Why not MP3? Is it a quality issue? Because these recordings arent high quality anyways, and the mp3's sound the same as the real deal. I can get you the mp3's easy.

it's absolutely a quality issue. if they already don't sound good, why make them worse by trimming the high and low ends away and skipping every other bit of information? MP3s are the worst technology of the last century, hands down. they sound like CDs being played in a wet cardboard box.

thanks, though. be well and stay smiling.

trudatman wrote:it's absolutely a quality issue. if they already don't sound good, why make them worse by trimming the high and low ends away and skipping every other bit of information? MP3s are the worst technology of the last century, hands down. they sound like CDs being played in a wet cardboard box.

I Hate to bring this thread off topic, but MP3s are far from the worst technology of the last century. The fact that they enable me to hold my entire CD collection in the palm of my hand is pretty awesome. Sure there are many technologies involved in that, but lossy audio compression played a big part of it.

First, in no way shape or form does mp3 compression trim the high and low ends and skip every other bit of information. What it does, is transforms the signal from the time domain into the frequency domain. It then quantizes it based on the human ear's perception, cutting back the accuracy of the signal at different frequency ranges. In general, the human ear won't notice the difference between a 192kbps lossy compressed audio file, and the 44KHz 16-bit audio found on the CD. I've yet to see studies showing that people can tell the difference adequately at this quality range.

While I agree, I try to avoid mp3s and lossy compression files for trading copies of bootlegs, it is only to avoid the issues that come about from recompressing the same file multiple times. If everyone just shared the same compressed audio files, it wouldn't be much of an issue, but people will recompress them and really start to degrade quality.

Of course, when talking about old demos, the whole thought becomes kind of silly. A 5th generation mp3 made from the original master tapes is going to sound better than a losslessly compressed flac made from a 1st gen tape. It's just the nature of analog copies. I think the whole obsession with "perfect" quality is kind of a joke, particularly when dealing with bootlegs of demos and what not. Also, for the record, a poorly compressed mp3 will make a much bigger difference when compressing a high quality audio source than a low quality one.

Phil

philipgar wrote: transforms the signal from the time domain into the frequency domain.

thanks for transforming me back in time to my vibes classes good times...

is there a freak accident demo? if so could someone please post thanks!

Atticusdog wrote:is there a freak accident demo? if so could someone please post thanks!

it's on the downloads page:
http://www.enterthesoulasylum.com/other/audio/


edit - just realized you might mean a real demo demo and i the file i mentioned is 'just' a live version. sorry! no clue if a 'real' demo exists for it.

I can hear the difference between most mp3's and CD. But yea, the point is that I can send the CD's, but im probobly just sending a CD that was made from MP3 files that were converted to .wav for the CD.

Atticusdog wrote:is there a freak accident demo? if so could someone please post thanks!

I don't believe there is one. If there is, it's not in circulation. As far as I'm aware, it has only been played live a handful of times.

philipgar wrote:....quantizes....

I know it doesn't skip every other bit, literally. I was generalizing the way MP3s takes a borderline technology (44.1 wav is a bit under the human-ear-can-tell threshold) and moves in firmly into the not-fit-for-human-consumption range. I assume somebody did cassette-to-CD transfers of the demos back in the day. I'm want to avoid lossy computer uploads. holler if you can help.

Monolith Maniac wrote:

Atticusdog wrote:is there a freak accident demo? if so could someone please post thanks!

I don't believe there is one. If there is, it's not in circulation. As far as I'm aware, it has only been played live a handful of times.

The archives list a total of 9 (known) times Freak Accident has been played
(July 7th, 2000; March 28th, 2001; July 20th, 2001; Nov 21st, 2001, Dec 15th 2001; July 25th, 2003; August 2nd, 2003; August 30th, 2003; May 24th 2004). Good song that one was!

I doubt any of the other demo's went straight from cassette > cd (in circulation or not), as I'm sure that they wanted everyone to suffer and listen to lowest quality stuff.

Oh yeah, I prefer the term "live recordings" over the term "bootlegs"

Anyway, carry on!