1. An “archive” is a collection of historical documents or records that is being preserved. In the computer-based music and audio world, “archiving” is the process of collecting, preparing, and storing data for long-term or permanent storage. In many cases, this means gathering all of the MIDI and audio data that have been recorded or created for a particular project and storing it on media that will be stable and readable for long periods of time.
But gathering the data is just one step. The second step for a true archive is ensuring that the project can be accurately restored or re-created at a later date even if the software and hardware tools used to create it are no longer available. Making this possible may require recording MIDI tracks as audio files, bouncing any audio tracks with the plug-ins and hardware processing that were used during mixdown, consolidating tracks that don’t contain contiguous audio regions into one full-length track, and so on.
The Producers & Engineers Wing of the Recording Academy (NARAS) has created a document, Recommendation for Delivery of Recorded Music Projects, that specifies how archived data should be prepared and stored for maximum protection from damage, obsolescence, and loss.
2. A compressed version of a file, used to reduce bandwidth or storage requirements.