A realistic look at mp3 from the standpoint of a veteran old-time radio collector
There has been much debate about the appropriateness of mp3 as a medium for storing vintage audio material. Mp3 has both its merits and limits. Unfortunately much of the debate in the otr community is based on insufficient information, emotion and snobbery.
Personally I do not prefer mp3 as a medium for storing the historic material. My preference is a medium that provides a completely lossless way of keeping the material. These lossless formats include wav, CD-A, and flac.
When considering mp3, much of our perception and belief system about mp3 stems not from its technical benefits or limitation, but from having heard and listened to many of the shows that were either over-processed (not an mp3 issue) and/or encoded ate obscenely low bitrates. I would agree that ALL of this material needs to be upgraded!
While it is certainly not my preference, I really have no difficulty with vintage material stored on mp3 under certain conditions. These include :
· A proper transfer from reels, cassettes, wire or electrical transcriptions.
· Appropriate and unobtrusive sound cleaning and re-processing
· Encoding at a proper bit rate. I recommend a minimum of 128 kB/s at 44.1 Khtz Mono or 256 kB/s at 44.1 Khtz if the source material is Stereophonic. The amount of loss for vintage material is so minimal at this level as to be irrelevant. For newer material that was genuinely high fidelity, only a lossless format is appropriate.
As elements in my collection came from lower bitrate mp3, I continue to successfully seek out higher quality material from other collectors, electrical transcriptions and lending libraries. This material is gradually being replaced. Having said this, there is much from the lower bitrate encodes that is worth keeping and collecting in the interim.