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Epiphany
Cool Member
Age: 53
Joined: 15 Feb 2010
Posts: 90
Location: Wijdenes
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 Posted:
Sun Feb 21, 2010 7:07 pm Digital downloads ?? |
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As an mix/mastering engineer I spend a lot of time and effort to achieve the highest sound quality as possible. Now days it is common to distribute your music in a digital format. Most of the time that will be a mp3 file. As a professional engineer I am reluctant to do so, since a mp3 is not a lossless decoding format and a lot of the original dynamics and overall sound quality will be lost forever. And besides that, is it not strange that people are willing to listen to mp3 file's on a expensive sound system ?
Ambient music is all about sound. If i do a A/B test with a original cd and the mp3 version of it, most of the time the difference is dramatic. I do realize that people who are listening to a mp3 file maybe never will hear the original cd. So they might think the mp3 sounds great. This fenomena troubles me.
I would love to hear how you think about this.
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Graham
One of the Coolest Member
Joined: 02 Feb 2008
Posts: 536
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Posted:
Sun Feb 21, 2010 7:14 pm (No subject) |
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This is why we created MusicZeit.
Primarily aimed at lossless audio.
www.musiczeit.com
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Epiphany
Cool Member
Age: 53
Joined: 15 Feb 2010
Posts: 90
Location: Wijdenes
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Posted:
Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:06 pm (No subject) |
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Indeed...
_________________
Let the Music Flow!
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Altus
Cool Member
Age: 35
Joined: 03 Feb 2007
Posts: 80
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Posted:
Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:11 pm (No subject) |
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FLAC is slowly gaining popularity, especially in the ambient genre.
I release my music in both MP3 and FLAC formats, and FLAC generally gets 30-40% of the download count. Not bad at all.
So I think that people are realizing what they're missing when they listening to MP3, and when it's available choose lossless audio options such as FLAC.
_________________
Mike -- Altus : aural journeys for the mind's eye
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Graham
One of the Coolest Member
Joined: 02 Feb 2008
Posts: 536
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Posted:
Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:42 pm (No subject) |
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Over 70% of MusicZeit sales are FLAC.
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sparrow
One of the Coolest Member
Age: 49
Joined: 15 Apr 2007
Posts: 2752
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Posted:
Sun Feb 21, 2010 10:16 pm (No subject) |
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Never got around as to how to convert files so that you can burn them off. I bought Redshift's Ether on Musiczeit and couldn't burn myself the album.
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Graham
One of the Coolest Member
Joined: 02 Feb 2008
Posts: 536
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Posted:
Sun Feb 21, 2010 10:25 pm (No subject) |
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« sparrow » wrote:
Never got around as to how to convert files so that you can burn them off. I bought Redshift's Ether on Musiczeit and couldn't burn myself the album.
Did you contact me?
Anyone who is unsure usually just sends a quick email to info@musiczeit.com
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modulator_esp
One of the Coolest Member
Age: 44
Joined: 03 Feb 2007
Posts: 2346
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Posted:
Sun Feb 21, 2010 10:44 pm (No subject) |
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Petrus
Guest
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Posted:
Mon Feb 22, 2010 12:41 am (No subject) |
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« Graham » wrote:
« sparrow » wrote:
Never got around as to how to convert files so that you can burn them off. I bought Redshift's Ether on Musiczeit and couldn't burn myself the album.
Did you contact me?
Anyone who is unsure usually just sends a quick email to info@musiczeit.com
Oh man, it's hard not to respond to this kind of stuff, but I did 
 Bullocks all over again.
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Petrus
Guest
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Posted:
Mon Feb 22, 2010 12:48 am Re: Digital downloads ?? |
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Epiphany
Cool Member
Age: 53
Joined: 15 Feb 2010
Posts: 90
Location: Wijdenes
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Posted:
Mon Feb 22, 2010 1:18 am (No subject) |
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Hi Petrus, pleased to meet you. For the record, I don't doubt my own expertise, and I am not considering mp3. I only would use a mp3 as a 'sample' of the music.
I am just worried about the music biz in common. It is more complex than it appears at first. And it's more a commercial problem than a technical one. At this moment we are recording a country/pop cd in our studio. The customer is willing to spend a lot of money to get the right sound. To our expatiation at least 90 % will end up as a mp3 file on a walkman. Most people just don't know the difference between a mp3 and the original cd anyhows. So, why should he invest in getting the right sound.
But then again, I have the beatles Love album on cd, and a Audio DVD 5.1 mix on 96 Khz 24b.
The cd sounds great, but the Audio DVD is just something from another world. But that is just me, I like to listen to great sounding recordings on good equipment. But others are just as happy with there tiny laptop speakers.
The main problem is, how do we reach people who are still interested in high quality recordings.
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phaedra2008
One of the Coolest Member
Joined: 09 Aug 2009
Posts: 2723
Location: Western Oz
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Posted:
Mon Feb 22, 2010 3:37 pm (No subject) |
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My bet is mp3 is here to stay while flac is the default format for non lossy audio.
The promising new formats would have been SACD and DVD-A if not killed by mp3.
These pretty much exceeded the human ear's design which did not evolve in thousands of years.
Does quality matter, yes and no, most of today's music is mixed for mp3, heavily compressed, and "disposable"
What's the point of playing some hip hop or great trance anthem on Martin Logan Electrostatics driven by a Krell amp when it was all mixed in Logic on a Mac.
EM rarely benefits from higher than CD quality, ambient stuff with no dynamics, even less.
Now we have top quality but it's no good: music needs record scratches, run through ancient tube gear, use hissy Mellotron sounds, 8 bit Fairlight & other LoFi 30 year old instrument samples, quite a joke, we no longer know what we want.
The trend is towards servers, instant access, white/blue LEDs not tubes, mosfets or bipolars, A class,etc.
HiFi as we knew it, is dead.
And it's not that bad a thing as a lot of the jargon and academic/dubious improvements end up in the Minority Report area.
The world seems past the point of interest in better than CD quality, lower seems Ok but certainly not higher.
_________________
Imagination is more important than knowledge
Albert Einstein
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Seeker_UK
Even more Cool Member
Age: 44
Joined: 05 Feb 2007
Posts: 367
Location: Wellingborough, UK
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Posted:
Mon Feb 22, 2010 7:39 pm (No subject) |
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Can flac handle 192 / 24?
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Epiphany
Cool Member
Age: 53
Joined: 15 Feb 2010
Posts: 90
Location: Wijdenes
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Posted:
Mon Feb 22, 2010 9:07 pm (No subject) |
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That should be no problem.
_________________
Let the Music Flow!
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ech3
Very Cool Member
Joined: 20 Nov 2008
Posts: 243
Location: St. Paul, Minnesota
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Posted:
Mon Feb 22, 2010 9:47 pm (No subject) |
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FLAC can handle sample sizes up to 32 bits, a sample rate up to 640 kHz X 8 channels.
So when EM artists start producing hi-def music in 7.1 surround, we'll be all set.
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