Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The Weight of Media

Having recently moved and had to move my audio library I happened to notice it's really heavy. Books are heavy and records are heavy.  Cassettes are light and CDs seem light until you're stacking boxes of hundreds of them. 78s are heavy, but steel-core acetates are heaviest. So I have been thinking about large-scale digitization, and the cloud since I closed the door behind me. The cloud may have it's downside, but it'll never give you a hernia. (I am taking recommendations.)

So to that point I have begun to work out the weights of various audio media.  I have begun with a list of mostly media I already have, and I've added in a few additional sizes and types which I presently do not. rather than calculate these in some very precise minor unit I'm using a postal scale to provide the weights in units that we would all be more familiar with. (Please excuse the awkward columns)

MEDIA TYPE                                             WEIGHT
10.5 inch open reel tape, 1/4 inch and box =   33 ounces
7 inch reel-to-reel tape (1/4 inch) with box =   11 ounces
5 inch reel-to-reel tape (1/4 inch) with box =   6 ounces
Fidelipac Tape (A size)  =                               4.5 ounces
Cassette and case =                                       2 ounces
DAT with case =                                            1.5 ounces
CD in jewel case =                                         4 ounces
78 with sleeve =                                             8 ounces
Edison Diamond disc =                                  10 ounces
Edison cylinder with tube =                             6 ounces
LP with sleeve =                                             6.5 ounces
LP with gate-fold sleeve =                               7 ounces
45 with sleeve =                                              2 ounces
6.5-inch paper core acetate disc with sleeve = 1.5 ounces
6.5-inch metal core acetate disc with sleeve =  17 ounces
10-inch paper core acetate disc with sleeve =  2.5 ounces
10-inch metal core acetate disc with sleeve =   26 ounces
12-inch metal core acetate disc with sleeve =   31.5 ounces
16-inch metal core acetate disc with sleeve =   42 ounces

*scale image from PSDS images by permission.
Posted by Jose Fritz at Tuesday, July 19, 2011
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2 comments:

  1. Timmy6:07 PM

    My reccomendation to you is: move one box at a time, don't think of the entirety of it all. If a particular box or stack is too heavy, reduce it by half & move it. Baby steps...
    Or you can just call someone, like me to come by & take away what you don't want to deal with & move it all away for you.

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  2. Jose Fritz9:18 PM

    I think my point is more about the absurdity of moving a few thousand pounds of media. I do feel a tad silly. I've been so resistant to digitization but here I was spending hours of labor when I could have just unplugged an external hard drive.. or with the right service.. moved nothing at all.

    But it does have me thinking I should digitize a large portion and sell off several thousand 78s. They are both the heaviest and the most fragile after the glass acetates.

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