Weird Tapes project update

[M Holmes]

So far I've been unable to speak to anyone at Wolden Studios since the
phone is never answered. Perhaps I have an out of date number. Does
anyone have a modern one?

It does look like there are around a dozen people interested in
obtaining the tapes and a CD-R backup of these so if I can get in touch
with Wolden, I'll ask for a quote for a dozen sets of the 8 tapes and
see if we can agree on a price lower than the original 5 Pounds per tape
plus postage.

I've been investigating making CD-R backups of 'em. Using a product
called Feurio to investigate lengths of supplied CD-R's, it looks like
overburning some CDR74's should do the job if I'm careful to choose the
ones which are long enough (they vary by around 30 seconds even within a
batch and we're close to the limits to get it all on 5 CDRs).

I've also investigated how to package 'em and have found a source for CD
boxes which will hold 6 CDs. These amount to the usual wide double CD
case (such as was used for a release of Space Ritual). The middle
section is adjusted to hold two CDs and the two outer trays, instead of
being the usual CD trays, are replaced by the hinged double sided trays
used for thin double CD's (as used for The 1999 Party).

Unfortunately it will cost me 2 Pounds per unit plus postage to order
these. However, I believe it would be worth this to have a means to keep
the whole collection together. It will also save on postage costs of
sending out 5 normal CD cases. Another saving will be that instead of
printing 5 front and 5 back covers for the CD's I'll need to print only
what amounts to 2 back covers. If I print using the photo colour
cartridge along with the colour cartridge for best effect, that will
actually be quite a saving (printing an A4 sheet this way costs around
40p-50p in ink costs as far as I can figure). I may also be able to order
CD-R's cheaper on a spindle without the boxes. The savings should
hopefully about balance out the costs of the boxes.

Kevin had some ideas about cover artwork which looked good. There is the
question of tracklists which are going to be quite long (and there'll be
five of them). The total printing will be the two CD back covers plus
the five roundel stickers to go on the CD's themselves. That doesn't
seem to give a lot since presumably we won't want tracklists on the
front cover and there may not easily be room on a roundel. I'm skeptical
that an inkjet printer will be able to put 5 long tracklists on one back
cover at a size which will be readable.

It would be possible to print each back insert as double sided, though I
haven't tried this for alignment in my small deskjet printer yet. And
again that ups costs. The other question is what quality of paper to
use. Photo paper works very well with that cartridge system but costs
more (50p-60p per sheet).

Finally we need to give some thought as to which CD-Rs to use for the
actual backups. It's known that some CD-Rs won't play in older CD
players. This varies from brand to brand as I understand it and also
with the age of the CD player. I'm pretty new to this CD-R game and so
would appreciate comments as regards brand selection. Again this will
also have implications for costs.

Over to you guys for comments...

FoFP