“If I let (PT LE) sessions that have been bounced to a disk and saved in Jam sit for a long period of time, will the audio quality degrade? What about if I burn it to a CD? The time period I am talking about is from 3 to 6 months.”
Almost certainly not, especially in that short of a time span. Until you burn your audio, as audio, to a disc what you have is a data file. Data files will normally stay intact on a hard drive for a long, long time. Most data corruption on hard drives or CD’s will either be corrected by redundant error correction schemes and thus go unnoticed or will result in a catastrophic failure – as in the computer being unable to read the data (or part of the data) at all. It’s pretty much an all or nothing affair for all practical purposes. “Degradation” of the quality of the information is not an issue. Just back up your data and you are fine.
(More info about the differences between data discs and audio discs can be found in the 6/12/2000 TTOTD)
However, CDR or CDRW media recorded/burned as audio CD’s (as opposed to data) have been known to degrade. Some environmental conditions can cause the chemical composition inside the disc break down over time. Since audio CD’s do not have all of the error correction that is included with pure data discs the results can be audible. This is not common, and it usually takes quite a long time to occur, but under the right conditions, with the right media, things can happen. Opinions on this still vary among users. Some report that they only get reliable results with one type of media or another. Others report that reliability seems random and unrelated to anything they have control over.
We’d love to know what types of experiences our readers have been having with CDR and CDRW discs, especially as related to longevity. Thus this is our question of the week over in the inSync Forums. If you have something to say on the matter just pop over there and speak your piece.