MP3

Here's a helping hand in the matter... How to compromise....

There is no one in their right mind who could honestly tell the difference between MP3, at 192 (VBR... CBR in some cases with graver sounds)... and a FLAC file... nobody. But, there lies one small inconveniance in the MP3 file... there are tiny gaps when burning them to CD which are very annoying during track changes... it loses the over all feel of a live concert..

SO... there is a certain technology out there for people who want lossless, gapless music, at high bitrates, and high compression (lower file size). It is absolutely crystal clear... I have very sensitive ears...

OggVorbis

They're known as ogg files... there are plugins for winamp, and there are ogg players out there, Nero burns them automatically.

They take up much less space and are easier to work with...

This would make it easier for people to share in the torrents... If they were this small... I would help out with uploading concerts and such... with flacs i just don't have the bandwith to do it

Jimmy Dean wrote:

This would make it easier for people to share in the torrents... If they were this small... I would help out with uploading concerts and such... with flacs i just don't have the bandwith to do it

Until recently I had to pay for every megabyte that I download. Now I don't pay per MB, but per KB per second. In other words I have a 12 K/sec Internet connection and I can download as much as I want to without paying extra.

With that speed a FLAC bootleg would take a week to download. An mp3 bootleg takes less than one night. Do the math ladies and gentlemen.

It's even worse when it comes to DVD's. I don't plan on downloading any, because if I tried to, it would take me a month to download 4 GB of information.

Now I apreciate that some of you in the UK have ridicuolously fast Internet connections, but you may want to consider that some of us are less fortunate than you are.

V.

Jimmy Dean wrote:

But, there lies one small inconveniance in the MP3 file... there are tiny gaps when burning them to CD which are very annoying during track changes...

A very small annoyance it is indeed... It takes about five minutes to edit out the gaps with Soundforge, and then you don't have to be annoyed anymore.

during the past 18 months I have downloaded some 200 bootlegs by various artists. There has been some material with very poor quality on the flac (shn, ape) files, and some incredibly good quality on 128kbit/s MP3s... Based on my own experience I have no problems whatsoever accepting either format.

Please don't call me stupid because of that. :)

I'm not from the UK! :P

And I'm a patient guy. If a download takes 3 hours or 3 weeks, I don't give a crap. As long as I can enjoy the download once I received it.

There is no one in their right mind who could honestly tell the difference between MP3, at 192 (VBR... CBR in some cases with graver sounds)... and a FLAC file... nobody

and

Now I apreciate that some of you in the UK have ridicuolously fast Internet connections, but you may want to consider that some of us are less fortunate than you are.

Indeed!

P.S. Now you can call me a deaf man, Thomas :)

Tero wrote:

during the past 18 months I have downloaded some 200 bootlegs by various artists. There has been some material with very poor quality on the flac (shn, ape) files, and some incredibly good quality on 128kbit/s MP3s... Based on my own experience I have no problems whatsoever accepting either format.

Yes, I completely agree with you, Tero... but - those incredibly good quality 128kbps mp3s would still sound a bit better in their original format before they became mp3 - and flac is a way to preserve that.

but - those incredibly good quality 128kbps mp3s would still sound a bit better in their original format before they became mp3 - and flac is a way to preserve that.

I can fully understand that, and I do prefer to download lossless formats myself if they are available.
But I'm not one of those persons who go around complaining and calling other people stupid if they happen to offer mp3s instead of flacs.

I can still remember a time when there was a "concert of the month" available to download as mp3s, and nobody was complaining about it. :P

Tero wrote:

I can still remember a time when there was a "concert of the month" available to download as mp3s, and nobody was complaining about it. :P

That was back before people could compare it to flac... now that people have a concrete reason to complain, you'd better bet they will do it! :P

"Why I don't like torrent? Because download rate is so low, but upload rate is so high... :) I can download whole concert from RapidShare just in a couple of hours, if I'd do the same as torrents it might take a whole day sometimes"

This is true for all formats, no matter if you torrent mp3 or flac. The difference is that you also SHARE when you download from BitTorrent. Someone donates the file and you as a downloader help sharing it with other people. Downloading from RapidShare and Yousendit is a one way street.

Seems as you afraid to call my name... These nameless quotes above about me, if someone doesn't know!

I didn't say that upload/download rates linked with formats actually, I know how does torrent works and what's the difference, I just don't like it. It's easy for me to download something from RS or YSI like I used to do. Sorry about that, people! And if I'd get something really rare I promise to post it in mp3, flac, RapidShare, torrent :)

Sir GH<br><h6>ah yeah</h6> wrote:

Yes, I completely agree with you, Tero... but - those incredibly good quality 128kbps mp3s would still sound a bit better in their original format before they became mp3 - and flac is a way to preserve that.

Yes, I have always said this and it´s true. These recordings have to be preserved in the best quality possible and therefore when it comes to trading live recordings, lossless formats must be used. Nobody will call anyone stupid if he enjoys listening to mp3, but only for his personal use. Many people here don´t understand that serious traders are worried that these mp3 concerts shared here will end up polluting the trading pool.

tilomagnet wrote:

Sir GH<br><h6>ah yeah</h6> wrote:

Yes, I completely agree with you, Tero... but - those incredibly good quality 128kbps mp3s would still sound a bit better in their original format before they became mp3 - and flac is a way to preserve that.

Yes, I have always said this and it´s true. These recordings have to be preserved in the best quality possible and therefore when it comes to trading live recordings, lossless formats must be used. Nobody will call anyone stupid if he enjoys listening to mp3, but only for his personal use. Many people here don´t understand that serious traders are worried that these mp3 concerts shared here will end up polluting the trading pool.

Hmmm... when you say traders, I envision the evil people who are holding back the footage of Houston '77 - one of my favourite QUEEN shows ever. For some reason I can't empathise with them, sorry.

VBR mp3's sound just as good as FLAC. Prove me wrong!

V.

Many people here don´t understand that serious traders are worried that these mp3 concerts shared here will end up polluting the trading pool.

Many people here don't understand that these so called serious traders already have all these common concerts that are currently circulating around the world as mp3s...
Besides the real issue of quality, I bet there is an underlying elitistic view that some people shouldn't be getting the concerts so easily. :/

Tero wrote:

Many people here don't understand that these so called serious traders already have all these common concerts that are currently circulating around the world as mp3s...

What kind of argument is that? I don´t call someone a serious collector just because he has tons of bootleg discs, a serious collector is someone who is interested in preserving the quality of these recordings, no matter how many discs he has in his collection.

Tero wrote:

Besides the real issue of quality, I bet there is an underlying elitistic view that some people shouldn't be getting the concerts so easily. :/

I do think "some" people shouldn´t be getting any concerts, especially these people who keep on complaining here that these concerts all sounded "crappy" anyway, so there was no need to preserve the quality. Bootlegs should be made available only to all those who know they have to be treasured.

Here's my contribution, if somebody's interested to get a bit more practical example...
(It's the first time I'm using rapidshare, so forgive me if it doesn't work)

http://rapidshare.de/files/1593924/MP3.zip.html

There are two 14 second .wav files from The Cross' concert in Geneva in this 5MB zip.
I downloaded the flac concert via QZ, and burned it to cd. For this demonstration I encoded one of the clips into 128kb MP3, and back to wav.

Can you tell me which is the compressed version, and which is straight from the cd?
Because I sure as hell can't!