[Spider_Web]

My take on music sharing via bittorrent and the Internet is to preserve and document the recording history as well as share things "AS IS"! Ban remasters! Why do some people feel it's necessary to "remaster" a recording and re-distribute it? Anyone these days can "remaster" a show on their computer. That's fine, but don't circulate it - you are taking away from the integrity of the recording. Polluting the waters. Remasters should be banned from distribution. Leave things AS IS. I'm not the only one who has voiced their displeasure with so called "remasters" by average Joe's who have computers and think they have an ear for sound. I personally don't give a rat's ass if someone's EQ job makes the sound better to a few people - it's all arbitrary anyway. You have now tainted the recording. Polluted the water. Let the listener adjust the controls if they choose.

Also, ban the unknown cassette lineage! I hope people realize that the term "lossless" means a whole heck of a lot more than just that a recording has never been converted to a lossy digital format such as MP3 or MiniDisc. Lossless truly means that one has a non-manipulated recording that has never suffered any analog or digital loss. The entire lossless thing is a joke. So much garbage gets torrented, but becuase it has never been converted to MP3 or MiniDisc, it's OK? So many shows are taken from unknown sources. Generation unknown. Yeah, that's real good.

Gee, let's torrent show from 1988 from a cassette that was bought at a flea market 5 years ago. It's probably been high-speed dubbed 7 times, and is 10 generations away from the master cassette. But because it's never been converted to MP3 or MiniDisc, it's considered lossless and OK to torrent. How absolutely preposterous.

Any true master tape or hard drive recording is lossless. A master DAT tape that has been dubbed to another DAT tape via an optical or coaxial cable (a clone) is lossless. A digital conversion to MP3 is lossy. Anything that goes through an analog signal is lossy. A master analog cassette that gets dubbed to another cassette has lost quality. First, second and third generation cassettes aren't bad; one knows the generational history, and it's not always possibly to source a recording back to the master cassette or reel. Don't let "silver" CD's fool you, they can very easily be lossy - and most are. Bootleg companies are evil! Most of them could care less what source they use to press a show on CD. It's all about money. In most cases, we have no idea what generation tape was used in creating a bootleg "silver" CD. We should all prefer tape or digital sourced material with generational lineage as opposed to the bootleg releases.

Converting a show from analog to digital technically is lossy, but one has to get it into the digital domain. The analog to digital conversion if done with good equipment loses less than an analog to analog copy. When a show is converted from analog to digital, it should be played back on a decent cassette deck or reel to reel machine with clean heads, and a good analog to digital converter should be used. Once the recording is in the digital domain, it should now be converted from wave to a lossless format such as FLAC or SHN, and LEFT ALONE. The same goes for DAT or digital hard drive recordings. Convert them to lossless FLAC or SHN, and THAT'S IT.

Also, list the type of recording equipment and unit model and well as microphones used (if you know them) when seeding or trading a show. And most people here do.

Traders Den does the best of all the BT sites is regards to promoting quality. But letting an unknown cassette sourced show be seeded completely defeats the entire purpose. Dimeadozen has turned into a freakin' germ pool, and it gets tiring wading through all the piss. I know more "pro lineage" people are here on Traders Den.

Thanks for reading my opinion. What's yours?