Copy protected CD's not the worst threat to sound quality!
 

"Jim H" wrote in message
...
more from the 'Stimpy school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:


"Jim H" wrote in message
...

I guess if you want to share, you have to go with the masses ;-)
For better or worse, MP3 has a *huge* amount of momentum - look at
the comparative volume of MP3's vs. Ogg on Kazaa

But who uses kazaa anymore?

Mwa ha ha ha!! 4,250,000 people are logged onto Kazaa as I type this!

I'd take those figures with a *big* pinch of salt. How can a supernode
know
the total users on a decentralised network? In kazaa people who logged off
some time ago tend to remain counted and those with flaky 'free'
connections + dynamic IP can be counted several times.

Besides, how many people use a network isn't important to file avaliablity
if search facilities do not scale sufficiently to allow them to be
reached.
How many of the 4million computers do you think your search queries?
Possibly less than a smaller, but better organised p2p network.

I really wouldn't recomend kazaa. The files are often fake or corrupt,
with
no serious attempt at maintaining file integrety, there is nothing to
guard
your privicy, there is no real hashing, it has disproportionaly many 56k
users and so is generally slow, the search facilities are inappropiate for
a network of it's size and it's users tend to be technically naieve.

With mp3, maybe, but mp3 is getting on 13 years old now, and at 320k
it's really outside the original design. You can't keep throwing
high, out of spec bitrate at an old format it and expect the quality
to scale nicely. I do not believe there to be audiable difference
between an r3mix lame rip (vbr,~180) and a 320 cbr one.

So, in reality, you don't download a lot - i.a. more than 4 or 5
complete CDs each day, then?

I don't understand the question. Are you acusing me of piracy, or of not
pirating enough? I'll prob download 0.01 full music albums per day, but
use
BitTorrent as an ftp replacement. I'd say at least a gig a week, often
maxing out a 2meg line.

What does that have to do with mp3 bitrates? I have many ogg/mp3 files
from
my own cds.

--
Jim H jh
@333
.org

lucky you are in the UK not the RIAA owned USA.

Copy protected CD's not the worst threat to sound quality!
 

"Stimpy" wrote in message
...
"Ian Molton" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 00:14:51 +0100
"Stimpy" wrote:

A decent 256 or
320 rip will produce an acceptable CDR - certainly good enough for
normal
day-to-day listening

320 is known to be able to pass for real in double-blind tests.

Hmmm... I've been pretty pleased with most of the many 320 tracks I've
downloaded/burned so I can believe that. It'd be interesting to read the
studies though - any references on the WWW?


That said, LAME does an *extremely* good job of variable bitrate
encoding, the theory being that you only use as many bits as needed to
reach 'indistinguishable' quality.

Hmmm... (again). I've never used variable bitrate and always rip at 320 -
easy option I guess :-). Have you tried a back-to-back variable vs fixed
rate rip? I might have a play over the weekend. I think my concern is
that, for file sharing purposes, people often search for tracks at a
specific bitrate (i.e. minimum 256). Although variable bitrate ripping
might save a little space, the lower bitrate won't do anything to raise
the
average bitrate used for sharing



bit rate doesnt always come into it, I have heard some better quality 128s
than 320s.
it depends on the encoder more than the bit rate.
Lame does a very good job, Blade not too bad.
regards malcolm

Copy protected CD's not the worst threat to sound quality!
 

"Stimpy" wrote in message
...
"Ian Molton" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 00:14:51 +0100
"Stimpy" wrote:

A decent 256 or
320 rip will produce an acceptable CDR - certainly good enough for
normal
day-to-day listening

320 is known to be able to pass for real in double-blind tests.

Hmmm... I've been pretty pleased with most of the many 320 tracks I've
downloaded/burned so I can believe that. It'd be interesting to read the
studies though - any references on the WWW?


That said, LAME does an *extremely* good job of variable bitrate
encoding, the theory being that you only use as many bits as needed to
reach 'indistinguishable' quality.

Hmmm... (again). I've never used variable bitrate and always rip at 320 -
easy option I guess :-). Have you tried a back-to-back variable vs fixed
rate rip? I might have a play over the weekend. I think my concern is
that, for file sharing purposes, people often search for tracks at a
specific bitrate (i.e. minimum 256). Although variable bitrate ripping
might save a little space, the lower bitrate won't do anything to raise
the
average bitrate used for sharing



bit rate doesnt always come into it, I have heard some better quality 128s
than 320s.
it depends on the encoder more than the bit rate.
Lame does a very good job, Blade not too bad.
regards malcolm

Copy protected CD's not the worst threat to sound quality!
 

more from the 'iddqdATworldonline.DenmarK school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

I fear that in a few years the majority of music will not be availble on
physical media but instead be sold on-line in compressed form!

