Jim, Not that it helps for every situation, but these are two excellent examples of why many people, myself included, only trade (sourced) SHNs. When I get Dead shows, I only want them in SHN format, and I want them to match an etree source. This means that I got the same thing as the original seed, no matter how many gens it's gone through.
Do some people find it snobbish and unnecessary? Yup. I don't. The problem with Audio trading is that many people don't care. Tiny gaps between tracks don't bother them. Half a song missing doesn't bother them. They receive them in trade, they don't really care, and they trade them back out again or dupe them for a friend. They're not even doing this maliciously -- they're just indifferent. And you're never going to make them unlearn their indifference. The only way to stop it is to enforce your own rules. That is, instead of trying to filter the piss out of the pool, just go to another pool. You'll find there are plenty nice ones around. :) That's my $.02 and nothing more. Greg > A couple years ago about a half dozen people each put in hundreds of > hours, for love and for free, to digitize more than a thousand first > generation SBD cassettes, master them to Cds and put the Cds into > circulation. Great care was taken to do as perfect a job as possible: > knowing that the fountainhead of Dead music had been freely opened by > the grace of one great deadhead, it was felt proper to live up to the > quality of the gift. > > It blows my mind, now, to see some of this stuff come back around rather > altered. Take, for instance, SMU Dallas 12/26/69. The 1st gen cassette > SBD source has a nasty cut at 26:00 into the Dark Star, about 2 1/2 > minutes after the vocals. The tape picks up again near the beginning of > New Speedway. A couple people have had the thought to cut directly from > the Dark Star vocals to the New Speedway, making a 'cleaner transition.' > I can understand the motive for this. What I can understand the motive > for, is the way one of these copies has cut a minute or so off the > beginning of Cold Rain and the other has cut a couple minutes off the > end of Cold Rain and around a minute off the beginning of China Cat. > Just to hack things up, I guess. Just to piss in the well, I guess. > > For still more egregiously stupid example, check out the version of > 12/30/69 going around. The first CD times 59:35 & sounds like a clean > transcript of Good Lovin through Midnight Hour. The 2nd disc times > 36:56 and contains Cumberland through Cosmic Charlie. The cut in The > Other One is closed up clean with the beginning of Cosmic Charlie. On > one listen it didn't seem like much was lost so I didn't cross check; > now I wish I had because in view of the rest I wouldn't trust it. The > third disc times 79:20. It begins with Uncle John through Me & My > Uncle, without intermediate tracking. It then continues with the first > 10 minutes of Dark Star, cutting the last 9 or so, apparently so as to > 'fit' the Alligator > Feedback sequence on the CD. > > Putting this mangled abortion into circulation is like tearing pages out > of library books. It is pissing in the well. When I think of the > hundreds of hours of love, care, attention and plain work that went into > putting this stuff out good and proper, and consider this hacked up > corpse that comes back around 2 years later, well, I just want to say > > Thanks a bunch, bozos. > > Caveat auditor.
