On Friday, June 13, 2003, at 09:24 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
On 13 Jun 2003 at 20:20, Darcy James Argue 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.
No, but I was thinking of future updates. Anyway, just seemed odd -- you'd already commented that MP3 playback in 6.3 sounded better, but you were still complaining about having to install updates with all this "junk" in them, when in fact the QuickTime updates actually tend to improve core stuff like encoding and playback.
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*?
Glad you've finally found a, uh, tolerable solution. I do hope QuickTime starts working better for you. You'll be able to use iTunes to encode when the PC version is eventually released, and hopefully it won't present the same problems as QuickTime is causing for you.
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.
Like I said, it's your call. But having A/B-ed the two versions, I have to say, honestly, if it were my work, there's just no way in hell I'd put up the 64 kbps one (except possibly as a "lo-fi" option for dialup users -- but I don't know if I'd even go that far). The 128 kbps version sounds basically like I'm listening to playback on the headphone jack on the MiniDisc (which I guess in a way I sort of am). It's quite pleasant to listen to, actually. It gives more than enough audio information for me to imagine what the live concert sounded like in person, and the digital artifacting caused by the MP3 compression, while audible, is not distracting.
The 64 kpbs version sounds like my upstairs neighbor is playing his $50 Radio Shack boom box too loud again, and I'm hearing the results through the floorboards. The compression at that level flattens out the sound, robs it off all expressive nuance, and introduces so many glassy, hissy digital artifacts that I consider it practically unlistenable. Every time the singers sing an "s" sound, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard. Seriously, I'm not exaggerating, that's my honest opinion. That sound -- the sound that over-compressed MP3's make -- is really extremely irritating, especially for music like yours with a lot of space, with the singers taking audible breaths, etc.
Perhaps others will jump in with opinions now that both versions are up. Perhaps I'm just hysterically sensitive to MP3 artifacts, but they really do bug me, and the difference between the two version really is night and day (if you'll excuse the old saw).
(For the record, digital compression artifacts are far, far more irritating than the analog hiss, pops and clicks etc associated with period recordings -- I'm quite happy putting up with that. It's just the artificial digital noise I can't stand.)
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.
Actually, I expect -- and hope -- that within a year, selection will from the iTunes Music Store will be *better* than Tower and Amazon. I hope to be able to buy iTunes Music Store downloads from some of the members of this list. I don't think that's an unreasonable hope, either. If you sell your albums through CDBaby (and anybody can sell their albums through CDBaby), you *will* be able to get your tracks added to the iTMS.
- Darcy
----- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Boston MA
No one likes us I don't know why We may not be perfect But heaven knows we try But all around, even our old friends put us down Let's drop the Big One and see what happens
- Randy Newman, "Political Science"
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