The move has allready started with Apple's ITunes, TDC's solution here
in Denmark and several others. For now they make deals with the record
labels but soon the musicians will make their own deals with them, and
the on-line shops in effect becoming new record companies forcing the
record labels to minic the model.

Now I'm all for the artists getting a bigger share of the money but I
fear sound quality will get lost in the process of the music
distribution going on-line. My prediction is that getting uncompressed
music will be just as hard as it is to find vinyl theese days!

Am I just over pesimistic or ?

Kind regards

Bruno, Denmark


I just discovered somthing that may be of interest.

The FooBar2000 media player comes with a quite good ABX comparator (with
proper level matching etc).

Might be a good idea to rip a few well known pieces of music to different
codecs and see if you really can hear the difference. Original wav, lame --
r3mix, lame 320cbr and quality 6 vorbis would make an interesting test set.

I've tried this, comparing each compressed format to the wav. Vorbis scored
best, 320cbr was a /little/ better than r3,

--
Jim H jh
@333
.org

Copy protected CD's not the worst threat to sound quality!
 

more from the 'iddqdATworldonline.DenmarK school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

I fear that in a few years the majority of music will not be availble on
physical media but instead be sold on-line in compressed form!

The move has allready started with Apple's ITunes, TDC's solution here
in Denmark and several others. For now they make deals with the record
labels but soon the musicians will make their own deals with them, and
the on-line shops in effect becoming new record companies forcing the
record labels to minic the model.

Now I'm all for the artists getting a bigger share of the money but I
fear sound quality will get lost in the process of the music
distribution going on-line. My prediction is that getting uncompressed
music will be just as hard as it is to find vinyl theese days!

Am I just over pesimistic or ?

Kind regards

Bruno, Denmark


I just discovered somthing that may be of interest.

The FooBar2000 media player comes with a quite good ABX comparator (with
proper level matching etc).

Might be a good idea to rip a few well known pieces of music to different
codecs and see if you really can hear the difference. Original wav, lame --
r3mix, lame 320cbr and quality 6 vorbis would make an interesting test set.

I've tried this, comparing each compressed format to the wav. Vorbis scored
best, 320cbr was a /little/ better than r3,

--
Jim H jh
@333
.org

Copy protected CD's not the worst threat to sound quality!
 

more from the 'malcolm school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

lucky you are in the UK not the RIAA owned USA.

Even if I was, I'm confident the p2p software I use does enough to protect
my privacy.

Btw, when I say I use BitTorrent as an ftp replacement, I mean to download
legitiamte files in order to take the strain off the ftp server (and
normally means a faster download :) I'll ocasionally get music off p2p to
try it out, but only because the music I like is never played on the radio.

If I like the music sometimes I'll buy the CD and never use it, I'll buy it
because I want to stay within the law and support artists in the only way I
am allowed to, but I have no *use* for it once I've already downloaded a
good mp3/vorbis file.

I see technologies like BitTorrent as important to usurping record
companies, not just a convenient way to rip them off. Allowing artists to
publish their material for almost nothing is an essential step to freedom
from the labels.

--
Jim H jh
@333
.org

Copy protected CD's not the worst threat to sound quality!
 

more from the 'malcolm school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

lucky you are in the UK not the RIAA owned USA.

Even if I was, I'm confident the p2p software I use does enough to protect
my privacy.

Btw, when I say I use BitTorrent as an ftp replacement, I mean to download
legitiamte files in order to take the strain off the ftp server (and
normally means a faster download :) I'll ocasionally get music off p2p to
try it out, but only because the music I like is never played on the radio.

If I like the music sometimes I'll buy the CD and never use it, I'll buy it
because I want to stay within the law and support artists in the only way I
am allowed to, but I have no *use* for it once I've already downloaded a
good mp3/vorbis file.

I see technologies like BitTorrent as important to usurping record
companies, not just a convenient way to rip them off. Allowing artists to
publish their material for almost nothing is an essential step to freedom
from the labels.

--
Jim H jh
@333
.org