[jpeace]

I will state my opinion as succintly as I can, though I could go on for some time about how this subject eliminates the availability of many shows for collectors who prefer this tracker. I am a taper. I am also poor. I survive on $700 a month, and I am perpetually chasing shutoffs of my utilities because of that. I use whatever recording gear is available to me to get the show because its the show that matters, not the gear. A WAV recorder for under $200...well that's a great idea, but if its over $40 I can't afford it. So I use an el cheapo cassette recorder that has no frequency response above 10khz and below 400hz. And it puts a hell of a lot of white noise on the tape too, forcing me to use a lot of NR. Look at my recent Riders On The Storm thread to see how shitty my recorder is. Fortunately this gig was taped by several DAT users and there are good sounding versions out there. However I also taped Kenny Wayne Shepherd with this recorder, and I haven't seen another recorder surface, so that's what you get. I'd much prefer a MD or mp3 recording of this stuff to my tapes any day. Your decisions to ban ATRAC and mp3 masters just keeps people from getting certain shows. Sure they can use a different tracker, but who wants to? I uploaded a Queensryche show to Dime and had it banned because someone did a SA on it and it looked lossy. It wasn't. I cut all the frequencies above and below a certain point because there wasn't any music information outside those points, just noise. This made a SA/FA look like mp3 when it wasn't. After explaining it to the mods the torrent was reinstated with apologies. But this (along with other stupid rules) has put me off uploading anything to Dime anymore. My point is, its the music that matters, not the format. I personally do not care if someone encodes my tapes to mp3 and recirculates them. If a person is satisfied with that standard of quality then they should be able to get it their way. More formats make higher availability and that'sa what I want to see: the music spread as far and wide as possible. Quality is secondary to quantity with me. Don't read me wrong on that. I personally want the best possible, but the average person doesn't care about that. I did a hearing test and I cannot hear a test tone above 16k. This sucks as I am a producer/engineer/concert taper, but its the price you pay for making a career in (rock) music your choice (not one that pays well either, bu that's my choice, too. Make it cheap enough that anyone can afford me. Same philisophy I have when I paint houses. I'll do a 3 story victorian for $1000. Better a job that pays little to no job that pays nothing). My point is that if an mp3 or a MD are the only known sources then they should be allowed. I realize the issue of people lying about lineage or not doing proper research, but that's why you police this stuff. Hell, find and assign mods to do just that one thing. But there are things out there that are going to disappear because of the elitist standards of sites like yours. For example, I transferred a couple Zappa shows from cassettes may years ago before lossless really took off. I made the transfers into 192 mp3s, then threw the tapes out, considering my work withthem to be done. Well it turns out that the Zappa trading community was blown away by the existence of these tapes, considerinbg them to be untaped/lost shows. I traded them to a prominent Zappa trader via WinMX and he spread the wealth. Now these recording are inferior to nearly all serious traders because they are lossy, but they are the only existing copies and there will never be others. THe trading community is deprived of these by anti-lossy standards such as the ones on this site. Now I realize that I have little clout here as I do not upload much here (or d/l much for that matter), but I have upped over 200 shows to Yeeshkul, the Pink Floyd tracker, as many co-members here can attest. So I am an important part of the trading community. I just feel that music belongs to everyone and it should not be profited on (this means you, record companies; you're dead. Lie down and accept it, already), nor should it be restricted to elitist traders with higher than average standards. I know the mission statement, but calling this a lossless site while still allowing minidisc recording from 2007 and back is hypocritical. Either allow them or don't. No lossy means no lossy. ALL MD recordings should be banned, or mp3 masters should also be allowed. One or the other. The way it is is self-conflicting.
Seems I've rambled despite my promise to be succint. I guess that's how it is when its important