Showing posts with label seconds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seconds. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The Missing Seconds

Ever notice that when you copy music to your computer, the tracks rarely end up the same length as on the cds?

I got several giftcards for Christmas and decided to splurge on books and movies and cds. Everything I got is an old favorite, just right for enjoying again and again, especially the cds. My original cassette tapes are over 20 years old and beginning to wow just a bit.

I put all of the cds on my computer so I could enjoy them while I'm online. As I was naming the tracks, I noticed that very few had the same time listed on the cd label. Some were a few seconds longer, some a bit shorter. And then there was the final track on one album, that was 30 seconds shorter.

That's right. Not 2 or 3 or even 5 seconds, but 30 seconds.

What I'd like to know is, where did all that time go? Is it being recycled to provide extra space for the occasional long-winded classical piece I copy? Is it going to add to the total run-time for my computer before it dies of obsolescence?

Or did it just get sucked into a musical black hole in the space-time continuum?









And yes, the answer is 42.