On 13 Jun 2003 at 20:20, Darcy James Argue wrote: > On Friday, June 13, 2003, at 07:54 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
> All I'm saying is, the upgrades tend to provide significant > improvements. Apple doesn't normally upgrade QT for no good reason. > But whatever, if it's too much trouble, don't bother. I guess you missed where I said I'd already installed it. > >> Surely there must be some sort of bare-bones freeware MP3 player for > >> PC > >> that doesn't have all the spyware garbage? . . . > > > > I have THREE programs on my PC that can play MP3s. Why should I do > > the research to find a free MP3 player without spyware? Granted, one > > doesn't seem to work reliably, and the other two are evil, but it > > just seems like such a lot of work. > > Well, because you preferred player (QT) seems to have unfortunately let > you down here, and I just figured it would probably be easier to find a > spyware-free MP3 player than it is to fix whatever problem you're > having with QT. Well, I downloaded WinAmp and installed it, then ran AdAware to get rid of the Allegra IE extension, then firewalled it so it couldn't phone home. It's pretty awful. I downloaded a bunch of skins, about half of which caused WinAmp to croak, and settled on two that are tolerably ugly. Why do these things have to be so damned *small*? > > Did you *really* think the files sounded that bad? Maybe you're > > expecting the source recording quality to have been better than it > > was. It was recorded with a small though decent mini-disc > > player/recorder and minimal mixing through a cheap little mixing > > board. > > As I said in another thread, I know what MP3's sound like. I know how > they affect the sound of the source material, and I can generally > distinguish artifacts introduced by the MP3 encryption process from > artifacts that were already present in the source files. I know > MiniDisc uses compressed audio, too, and I'm familiar with how *that* > medium affects the sound, and also how audio recorded on a MiniDisc > behaves when it gets transferred to MP3. So the short answer is, no, I > don't think my expectations regarding the source material were > unrealistic, and yes, I would expect that even given the limitations of > the source recording, a 128 kbps MP3 would sound much, much better than > a 64 kbps MP3. So much better that I feel it's definitely worth twice > the download time and twice the disk storage. And if it were up to me > (which of course it isn't), I'd much prefer my work to be represented > by the 128 kbps files. Of course, that's just IMHO, and YMMV (as they > say on the Information Superhighway). Well, I just put up the 128bit version of one of them. I don't see a *huge* difference. Audible, absolutely. But not what I'd call night and day. It's at: http://www.bway.net/~dfenton/Collegium/HimmelUndErde/128Bit/Bernhard- Jubilate%20Deo.mp3 (all on one line, of course) Yes, I can hear the difference. But I don't think the 64bit is so horrid as to make it worth the extra download time for the non- broadband folks. > > Well, if some day there's ever any music available for download from > > these legitimate music stores, I may bite, but I don't see that as > > being at all likely to happen any time soon. > > Well, the iTunes Music Store is obviously geared much more towards the > popular market right now -- which is as it should be, seeing as they're > just starting out. Obviously, there are still unacceptable glitches -- > like, for instance, artists sort by first name only. There are > separate entries for Bela Bartok and Béla Bartók. And they only have > the five major labels right now, BUT many independents are coming, > including the super-indies like CDBaby (which isn't even really a > "label" at all). But despite these drawbacks, it's still a pretty good > service, especially considering there's no monthly subscription fee or > any of that. You just pay for what you use -- $0.99 per song, or > (generally) $9.99 per album. Many albums cost less... some a little > more. It's an excellent (and extremely successful) start, especially > considering the quality of the competition right now. I'm certainly > heartened by the idea that millions of people are apparently willing to > actually pay for music online. I wasn't sure that would actually be > the case. Well, there is just no music there that I have the slightest interest in purchasing. Now, if they halved the price, that might make the difference so that I'd purchase some things that I'm not all that interested in (to fill out my collection in areas I don't already own, which means the music was not important enough to me to buy), though I've got to factor in the time spent ripping the CDs to store it (I've got enough hard drives in the house, over 140GBs I could leave them on the computers for a long time). But mostly I hardly ever buy anything on a major label, so it's not yet going to be of much interest to me. I assume that one day, it will be the only way, and I just hope the selection as good as what I have now between Tower Records and Amazon.com. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
