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  #46  
Old 2008-05-31, 06:22 AM
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Re: mp3/lossless question for audiophiles...

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Originally Posted by thebernreuter View Post
How do people here feel about .mp4 formats, especially the Apple Lossless Codec? I think the lossy aac files are better sounding than their mp3 counterparts of similar bitrate, to the point that I can't discern 256 kbps aacs from cda.

Will Apple Lossless codec ever be allowed to be traded here? I know dime hates it [I just asked them this afternoon; bitter about it for some reason].
apple lossless -- NO...its a lot less "universal" than flac re: both hardware & software support, the compression rate is not as good AND longer encode/decode times, and its not open source...plus, there's been much debate as to the actual lossless-ness of the codec since the beginning

aac -- NO...i don't know how to say any other way but - we are a lossless-only site! whether you can hear the difference or not doesn't really matter...many of us can...if ya want lossy sources, there are plenty of other sites that'll meet your needs, we however are not going to change

not to mention, i really can't think of one good reason to chose any codec other than flac, it pretty much gives the best in regards to quality vs data size vs universal support
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  #47  
Old 2008-05-31, 06:27 AM
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Re: mp3/lossless question for audiophiles...

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Originally Posted by Ward View Post
Snobbery ruins everything.... even free music. Some of us are happy to hear something new - without looking a gift horse in the mouth or nitpicking it to death.
uhhhhh...alright i guess or something
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  #48  
Old 2008-05-31, 06:53 AM
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Re: mp3/lossless question for audiophiles...

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Originally Posted by Ward View Post
Snobbery ruins everything.... even free music. Some of us are happy to hear something new - without looking a gift horse in the mouth or nitpicking it to death.

It's not snobbery.

When I drink water, I want to know it's clean, fresh, and not polluted by anything, such as humans washing their laundry in it, or animals p**ing in or near it.

When I eat, I like to know where the food has come from - organic source, or not? Free range eggs or battery? Any GM ingredients?

Being particular about my food intake isn't snobbery, likewise being particular about my audio intake isn't either.

When I download, I like to know what the source was, and what it's been through before it reached me. I'm happy to hear something new on mp3 - as long as I KNOW it's an mp3 ...

Regards, Graham
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  #49  
Old 2008-06-12, 11:30 AM
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MP3

I have come across a site that seems to have a lot of shows that have more than likely come from dime and here.These shows are all mp3 and the admin at this site sees nothing wrong with people sharing these orginally lossless recordings in mp3 to download.This is a quote from the admin on the site.

where is the moral of saying that someone could not transfer the show from flac to mp3 ?

Is it the same as saying we can't record a live show?

I explained that people go to the trouble/effort of recording a show and most people ask not to convert from flac to mp3( unless its for personal use).
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  #50  
Old 2008-06-12, 12:02 PM
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Re: MP3

You're right, he's a douche, and the only thing you can do about it is bitch, unfortunately.
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  #51  
Old 2008-06-12, 12:08 PM
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Re: MP3

People are stupid. I donīt know if itīs as hard as in Germany in other countries to tell people that MP3s are kind of retarded...what they canīt hear with their own ears, that does not exist. When I make a note on fan-forums and stuff that I have recorded this or that show, the first question always is: Could you upload the MP3s on Rapidshare?
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  #52  
Old 2008-06-12, 12:29 PM
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Re: MP3

First off, it's pretty unrealistic to upload a show to a site like this or Dime and expect that nobody is going to convert it to MP3. That's just reality.

Secondly, most people are going to prefer to take a 1/10 reduction in size accompanied by a minor (inaudible to most) decrease in sound quality. I don't know why this comes as a surprise to anyone.

Thirdly, not everyone has fast internet connections. If you're more into appreciating the performance, rather than the subtle nuances of the floor tom's timbre, it can be a lot more practical to enjoy music in a compressed format that makes it much easier to acquire and share new recordings.

Finally, whenever I see a description like this (not that much of an exaggeration based on some of the shows that get upped to Dime):

Quote:
Recorded on Radio Shack cassette recorder with built-in mike, stuck down my pants while I was dancing out in the hallway.

DO NOT CONVERT TO LOSSY!!
I just laugh and laugh and laugh. Seriously, the only people who give a flying fuck whether some B- quality (or worse) audience tape is converted to mp3 are people who are more interested in numbers than music.

There, I said it.
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  #53  
Old 2008-06-12, 12:39 PM
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Re: MP3

Good points. Each to his own, we donīt have any problems with people enjoying MP3s, itīs merely the spreading.
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dumbass."


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  #54  
Old 2008-06-12, 12:50 PM
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Re: MP3

I don't really care if they share mp3's themselves. Not a fan of people expanding them & burning CD's to spread, or expanding & then flac-ing the lossy files, etc.

Not much you can do about it anyway.
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  #55  
Old 2008-06-12, 12:53 PM
scratchie scratchie is offline
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Re: MP3

Well here's the thing. To clarify my original point...

First off, it wasn't my intention to denigrate the work that goes on at sites like this to propagate high-quality material. Obviously. I'm a heavy consumer of the stuff offered here.

But more importantly, I think it's a complete red herring to worry about people sharing shows in MP3 format.

I got my first CD burner in 1999, which means I've been trading bootlegs digitally for almost ten years.

In that entire time, I've heard dire warnings about sharing recording in MP3 format, lest we "poison the well" or some such.

And also in that time, two trends have been pretty hard to deny:

1) MP3 sharing of every possible type of music (including bootlegs) has increased exponentially.

