[AAR.oner]

strangely enough, we both work in audio and paint houses on the side! i guess that means i should address some of yer questions and comments today , hopefully being no less succinct as you

i will note, as a fellow "audio guy" it kinda concerns me that you seem to care little for things like fidelity, a broad frequency spectrum, gettin the best out of your recordings, etc -- just simple basic standards...but by gones, i'm not interviewing you for a position, either as an engineer or house painter

Originally Posted by jpeace

Quality is secondary to quantity with me.

although we have no problem with you believing that, you need to understand it is THAT philosophy which has lead to the "muddiness of the pool", making it tougher and tougher for serious collectors to wade thru...please re-read our Mission Statement, don't just skim it:
http://www.thetradersden.org/index.php?#statement

Welcome to The Traders' Den. We, the administrators, will be familiar faces to some, and new to others. Each of us have been involved in various trading communities for many years, and many have worked together on other trading sites. We have come together to create an online trading site with an entirely new ideology. This site will be geared towards a certain kind of collector: those who feel quality and integrity are important. Our policies will seem demanding to many users, but we have witnessed the decline in overall quality in many other trading circles due to lax restrictions. We offer a safe haven for traders frustrated with the dilution of quality in the trading pool, as well as our combined experience and devotion to helping new users enter an elite trading community.

Please read the seeding rules, FAQs, and linked tutorials for more information as to how we are employing our ideals to better serve traders of all music tastes. If there are any questions, comments, or ways we can help make the experience more rewarding, please don't hesitate to post in our forums or message one of us.

Quality is not an option in the seeds here, it will be the standard.

The Trader's Den Staff

Originally Posted by jpeace

I did a hearing test and I cannot hear a test tone above 16k. This sucks as I am a producer/engineer/concert taper,

yes, that really sucks! i mean, not hearing above 18-19kHz is one thing, but 16kHz?! how can you mix properly as an engineer? it'd make it tough on me thats for sure

Originally Posted by jpeace

Same philisophy I have when I paint houses. I'll do a 3 story victorian for $1000.

i know this is off the topic, but thats just plain retarded! and probly why you are living on $700/month...seems i'm in the same line of work as you and assuming we are both in the States [i.e. in the same economy] -- how is it that i can make FAR more than that monthly while livin in one of the poorer parts of the country?!

are you sure its not your work ethic thats causing the low monthly income? "quantity over quality" doesn't work in numerous aspects of life, not just collecting shows

Originally Posted by jpeace

But there are things out there that are going to disappear because of the elitist standards of sites like yours.

why is it that some people like to pretend we are the only trading site on the internet? our "elitist standards" make up less than 5% of the BT/trading sites out there

Originally Posted by jpeace

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.

if you transferred the tapes, traded them out, and they were spread around the Zappa community and undoubtedly beyond -- remind me again how we have deprived the trading community of these so-called rare gems...maybe they're not uploadable here, but i can name off the top of my head probly 3 dozen sites right now where they'd be perfectly fine! why do you refuse to upload them at one of those other sites and blame it on TTD?

Originally Posted by jpeace

nor should it be restricted to elitist traders with higher than average standards.

so yer saying that because we [TTD founders and the members who are in FULL AGREEMENT with our Mission Statement] -- because we have high standards due to a discerning ear/length of time collecting/etc and want the best of the best, which changes as technology changes -- that this small handful of audio/videophiles are restricting the entire world of trading -- from BT trackers to DC Hubs to FTP to snail Mail trading to vine/loop sites to...........

no offense, but yer argument is swiss cheese at best...we might disagree philosophically, and my ears are obviously way better than yers, but to sit here and say that we single-handedly keep the entire world from hearing any recording is completely ludicrous!

Originally Posted by jpeace

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.

it is a conundrum, isn't it?

first off, if you've ever done a side by side comparison of ATRAC and MP3 compression, you would know that they are NOT the same -- far from it! i'm not gonna spend another 10mins typing out all the technical differences, as they've been gone over many many times here at TTD...but suffice it to say, MP3 strips out way more data than just a simple roll-off in the HFs

secondly, some of us on staff agreed with you that we should ban all MD recordings outright, lossy is lossy right? others felt that a sort of "grandfather clause" should be put in place [atleast for the time being]...in the end, we all agreed on the current rules that are in place [all staff have an equal voice here]

and third, how many "mp3 masters" are there really? i mean, 10 years ago MD was the consumer-level, reasonably-priced recording technology...therefore, a sizable amount of recordings from the 90s were made on these decks...but mp3 recorders are fairly new, not very popular when it comes to recording, and despite the shitty compression codec cost as much if not more than the majority of "low-end" lossless recorders...arguing mp3 masters and MD masters as the same thing is simply not a viable argument








although we always try to respect others opinions and philosophies here at TTD, the simple truth is this site was not designed for the type of trading philosophy you ascribe to...and the majority of the members of this site, whether they agree completely or not, continue to come to the site BECAUSE they appreciate our standards -- they know they can get the quality goods here...if someone has a major problem with those standards, feel free to have your account deleted and do not support this site -- simpla as that!

as technology changes, so will our standards and our rules...and as these things change, sometimes there will be rules which seem contradictory for a time -- but the world and black & white

but the one thing you will always be able to count on here at TTD:
Quality is not an option in the seeds here, it will be the standard.