KaZaA use/arrest

[cloudseeker2001 0]

the music companies have lost up to 30% of it's business in the last 2 years and they are going to put their money to work in washington by forcing the governement to hunt down music lovers everywhere. it is all about the money! what artist need to to is bypass the record companies and start internet co-op's and publish music themselves.

"Some call it heavenly in it's brilliance,
others mean and rueful of the western dream"

[billvon 2,396]

>Nope

Digital audio is provably better in impulse noise (clicks and pops) and signal to noise ratio. CD's are around 100dB, 1/4" tape is around 80dB, and FM radio is around 70dB. I am aware that there are some audiophiles that prefer LP's (with RIAA equalization) and tube amps, but that's more the distortion they prefer than true fidelity.

As the link you posted points out, there is another factor - the skill of the person doing the original mastering. Given an equal amount of skill applied to an analog vs digital recording, the digital recording will sound closer to the original.

[staticnewbie 0]

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I download music all the time. The difference is this; if I decide that I like the music, I buy the CD. If I don't like the music, I delete it. I have just over a gig of mp3's right now, which really isn't that much at all, but I have most of the CD's too.

This is something that a great majority of people do (at least here in the UK). When Metallica booted off about Napster, there were quotes from students in the US saying that they would never buy a CD even again, just download the music and burn their own. Most people I know here who have Kazaa listen to the tracks once, and if they it, they almost always buy the CD, since mp3 files can be of crappy quality, depending on how they were encoded in the first place.

In this case Kazaa can be of benefit, because CD's could be bought on the basis of someone hearing a track which wasn't released as a single, therefore there may not be a sale otherwise.

I think the slowdown in the profits of the music industry is due in no small part to the fact that CD's are generally overpriced, and artists aren't forced to release music of a standard that was expected in previous decades. Artists have become living legends, and no-one will tell them that what they've just released is a pile of crap, so it gets put out, people hear this, and simply download the one or two tracks out of fourteen which are any good.

This username sucks, so I'm BBKid now instead. Replies, insults, sexual favours and death threats to be sent there from now on.

[JayhawkJumper 0]

Ok, as far as quality goes, you can talk about the technical aspects all day, but I've DL'ed 128 bit "CD quality" songs off of Kazaa and the CD sounds COMPLETELY different, with a much cleaner sound. However, some people like a dirtier, less produced sound. It's all about personal preference.

[skychic68 0]

Excellent joke......my pranks always suck!!

Que sera sera

[FallRate 0]

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but that's more the distortion they prefer than true fidelity.

Not sure what you mean by that.

But speaking of distortion...according to Tom Scholz (Singer, Songwriter, Producer, Graduate of M.I.T.): "...as soon as you digitize a signal, you introduce a distortion called phase-handle distortion. That means the highs and lows no longer line up in the original waveform. On an oscilloscope, the waveform will look totally different than the original analog signal." As most all signals begin as analog signals (microphones, transducer pick-ups, etc.) this signal degradation is inevitable.

CD's don't pop and hiss, but they sound like you're listening to the music with ear-condoms on!

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[billvon 2,396]

>>but that's more the distortion they prefer than true fidelity.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>Not sure what you mean by that.

It means that people who like tube amps simply like the type of distortion that tube amps provide. If you take a circuit that adds the same sort of distortion, and play the same music on a class-C solid state amp, they can't tell the result from a tube amp. This was demonstrated during several listening tests.

Basically tube amps give better-sounding distortion than transistor amps.

>But speaking of distortion...according to Tom Scholz (Singer,
> Songwriter, Producer, Graduate of M.I.T.). . .

While Tom is definitely a musical genius, his degree in mechanical engineering doesn't make him much of an expert on digital signal processing. He's pretty good at basic analog design, though - his Rockman amp was pretty popular until more modern audio processors edged it out.

> On an oscilloscope, the waveform will look totally different than the
> original analog signal."

Nope. On a scope they look identical. In fact, that very similarity is one reason that so many places use digital transmission of analog data - a digital signal with some noise on it, when converted back to analog, has no noise.

>CD's don't pop and hiss, but they sound like you're listening to the
>music with ear-condoms on!

Properly mastered CD's sound pretty much identical to the original material. You may not like them; that's fine, everyone likes something different. There are many reasons you might not. LP's use RIAA equalization which emphasizes highs; this lets you filter the highs when you play back the record, to reduce pops and clicks. Some people like this sort of audio processing. (Dolby B and C are similar.) Some even like the background hiss of 1/4" (i.e. cassette) tape.

[FallRate 0]

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It means that people who like tube amps simply like the type of distortion that tube amps provide. If you take a circuit that adds the same sort of distortion, and play the same music on a class-C solid state amp, they can't tell the result from a tube amp. This was demonstrated during several listening tests.