2) The quality of digital offerings has gone steadily up. Every year it seems we see new, improved, sources for multiple classic shows, as well as new (formerly "unknown") performances by our favorite artists that are widely available for the first time due to lossless digital file-sharing.

Conclusion: The proliferation of MP3 trading has absolutely ZERO effect on the prorogation of high-quality lossless material. End of story.

The way to ensure that high-quality lossless material is available is to do exactly what the trading community has been doing all along:

1) Insist on material with known lineage.

2) Standardize the distribution formats (i.e. SHN or FLAC rather than audio CDs that require extraction).

That way, everybody knows what they're getting, and when a new version comes along, it's easy to tell that it's new. Those are the practices that have improved the stock of available bootleg material to a degree that was almost unimaginable 10-20 years ago. And whether some other people are sharing the exact same material in MP3, or Xvid, or anything else is 100% immaterial.
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  #56  
Old 2008-06-12, 12:59 PM
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Re: MP3

I dont have any problem with people wanting mp3s,its the spreading of these mp3 shows that were lossless to start with.
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  #57  
Old 2008-06-12, 01:38 PM
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Re: MP3

it pisses me off equally that many "lossless traders" still take a lossless file set complete with info & checksum, burn it to an Audio CDR, then trade it out by extracting and re-burning to CDR [and never seem to include the info/checksums either]...to me thats just as aggravating, as is trading DVDs and not burning w/ checksums/lineage...but as james said, nothing you can do really

i usually try to politely educate, and a lot of times people will be fairly responsive...but if that doesn't work [as in this case above], i'll usually just make some snide closing remark like "you mean you can't can't hear the difference between a lossless wav and an 192k/s mp3?! you must either be deaf or a senior citizen, cuz i'm "middle-aged" and definitely have the ability to hear above 15kHz...sucks for you"
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  #58  
Old 2008-06-12, 01:44 PM
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Re: MP3

Quote:
Originally Posted by scratchie View Post
Conclusion: The proliferation of MP3 trading has absolutely ZERO effect on the prorogation of high-quality lossless material. End of story.

The way to ensure that high-quality lossless material is available is to do exactly what the trading community has been doing all along:

1) Insist on material with known lineage.

2) Standardize the distribution formats (i.e. SHN or FLAC rather than audio CDs that require extraction).
1) the lineage can't always be known, and sometimes people lie 2) someone can easily convert FLAC > wav > mp3 > wav > FLAC, so the distribution format isn't always a guarantee.

Take a look at the lossy or lossless sub forum in technobabble. People post spectrum and frequency analyses screenshots in order to determine if their show is truly lossless. That's the only fail safe way to know for sure if it's truly lossless.

Some shows get pulled for being lossy. I'm not sure how often it happens, but I've seen a few shows pulled here at TTD that were mp3 sourced (but shared as FLAC), and a video that was mpeg1 sourced (but shared as an authored DVD, which is required to be mpeg2). So there is a little pollution still happening.

But I don't think that spreading mp3s on rapidshare or similar for those who want them is a bad thing. A lot of ppl listen to low fi systems (iPod ear buds, cheap computer speakers, etc.) exclusively these days so they probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway. They get to hear the shows, for free, in a relatively high quality format compared to yesteryear. Those are the most important things IMO. www.archive.org has FLACs as well as mp3s available for download for a lot of shows.
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  #59  
Old 2008-06-12, 02:09 PM
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Re: MP3

Quote:
Originally Posted by roomful View Post
A lot of ppl listen to low fi systems (iPod ear buds, cheap computer speakers, etc.) exclusively these days so they probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway.
that is the saddest part

if i had unlimited resources, every human being with a compute or home stereo would have a pair of at least halfway decent near-field monitors
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  #60  
Old 2008-06-12, 02:16 PM
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Re: MP3

Quote:
Originally Posted by roomful View Post
1) the lineage can't always be known, and sometimes people lie 2) someone can easily convert FLAC > wav > mp3 > wav > FLAC, so the distribution format isn't always a guarantee.
Sure, but how often does that really happen? Most of the time, when something enters the "compressed realm", it continues to circulate in that format.

Quote:
Take a look at the lossy or lossless sub forum in technobabble. People post spectrum and frequency analyses screenshots in order to determine if their show is truly lossless. That's the only fail safe way to know for sure if it's truly lossless.
Based on what I've read, it's hardly fail-safe, and it can be possible to mistake (e.g.) a poor-sounding audience tape for a lossy source, but anyway, that's beside the point.

Obviously, TTD has the option of taking whatever steps they want to prevent lossy material from being posted here. That's the whole raison d'etre of the site. But to worry about what happens to it once it leaves your hands is foolish and unnecessary. The overlap between quality-obsessive traders and casual mp3 users is so small as to be virtually irrelevant.

Quote:
Some shows get pulled for being lossy. I'm not sure how often it happens, but I've seen a few shows pulled here at TTD that were mp3 sourced (but shared as FLAC), and a video that was mpeg1 sourced (but shared as an authored DVD, which is required to be mpeg2). So there is a little pollution still happening.
I'm sure there's "some" but it's obviously not too toxic, because the pool of original material that's available in great-sounding lossless formats in 2008 is truly mind-boggling.

Most of the lossy material that shows up in a place like this is undoubtedly due to newbie mistakes, and most of them will probably get picked off for other mistakes (e.g. missing or incomplete lineage) before it's necessary to haul out the spectrometers.

Quote:
They get to hear the shows, for free, in a relatively high quality format compared to yesteryear. Those are the most important things IMO.
That's my point. I think that any compression format that makes it easier for people to enjoy and share music is good. The trading pool will take care of itself just fine regardless of whether I make an MP3 copy of some show for my brother-in-law.
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