[copperx]

> but dismissing or abandoning media files is a much more guaranteed potential loss of information – information which plain text cannot capture due to its limitations.

Some examples are sorely needed. How is a Word/InDesign file more authentic than a plain text file? Or is the author talking about media? Is a ProTools session more authentic than Wav files?

[coldtea]

>Is a ProTools session more authentic than Wav files?

Dunno about 'authentic', but since the part you've quoted specifically talks about "loss of information", the WAV files indeed incur loss of information compared to a ProTools session.

E.g. if it's a single stereo wav file render, it would miss all the individual channels, for starters.

If it's multiple wav files with all the channels as stems, it will still miss the effect chain settings (and hardcode them in the final result), the MIDI notes (hardcoded as the rendered VST output), session markers, tempo change tracks, and other such things.

[falcolas]

> E.g. if it's a single stereo wav file render, it would miss all the individual channels, for starters.

A DAW session is like notes for writing a book. Not everything is going to make it in, and the choice of what does make it from the notes to the book, and how it's changed, is quite intentional. And I, personally, don't consider a book to be "lossy" or "unauthentic" because it doesn't also come with all the author's notes.

So, if it's not in the final mix, it's because it's not supposed to be in the final mix; it's not that the data is lost because of technical limitations. And like notes from a book, unless you throw them away, they're not going anywhere.

On a more technical note, underneath the hood, the recorded items are all stored as .wav files too...

[coldtea]

>A DAW session is like notes for writing a book. Not everything is going to make it in, and the choice of what does make it from the notes to the book, and how it's changed, is quite intentional. And I, personally, don't consider a book to be "lossy" or "unauthentic" because it doesn't also come with all the author's notes.

Yeah, not really.

In music, for starters, a DAW session is like the recording reels from the analog days. And artists, producers, and studios go back to those reels a lot, for many reasons: to later clean up, rebalance, and release a "remastered version", to adapt to a new format (e.g. Apple/Dolby's spatial audio or some 5:1 surround mix), or simply to give individual parts to collaborators to make a remix of the track, or even just for the artists themselves to plunder it for parts to reuse in later works.

What your comment misses is that we're talking about the author here, not the reader.

The author (or in the DAW session case, the producer/artist) is the one who would be having the original format, and have a choice to keep their stuff as a ProTools session or wav stems, or as a text file or some proprietary format.

So while you "personally, don't consider a book to be "lossy" or unauthentic because it doesn't also come with all the author's notes.", the author would indeed be furious if we needed his notes and couldn't open them because he wrote his first book+notes in some editor/format since discontinued, and he now only has the final printed or ebook text.

>On a more technical note, underneath the hood, the recorded items are all stored as .wav files too...

Which is neither here nor there regarding the things I've mentioned as lost (e.g. the fx chains used with their settings for re-toggleability, sequenced notes, automation curves, and so on), and is also not generally true across DAWs, depends on the DAW whether they'd use some proprietary format.

[falcolas]

Perhaps this is a protools vs. Reaper thing, but none of that is ever lost in Reaper. So long as I don't get rid of the directory, I will not lose any of that. And, if we're talking about the producer, creating the final mix doesn't lose any of the authenticity of their session.

I'm probably missing something, but between wav files and the metadata (which is, IIRC, marked up text files in Reaper), the producer will never lose anything.

EDIT: Confirmed, .rpp files (and most of the plugins) are text files. So, best of both worlds - longevity AND authenticity (and infinite undo).

[lallysingh]

I've read some docs with ASCII art diagrams far more complex than the medium really allowed.

I would have preferred PDF/A