The point is if you put in a distinguishing feature on the actual performance to mark it as yours, you run an even greater risk of someone messing with it to try to get rid of something most tapers/traders find non-standard or odd. You said earlier that you are glad you implemented the whistle 30 years ago when taping. So it doesn't appear that you whistled just to applaud, correct me if I am wrong. But it's none of my business I guess.

There are some forms of digital audio copy protection that use watermarking. Some types of watermarking degrade sound quality. This should always be opposed by audiophiles, even if it is the only effective way to prevent copies being made (which it is not).

Yeah, you are entitled to your opinion and I guess you can record and author pretty much any lossless way you want unless there is a ruling on TTD, no matter how idiosyncratic, eccentric, unorthodox, and unpopular it may be.

You seem very defensive about the whistle. Does anyone besides you enjoy it on one of your recordings? I understand what's done is done and it can't be changed, but you intend to use the whistle again this summer when you tape, and intend to share these recordings. Then you sarcastically say people should enjoy the whistle. Well I won't enjoy it if I do get a hold of one of those tapes, just like I wouldn't enjoy someone multitracking in a hot French Horn solo that wasn't in the original perfomance over some rare, uncirculated Jimi Hendrix. But making the maximum amount of people happy with your recordings isn't your goal. They must learn to tolerate, I mean appreciate, the wild eccentricities of your tapes and kindly not download it if they don't like it.

If you like to blow the whistle so much, why not become a football referee or join a Latin Jazz band? Better yet, take the world by storm and go solo and cut a record of nuthin' but whistlin' improv, with a kazoo virtuoso, master of the triangle, jew's harp expert, and a douche on an air horn backing you up. I'm sure it'll be toe tappin', good-time music. Ain't nobody will have ever seen nuthin' like it before, and probably never see nuthin' like it again.