perceived before. Thanks for that, really helped me out.Infinite_Power's forum posts
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