About Marchive
"Marchive" is an abbreviation of "Media" "Archive".
The purpose of this site is to provide a publicly accessible permanent archive of recordings (or other content) in electronic format.
Sources
- Includes live recordings of concerts at Scarborough Citadel from the time which Kevin was the sound and lighting supervisor.
- Other recordings of similar live concerts recorded by others.
Submissions of private recordings are welcome!
Contact Kevin via the Contact Us dialog to request details on how to submit.
- Other recordings are from the public domain, from sources such as the Internet, public web pages, etc. and are freely available for download by the general public.
- This site may also contains links to external sources such as YouTube, Facebook, church archives, etc. (Future availability of these external sources cannot be guaranteed.)
Technical Notes
- Most Events pages have a table of contents near the top of the page, which includes the title, composer/arranger, and program notes/comments. This is followed by 'block(s)' of links to the available content (download block). If the content is not available to the current user, the download block will not appear! This is not a bug ... it is the intended functionality of the page!
- Content that is public domain will appear in a separate download block which makes it available for download by all guests to the site.
- Typically the content may be played directly on your device by clicking or pressing on the item in the Name column.
- Downloading the content to your device is typically accomplished by right clicking on the item and selecting Save-As, ... or long-pressing on the item until a download dialog appears. Exact functionality will vary from device to device and browser to browser.
- Additional details concerning the item (duration, artist details, filename, filesize, etc.) are exposed by 'mousing over' or 'touching' the small 'Details>>' button found to the right of the Name entry.
- Most items are audio files that were originally encoded as Ogg Vorbis files (.ogg). This is a free and open source audio format that produces excellent audio results with relatively small file sizes. HOWEVER, due to the revelation that some audio devices (notably Apple!) do not natively support the Ogg Vorbis format, all content has been re-encoded as MP3 files. Most content has been encoded at qualities that exceed CD quality audio.
If you experience difficulty playing content in any format, please contact me.
Technical Notice!
When this site was originally created, Ogg Vorbis was the digital format of choice, however, due to the revelation that many devices (notably Apple products!) do not natively support the Ogg Vorbis audio file format, all audio files on this site are now presented as MP3 files (at minimum). Although the file sizes are larger (affecting responsiveness and increasing data usage) the resultant audio is equal in quality to the originals they replaced!
The New Standard!
(As of Fall 2019)
Digitally Mastered Recordings
The source audio files are recorded in studio quality (with a sample rate of 48 kHz and a recording bit rate of 32-bits) and have been processed with suitable effects using the professional Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software 'Presonus Studio One Artist'. Resultant audio files are presented in MP3 format, and sometimes also as WAV files.
Lossless vs Lossy
"Lossless formats use compression algorithms that preserve audio data so the audio is exactly the same as the original source. This contrasts with lossy audio formats such as AAC, MP3, and WMA, which compress audio using algorithms that discard data."
WAV files
- This is a lossless audio format (meaning there is no degradation in quality due to filesize compression) and are encoded at the original source file sample rate of 48 kHz and a bit rate of 32-bits.
WAV notes:
- These files are considerably larger than their MP3 counterparts.
- Most devices cannot stream this file format which results in comparatively long delays before the audio starts to play (because it has to download the whole file to the device first).
- This is an excellent source from which to create CD's or to download and keep in your studio quality audio archive.
MP3 files
- These files are encoded from the same source as the high quality WAV files, in the highest quality possible for MP3 files, but are in a lossy format (at a sample rate of 48 kHz, 32 bits per sample, and a bitrate of 320 kb/s), so the quality is still great, but not as good as their WAV counterparts.
MP3 notes:
- The filesize of these files is considerably smaller.
- This file format supports streaming, so playback is almost instantaneous.
- Because of their smaller file size and almost instantaneous playback, these audio files are most suitable for use on your portable devices such as media players, tablets, or smart phones.
- The download blocks feature some useful functionality:
- If more than one column is displayed (eg.Name, Filename, Size, etc.), these are sort-able (forward and reverse). Click on the column name.
- Each block features a Search box which allows you to filter and display only those items which match your criteria within that download block.
- The Search page searches site wide for matches to the search text but does not search for text found within the download blocks. (Use the download block search capability described above instead.)
- To change your password, click the 'System Login' link found below the login dialog found at the bottom of every page and use the "Forgot Your Password?" dialog at the bottom. An email will be sent to you. Follow the instructions in the message.