Yes, tube amplifiers are coveted by musicians for the rich overdrive they produce. They are also appreciated for the rich, responsive clean tones they achieve. But the preference for tube amplifiers in stereo equipment is not based on a preference for distortion but is based on a preference for the warm and rich sound that tubes provide. I do know a few musicians who can tell the difference between solid state and tube amplifiers yet prefer the solid state amps. But this preference is usually based on cost and the fact that solid state technology is more convenient in that the qualities don't change or degrade over time. I prefer to lay out the $200 every couple of years to have my amp re-tubed!

But that is beside the point. The fact that digitizing a source signal degrades it is just that: a fact. It is possible to digitally sample an analog signal at a rate which makes detection all but impossible to the human ear, but CD's don't make use of that technological ability. DVD shows promise.

By the way, I also prefer butter to margarine.

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[FallingILweenie 0]

ok, so a legal question for those that know....if something like this were true, and they were sitting there waiting for people to download stuff to bust em, would they be able to bust you just for the mp3 you downloaded, or for every MP3 you have on your drive?

I thought it was legal to rip mp3s of songs from cd's you have bought.

and I prefer freeflying to not freeflying.

[billvon 2,396]

>the preference for tube amplifiers in stereo equipment is not based
> on a preference for distortion but is based on a preference for the
> warm and rich sound that tubes provide.

Any time you start using words like warm and rich you are referring to a distortion that you prefer. Now, I'm using 'distortion' in a purely engineering sense i.e. a sound that is warmer and richer than the original is still distorted, even if it sounds _better._ There is no doubt that some sorts of distortion make music sound better - most musicians use effects nowadays to change the way their voices or instruments sound. There are even some speaker systems (the Bose 901 line) that 'pre-distort' the signal to the speaker to make up for an inherent lack of high frequency reproduction by the single-element design, and of course both phono and audio tape recording adds some pre-distortion to make up for the drawbacks of their physical medium.

>The fact that digitizing a source signal degrades it is just that: a fact.

Literally true, but you can choose any arbitrarily high resolution and sampling rate. CD's, at 16 bits/channel and 44.1KHz sampling rates, give you a higher SNR than just about any consumer analog medium out there, more exotic technologies like Beta hi-fi excepted.

The next issue is reproducing the sound when played. Converting digital back to analog is simple, but it's important to filter out the higher energy components generated during D/A conversion. Early CD players used an analog brick wall filter which introduced some distortion at high frequencies; a neccessary result of a sharp cutoff analog filter.

Modern CD players play lower resolution samples back at a higher rate, so very basic filters can be used that do not significantly distort the audio. When compared to the original on a scope differences aren't visible.

Of course, there are a dozen other potential problems that can mess with the sound in a CD player - clock jitter, DNL, THD in output drivers etc. These problems are not problems inherent in 16bit/44.1khz recording, but rather just poorly designed players.

> It is possible to digitally sample an analog signal at a rate which
> makes detection all but impossible to the human ear, but CD's
> don't make use of that technological ability. DVD shows promise.

Human ears just don't hear signals above 20khz, so bringing the rate significantly above 45 khz just doesn't help you with reproducing what _humans_ can hear. I know, the latest "thing" is 96khz sampling, but I don't buy into the idea that inaudible aspects of music are critical to its reproduction.

In addition, increasing the # of bits above 16 doesn't add too much; you are still better than most other mediums. Unless, of course, there are other issues, like a studio that wishes to retain some headroom on their master tapes. (Headroom is not an issue on prerecorded consumer audio.)

[Iflyme 0]

Downloading music without paying amounts to nothing more than stealing. You don't work for free, do you? Well neither do muscians... yes, it's too bad that big business has this thing called "record companies" ... people who often take the lion's share of the profits for doing relatively little compared to what the artists do ... but we still need a system that adequately compensates the artists/muscians for their product. But if you download tunes off the internet without paying, you are still ripping off the artist.

[FallRate 0]

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Any time you start using words like warm and rich you are referring to a distortion that you prefer. Now, I'm using 'distortion' in a purely engineering sense i.e. a sound that is warmer and richer than the original is still distorted, even if it sounds _better._

I mean warm and rich to say that it sounds more like the original source, much like saying less shrill. Perhaps a better way to put it would be "a more accurate reproduction of the harmonic depth of the original." But again, tubes vs. solid state was not the original issue. Actually, tubes vs. solid state isn't really an issue...solid state just sucks!

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[yourzero 0]

I prefer tube amps for my guitar because of the genuine warm tone. The great distortion is just the cherry on top.