Re: [ARSCLIST] CD versus Download was "All hail the analogue revolution..."

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Don:

Two points:

1. I agree with you about lossy formats in general. Storage space is cheap. Bandwidth is cheap. 
Preserve without lossy compression. As to what format to make widely available, that's another 
matter. But preservation should never be in a lossy format. It's penny-wise and pound-foolish to the 
extreme.

2. That said, something with the limited frequency response and dynamic range of, for instance old 
radio or many 78's can sound great in pretty squashed MP3 and MP4 files, and with as low as 128K 
streaming WinMedia. It does depend on how the engineer EQ's the material before squashing. There's a 
whole article about this in the latest Electronic Musician. Different encoders do better with 
different types and different squashed formats sound better with different material.

Here's a for instance. I can't get much FM here but I love Riverwalk Jazz (www.riverwalk.org). The 
128K WinMedia stream is good enough that I can stream it to my laptop, put it thru the console to do 
some EQ tweaking to take out the harshness in the upper mid and boost the bass a little bit and then 
record it to CD. The results actually sound better than recordings others have done for me off-air 
because most FM stations do horrible processing (over-compression, super-hyped bass, etc -- stuff 
you wouldn't expect on a public radio station but seems to be the norm in all too many places). So 
my point is that even high-fidelity modern stereo material can be made available in lossy formats 
and still sound OK. The opposite is the awful typical 32K streams coming from radio station 
websites. Unlistenable! With old radio material, as another for instance, I've done OK crunching to 
64K MP3 mono (which actually has the resolution of 128K stereo). I find I do best if I hard-roll the 
treble before doing it because otherwise things like transcription surface noise result in 
digi-swishies. Crunching OTR to that level means a 20gig iPod can literally hold hundreds of hours 
of programs. I've found that with 78's material, especially a well-restored CD issue like what Doug 
Pomeroy does for Bluebird/BMG or my friend Art Shifrin has done, it's gotta be at least 128K mono to 
capture everything so it sounds relatively close to the source. For something like you can buy from 
the guy down in Maryland, which are just dubs of decent-condition public-release records, then the 
same rules as OTR seem to apply.

One final point on squashed formats. This has been said many times in many places but bears 
repeating yet again. Each encoder is different. Something like LAME is a workaround of the German 
"official" MP3 encoding technology. I find it does not do a very good job in some cases, does a 
respectable job in others, takes too long to do the job in all cases. The German-licensed encoders 
like MusicMatch and iTunes are fast and do a very good job in most cases. I find MusicMatch is 
easier to tweak, and iTunes software stupidly has issues with CD Text on home-brew CD's whereas 
MusicMatch looks for CD Text first before it queries the often-inaccurate or sloppy online databases 
like Gracenote (the better one) or Freedb (which iTunes uses because Apple won't pay the Gracenote 
royalty, as I understand it). When Sony bought Soundforge, they ponied up to the Germans and thus 
their versions of the software have had full MP3 capabilities. I find that Soundforge makes good 
sounding files but they are very large with the same parameters as compared to iTunes or MusicMatch. 
Why??? The Windows Media Player later versions makes the best WMA files, but I can't see too many 
situations to use that format except if you are working with a Windows-based server that streams 
media. I don't do Real -- I think it's an awful format for a variety of reasons. I also don't do 
Quicktime/AAC because I think it's a fringe format and Quicktime software is very invasive if a user 
doesn't install it carefully on a Windows system (so is Real, BTW). So I don't want to encourage 
those proprietary formats -- same counts for WMA, but something available to 95% of desktops as part 
of the OS is hardly "proprietary."

One format that does save on file size but does not lose any information is Apple Lossless Format. 
It's been standard on iTunes for a couple of versions now and the newer iPods and Nanos can play it. 
To my ears, it's identical to putting a CD in the drive and playing it through iTunes software. I 
can't understand why Apple doesn't make more use of this format -- for instance putting a security 
wrapper around it and selling iTunes downloads for maybe a 10% premium in "full fidelity" -- or 
competing with Wal-Mart's rising download business by selling squashed AAC iTunes for 75 cents each 
and full-fidelity ALF for the standard $1. As I've said before, I'd gladly pay $1 for a 
full-fidelity legal download but I'm not wasting money on blatantly inferior-sounding formats. 
Anyway, ALF files tend to be about 75-80% the size of the original WAV. The big problem with ALF is 
that so far it only works with iTunes and a few obscure freeware/shareware programs. I am hoping it 
will grow in popularity. Make no mistake -- I do not think it or any other data-compression (lossy 
or not) is a good idea for archiving; again, storage is cheap and bandwidth is cheap compared to 
re-doing something because data is lost or corrupted. But as a consumer format, I see ALF as a 
win-win. It's certainly what I'd use in my ultimate-networked-jukebox server that exists in my mind 
but has yet to be built here.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Cox" <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 4:02 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] CD versus Download was "All hail the analogue revolution..."


> On 25/09/06, Mike Richter wrote:
>
> > The market for commercial classical CDs has no significant competition
> > from downloading. The customer wants both superior sound and the
> > packaging. There are exceptions, but I believe that that is generally
> > true.
> >
> > On the other hand there is an active market for live material,
> > broadcasts, and recordings long out of print. In general, neither
> > sound quality nor packaging offers any advantage comparable with the
> > cost of the CD - even when that CD is an underground product from a
> > label such as Gala. That business is likely to be destroyed by
> > downloading, which appears to bother no one but those living on its
> > proceeds.
> >
> > Now if only the people uploading realized that an AM broadcast does
> > not benefit from 48 Ksps, 320 Kbps MP3s in "stereo"... <G>
>
> It would not be helped by lossy compression or any other kind of
> distortion.
>
> The worse the sound, the less you can afford to lose before it becomes
> unlistenable. If it is already just about at the limit of what the brain
> can interpret, any further burden on the auditory processing pushes it
> over the limit.
>
> Regards
> --
> Don Cox
> doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx