Recording XM

[Jackstraw_1969]

Originally Posted by RainDawg

XM radio is a pay service that has specific agreements for users to not record and reproduce any of the material. The staff has decided we do not wish to endorse the seeding of XM radio material on our tracker.

There you have it!

[Jackstraw_1969]

Originally Posted by wharfrat73

Is that true of artists that do not want their art distributed electronically as well?

Yep......won't find any ABB here.

[wharfrat73]

Fair enough. Let's hope that holds.

[Jackstraw_1969]

Originally Posted by wharfrat73

Fair enough. Let's hope that holds.

You'll find the MOD's here to be a really good group, and they'll pull stuff if they have to, however they WILL give an explanation as to WHY.

[RainDawg]

Originally Posted by wharfrat73

All FM sources are lossy. They always have been. The question is is there a less loss source available. That, my friends, is a fine line to walk; is there - will there ever be - a TRUE SBD source available or is the best available a lossy frequency modulated source.

Absolutely right. EVERYTHING is lossy, as it has to, in some way, interpret natural sound pressure fluctuations percieved by the brain as audio and record it onto some kind of media....this transition constitutes loss.

The main thrust of lossless trading stems from the belief that, once something is recorded, it should remain identical each time it is copied. Lossy codecs decrease the quality with each transfer, and to promote the idea that everyone should get equal access to identical audio, lossless codecs are used.

It is a physical fact that FM, XM, and even CD and SBD are lossy in comparison to the true signal, but this fact is beside the point here. Seeding XM radio brings about a slew of legal issues that I would rather not confront here on this site. I am sure there are places on the internet to attain this material if one is resourceful enough....

[Five]

We use the term "lossy" a little loosely in the community... we are normally referring to 1990's lossy a la realmedia-mp3-ogg vorbis-vqa-etc. This is the kind of lossy that we're cracking down on. Hope this helps.

[wazoo2u]

Originally Posted by Five

We use the term "lossy" a little loosely in the community... we are normally referring to 1990's lossy a la realmedia-mp3-ogg vorbis-vqa-etc. This is the kind of lossy that we're cracking down on. Hope this helps.

I think that we can generally agree that if the source is "FM", it's being distributed because the availability of the "Pre-FM" source is limited or unavailable. Obviously, there are different qualities of FM recordings, depending upon the type of recieving/recording equipment and the reception conditions.

All FM broadcasts are "bandwidth limited", which differs from "lossy" in the fact that full spectrum audio is bandpassed without psychoacoustic algorithms being employed to fool your ear to think all frequencies are present. Yes, limiting and compression are very prevelant in the broadcast chain, especially in the STL, but if they're analog links, they are simply amplitude envelope controls, and the basic spectrum is still passed (within the FM carrier restrictions, of course). Adding digital compression techniques that might be enountered in ISDN links as mentioned, will add an unknown factor, but I would assume that most stations would want a lossless path to their transmitter.

Could MP3 play a role in timeshifting and replaying a live concert ? It's certainly possible, but an MP3 frequency falloff might be visable before the bandpass limit, so .......

So the unknown processing in the FM path does raise questions, but all things considered, it usually means it's a recording of the most readily available source, not necessarily the best possible.

[RainDawg]

wazoo,
Understood about the differences, but whether it's analog filtering, modulation, or perceptual coding, there is still some audio "loss" involved with the transfer....and each reduce the overall quality of the recording.

Regardless, the goal of communities like this is to find the "purest" copy possible, and losslessly spread it to others. I'm not worried about the supposedly quality loss in XM or FM broadcasts as I am the legal issues with copying XM. I accept that not much (if anything) broadcast on XM is ever likely to get into the hands of the public in it's original source form, and would be fine with XM > lossless transfers of their broadcasts were it not putting TTD into legal jeopardy.

[wazoo2u]

Originally Posted by RainDawg

wazoo,
Understood about the differences,..... and would be fine with XM > lossless transfers of their broadcasts were it not putting TTD into legal jeopardy.

I know YOU understand....

Guess that my point was to clarify the differences between SONIC loss (loss of fidelity due to analog limitations or processing) versus MATHEMATICAL loss (which as we all know, comes from errors in creating, translating and reconstructing the digital signal).

[Rider]

Originally Posted by wazoo2u

I know YOU understand....

Guess that my point was to clarify the differences between SONIC loss (loss of fidelity due to analog limitations or processing) versus MATHEMATICAL loss (which as we all know, comes from errors in creating, translating and reconstructing the digital signal).

You kind of nailed it right there. Theres a big diifrence between a process like FM that will cut everything off at a certain level and something like MP3 which not only cuts off at cetain level but digs into what's left tries to find what no one can hear and also remove that.

[wharfrat73]

Originally Posted by RainDawg

Regardless, the goal of communities like this is to find the "purest" copy possible, and losslessly spread it to others. I'm not worried about the supposedly quality loss in XM or FM broadcasts as I am the legal issues with copying XM. I accept that not much (if anything) broadcast on XM is ever likely to get into the hands of the public in it's original source form, and would be fine with XM > lossless transfers of their broadcasts were it not putting TTD into legal jeopardy.

Well put. There's really no more to say. Thanks