From: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org (precious-things-digest) To: precious-things-digest@smoe.org Subject: precious-things-digest V12 #109 Reply-To: precious-things@smoe.org Sender: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "precious-things-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. precious-things-digest Saturday, December 15 2007 Volume 12 : Number 109 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [pt] the latest from toriamos.com: bootleg sale and two [handal@r2d2.] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:10:35 -0600 (CST) From: handal@r2d2.reverse.net (Richard Handal) Subject: Re: [pt] the latest from toriamos.com: bootleg sale and two David responded to one of my posts, > a much more interesting story: > > http://www.maximumpc.com/article/do_higher_mp3_bit_rates_pay_off > > wherein people actually chose their selections that they KNEW they'd > be able to distinguish. Unfortunately, they mostly failed or were > guessing at best. Your honor, I rest my case. Thank you. > This for the most part really only says though that once you're in mp3 > land, there's not a lot of distinguishing characteristics to most > people from mid-to-high quality, but everyone can mostly pick out the > crap. And they were so surprised! That would have been my prediction, and it was similarly borne out by the article I mentioned earlier. Had I been a tester, I would have selected something with gobs of serious open bass- playing, because at least on paper and in theory, the low end is where digital is more of a problem. Whether I could have told the difference, I don't know. I never tried it with quality studio recordings. I guess my main complaint about the complainers is when it's nearly a miracle that a recording from a specific concert exists at all, some people will bitch that the recording isn't perfect. Well, of *course* it isn't perfect, some random person went to the concert in 1996 and put the $19.95 cassette player they managed to smuggle into the hall under their seat, the internal microphone can be heard picking up its own motor noise, and the compression can be heard pumping up and down as it adjusts its level automatically, but THIS IS A SPINE-TINGLING PERFORMANCE AND IT'S THE ONLY KNOWN RECORDING OF IT, SO SHUT THE HELL UP AND LISTEN TO IT! THERE'S STILL PLENTY OF MUSIC IN THERE! I'm entirely used to hearing recordings on antique formats. There's a wide variance in quality between, say, an 1898 Berliner disc of Teddy Roosevelt's bugler from the charge the Rough Riders made up San Juan Hill, Emil Cassi, and a 1940s era jazz band recorded in a major studio. But in each instance, until someone invents a time machine, we won't be going back to make a better recording of any of that stuff. It's nearly a miracle to have any of it. They are all historical *documents*. http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/berl:@OR(@field(AUTHOR+@band(Cassi,+Emil+))+@field(OTHER+@band(Cassi,+Emil+))) So while I would choose the highest available quality for concert recordings were I able to buy any, I would also keep in mind the luck we have to experience such sonic blessings as we do. 128kbps MP3s professionally done these days wipe the floor with *almost* anything made before the late 1930s, if not later. God forbid Tori would have started releasing a bunch of concert recordings a long time ago, as I suggested to her at the end of the 1996 tour. Hey--I tried! Imagine a dozen CDs of the DDI Tour made from Mark's soundboard recordings. Wow. > You can't really go above the level of quality of your listening > devices... so even high quality mp3's are excessive to some people. And I'll put a finer point on it, and say that speakers are the tires of a stereo system: they're where the rubber meets the road. I won't tell too much of this story, but the main relevant part isn't too personal. About two weeks before Venus was released, Tori was telling me that the final master they did a few days earlier had boosted the midrange by 1dB. My instant thought was how little difference that would make to 98% of anyone's listening experiences as they listened on their bookshelf stereo systems, car systems with engines running in traffic, and boomboxes. 1dB like that isn't a minor difference, but to believe that the difference will be played back similarly from one person's playback equipment to the next is to live in fantasyland. I'm not saying Tori shouldn't want it to be the best she can make it, but knowing that she can't go to everyone's house and adjust their stereos for them is worth keeping in mind, too. She's welcome to come adjust mine if she likes. . . . :-) When I was in recording engineering school many years ago, they taught us that we might be changing bass and treble controls on the main board without having them even turned on, so we might think we were changing the sound when we weren't. So this is a known and accepted concept. People hear, see, and think what they expect. If you put one version up against the other you can probably tell, and that's the main constant in all this. > As for the gapless playback, are you using itunes? I am. > I was under the impression that itunes was seamless playback. What they have is a preference setting to allow tracks to overlap, and the smallest increment is one second. I don't want overlap! Boo! If I play CDs or AIFFs or AACs, it doesn't have a gap. I *do* mind the gaps. I plan to get a huge external drive soon so I can keep a lot of big audio files on it. > Whatever program you're using though has to compensate for built-in > "gap" at the end of an mp3 file to pad out to the full second. That's what it is? Weird. When I convert an MP3 to an AIFF to edit it for some reason, clearly, there's wacky stuff going on at the ends of the file, including a spike with noise that I need to edit out. I never researched the reason for that. A nutty thing to have to live with. You'd think software could figure out how to work around this problem and join two tracks seamlessly. You may say that I'm a dreamer. . . . Be seeing you, Richard Handal, H.G. ------------------------------ End of precious-things-digest V12 #109 **************************************