From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V13 #56 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Thursday, March 8 2007 Volume 13 : Number 056 To unsubscribe: e-mail ecto-digest-request@smoe.org and put the word unsubscribe in the message body. Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Lossy compression... Was: allofmp3s.com?? and itunes?? [Bernie Mojzes] sxsw ["Lenore" ] Re: Lossy compression... Was: allofmp3s.com?? and itunes?? ["Jeffrey Burk] Loreena McKennitt -- PBS broadcast + tour [Joshua ] 2 witches wanting to be haunting, any ideas? [cy ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 09:56:51 -0500 (EST) From: Bernie Mojzes Subject: Re: Lossy compression... Was: allofmp3s.com?? and itunes?? I' not a terrible purist when it comes to sound quality - for me it sorta depends on the venue and (to some extent) the form of music. I think that in some ways, some punk music sounds best on a crappy old cassette tape (you know, the _Electric Light Orchestra's Greatest Hits_ tape that you cannibalized and scribbled all over in marker so that nobody would ever realize that you had ever owned an ELO album). And when you're in your car, and there's all that wind noise... MP3 is fine. I like having my entire VdGG collection on one disk, and my entire Throwing Muses collection on another. But. It's always good to have the original non-compressed media somewhere, for when you Really Want To Listen. brni > Hi, Thanks to all, especially Bob for the info. And thanks for not > laughing at my spelling 8-). I don't play around too much with the > computer at work and Webtv can do hardly anything. Someone graciously > set up some music I wanted and I downloaded it and burnt a CDr. It > sounded fine to me. I then started to feel like a kid in a candy store > - all those groups who did one or two songs I liked could be fit onto > one CDr. I am assuming that an individual would use a less lossy than a > business concern with a giant selection to deal with. Maybe I will > stick to trading with persons - after all denial of some stuff in this > material world is good for your character. 8-) bye, me > > KrW > I'm Peter Pan! > I'm perpetually young!! > OW!! What's wrong with my back? > - -- brni i don't want the world, i just want your half. www.livejournal.com/~brni ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 10:03:16 -0500 From: "Lenore" Subject: sxsw i'm going to be there as well....am playing a whack of 'unofficial' shows i.e. no wristband required.....drop on in if you're in the area - details on my myspace page. i do wish this event wasn't so close to folk alliance though....i've barely recovered from memphis! (was nice to meet you neil.) cheers, lenore www.myspace.com/lenorecanada www.lenore.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 10:37:43 -0500 From: "Jeffrey Burka" Subject: Re: Lossy compression... Was: allofmp3s.com?? and itunes?? I do all my encoding in VBR mp3 at > 192kbps and am generally very happy with the results. Years ago when I was encoding at 128 because my portable storage was limited to 64mb, I could clearly hear the lossiness of the encoding parameters, particular in sibilant vocal passages. Uncle Bob's link to his friend's subtractive analysis of mp3 encoding loss was interesting, but to my mind largely pointless. His results showed you, for any particular moment in time, the difference between the lossless and lossy versions of the audio. But when I'm listening to lossy music, the problems aren't with the difference at any moment in time; it's with the scale of differences between one moment and the proceeding one. Further, I'm a little surprised at his contention that, "Even at 64 kbps, you don't lose much." In his 64kbps sample, you can fully hear and understand the spoken voice at the beginning of the clip. To me, that suggests you're losing a hell of a lot! jeff n.p. _Down Easy_, Noe Venable ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2007 09:10:16 -0700 From: Joshua Subject: Loreena McKennitt -- PBS broadcast + tour Besides Loreena's new album, "An Ancient Muse," being nominated for two Juno awards, I'm also excited about the PBS broadcast this month of her concert from the Alhambra in Spain ... not to mention her North American tour (Loreena one week, Lisa Gerrard the next in May in Minneapolis?! Too good to be true!). Here are a few links: General info on "Nights from the Alhambra"http://www.quinlanroad.com/explorethemusic/nights.asp PBS broadcast schedulehttp://www.quinlanroad.com/pdf/nfta-broadcast-schedule.pdf North American tour dateshttp://www.quinlanroad.com/performances/performances.asp ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 12:00:45 -0500 (GMT-05:00) From: Greg Dunn Subject: Re: Lossy compression... Was: allofmp3s.com?? and itunes?? >I do all my encoding in VBR mp3 at > 192kbps and am generally very >happy with the results. Years ago when I was encoding at 128 because >my portable storage was limited to 64mb, I could clearly hear the >lossiness of the encoding parameters, particular in sibilant vocal >passages. Low bit rate encoding seems to particularly affect the quality of vocals. While it's possible to understand spoken voice at surprisingly low rates, the quality drops rapidly below about 160 kbps. Much pop music seems to survive the lower bit rates fairly well, even with (non-solo) vocals, indicating the psychoacoustics are favorable for the particular recordings; part of the Fraunhofer algorithms deal with the inaudibility of individual sounds in a massed recording. You can sometimes be fooled into thinking you're hearing more detail than you are in a complex signal; whereas more sparse arrangements often reveal obvious deficiencies in the encoding. >Uncle Bob's link to his friend's subtractive analysis of mp3 encoding >loss was interesting, but to my mind largely pointless. His results >showed you, for any particular moment in time, the difference between >the lossless and lossy versions of the audio. But when I'm listening >to lossy music, the problems aren't with the difference at any moment >in time; it's with the scale of differences between one moment and the >proceeding one. The artifacts I hear in low bit rate recordings often sound like echoes or decaying resonances, which are how the brain interprets the errors; so that actually makes sense in context. >Further, I'm a little surprised at his contention that, "Even at 64 >kbps, you don't lose much." In his 64kbps sample, you can fully hear >and understand the spoken voice at the beginning of the clip. To me, >that suggests you're losing a hell of a lot! 64 kbps is atrocious from the standpoint of fidelity; at that point, you're throwing away 95% of the data. It's amazing that you can even understand the audio. :-) OTOH, we did some experiments in our DoD labs about 20 years ago, showing that you could get usable voice signals through a 4 kbps link, using codecs optimized for voice. The brain is an amazing organ... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 09:18:25 -0800 From: Michael Pearce Subject: Re: allofmp3s.com?? and itunes?? At 1:55 AM -0500 3/7/07, Greg Dunn wrote: >I'm surprised allofmp3s.com is still alive; they don't pay a penny >of royalties to the copyright owners AFAIK. Not a good thing. I use them to buy 256kbps copies of my vinyl collection. For a few cents a track it saves me an entire afternoon of recording, cleaning up and separating the tracks, titling and ripping to MP3. I would like to PayPal some money to the few artists I have bought from them that I did not already have. I just wish I knew how much Sheryl Crow, for instance, actually gets per track from her record company. Apparently AllOfMP3 survives in spite of the pressure from the card companies; I registered with a 3rd-party payer and I can still renew my balance with them, usually no more than $10 at a time in case Putin decides to care after all. >All MP3-like formats are "very lossy"; the typical 128kbps bitstream >throws more than 90% of the data away (depending on the exact >encoding process used). iTunes' AAC format is better than the >average MP3 encoder in that regard, but after years of putzing >around with my own music collection, I still prefer encoding rates >above 192 kbps no matter what compression format. > >My ears tell me that 256k is adequate even for complex classical and >jazz, but 128k and below doesn't seem to work well except for voice. >In general, the better the original recording and the more complex >the signal, the higher bit rate is needed to do it justice. I don't >see the requirements being substantially different for rock/pop, >it's just that most of it is so poorly recorded to begin with. :-( Apple's AAC format is pretty lossy at 128; it's only slightly better than MP3 at the same rate. When I rip CDs I always use 256 which sounds good on my ipod, car radio and home stereo and is still better than 5 to 1 compression. Plus, it will play on any MP3 player. Did you know that DRM takes extra battery power to decode? Loss is about 15% over what standard MP3 uses, and WMV takes almost 30%. Michael ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2007 16:51:05 -0800 From: cy Subject: 2 witches wanting to be haunting, any ideas? hello ectos Cyoakha Grace here of Land of the Blind. Wendy Rule will be visiting me again in early July, and we may tour together up to Oregon for the Country Fair. She may fly in the weekend of the 4th or after the 8th, we are still getting dates together for a double witchy tour. My question to the list is, any cool house concerts ecto-type places you can recommend in SF, Santa Cruz, then Portland/Eugene. I used to know all the places in the NW but Blind's been playing bigger fests so I don't know who does house concerts anymore. Wendy may fly into LA so even something inbetween, say, Santa Barbara. She created such an amazing tour for Blind for a month last year when we did Australia, I want to find some cool gatherings, some "ecto fest west", or at least a house concert or two for her! Any ideas? We will both be duos, she on guitar with partner on drum, me on harmonium with krystov on didj, both semi organic, sorta folk but a little more POWERFUL. thanks for any ideas! Cyoakha http://www.cyoakhagrace.com/ for indie producers, fans of Cyo, soundtrack info, ALL CDs & recording comments http://www.landoftheblind.com/ For Blind friends & fans/to order BLIND's CDs/BLIND gigs/Bios http://www.sonicbids.com/landoftheblindcyoakhagrace Electronic Press Kit - gig info MYSPACE's http://www.myspace.com/cyoakhagrace lots of photos & free new downloads daily http://www.myspace.com/landoftheblind music samples & new Burning Man photos ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V13 #56 **************************