AvaxHome Music Community Publication Guideline

Posted By : Bully | Date : 10 Apr 2007 01:03:00 | Comments : 86 |

This is just a first raw, unstructured version of some main points. Please feel free to discuss.. Any suggestions, additions, and even complaints are welcome. The AvaxHome Music Community is a great TEAM of people from all over the world - different cultures, different views, but one aim: to be the BEST Music Community.

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
John Lennon

Latest news

2006-05-25

New teamproject: Tangerine Dream

After some delays finding a projectleader, Joz (TNX again Joz!) agreed to handle the project. The project page is online and many albums are already added. Don't miss it - bookmark this link:

AvaxHome Tangerine Dream Teampage

2006-05-24

AvaxHome HORROR

PLEASE read this page AND the comments written by your AvaxHome moderators. Many publishers of music are a part of the discussed horror.

AvaxHome Horrorpage

2006-05-14

New project: Mastermix Classic Cuts - 100 CD set uploaded by a single user!

Many of us remember the days when a single user called Alejx007 was crazy enough to upload 38 Kuschelrock CDs all by himself. OK, it's time now to break Alejx's record :-)

Peetje offered to upload the full 100 CD set of Classic Cuts!

This will be the largest full set ever uploaded for AvaxHome so far. And I repeat: Uploaded by one single user! About 10 GB of music!

The first 10 CDs are out and wait for your downlods here:

Mastermix Classic Cuts

It would be great if some users can create mirrors and reuploads when the original files are deleted.

2006-05-03

New teamproject: Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs

After a short delay - yep, Alejx isn't the fastest, hehe - the new project finally was started. The other 2 projects are delayed a bit for this special one. For details contact Alejx007 or visit the teampage (link below)

No loosless... no... just the original release... Unbelievable sound quality...

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL, or "MoFi") is a company that produces audiophile releases of classic CDs and vinyl records. Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab releases are highly desirable due to their attention to detail concerning the audio mastering process....

AvaxHome Mobile Fidelity Teampage

2006-04-27

New service started: Requests for Music

Today we started a new service where users can place requests for music. Please have a regular look on this page to see if you can help: AMC Requests for Music

New teamprojects soon: Tangerine Dream & Rick Wakeman

Our new "monster" :-) just released his plans for the next teamprojects by publishing his lists of available albums for Tangerine Dream and Rick Wakeman. You can find details in the comments of the Camel Teamproject page

2006-04-21

Bitrates - Quo vadis?

Yesterday mornig I had to mark with red color an upload of a well known uploader, becasue he wrote "mp3pro". After wondering why 32 minutes of 96 kbps have a size of almost 70 MB, I asked him to check again if this is really mp3"pro" :-)

We also had an upload labeled as 320 kbps. Filesize: 47 MB. And as first people conmfirm in the comments, the files are 128 kbps.

Please, give correct information in your publications.
And somehow I have a strange feeling that those problems will increase with separate sub-categories for lo-fi and HQ :-)

And finally a positive news:

Tonylevrai, well known :-) for his mp3pro uploads, is out today with a new publication at 320 kbps! Congratulations Tony!

2006-04-18

New teamproject started: Camel

After the success of the old Santana and Cohen projects, a new teamproject was started today: Camel. The first 4 albums are up, all in excellent quality. If you can contribute, please join the teampage! This time Alejx007 will manage the project, so please talk directly to him and follow his advices. Besides all the experience he gathered taking part in the former projects, he was first on my mind related to Camel :-))

Refused publications

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Read the FAQ! Read this addon. PLEASE!!!

I just saw a publication in the refused list one of our fine moderators had refused with only the words "Read FAQ", no more helpful details. So I checked the publication itself. And yes, "Read FAQ" is also what comes to my mind. Here is the complete publication:

----- start of publication -----

Title: ezgiler

full promote area:

[.img]xxxx[./img]

full news area:

http://rapidshare.de/files/1829xxxx/01_Track_1.mp3.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/1829xxxx/02_Track_2.mp3.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/1830xxxx/03_Track_3.mp3.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/1830xxxx/04_Track_4.mp3.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/1830xxxx/05_Track_5.mp3.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/1839xxxx/06_Track_6.mp3.html

----- end of publication -----

The "xxxxx" had been done by me to keep publishers privacy. Perhaps it is better to spare any comment by myself.

AMC Users Guide

As this guide is mainly about topics for publishers, we also need a guide for users. during the next days I will create a framework for it, but in no way do I have enough time to write everything myself. In other words: YOUR help is needed. Everyone can contribute by writing small or larger articles which I will put together inside the publication. There are endless topics: About fileformats, about players, about unpacking files, about handling Rapidsahre :-), about handling uploaders and publishers :-)) and so on.

At the end of this Users Guide I will also include a "Fun Section". It will be a new home for some of the great fun which can be found browsing old publications. It will inlcude some great quotes and some great pictures. If you remember such highlights, please PM the urls to me.

I also think about an "Uploader/publisher Section" in front of the fun section. As users have learned that behind every download they click there is a real person working hard for them, it might be no bad idea if some of our famous uploders write a few lines about themselves. Plese think about security, so do not write where your live or what your real name is :-)

2006-04-11

_IMPORTANT_

The (first version, hehe) of the AvaxHome 3.0 User's Guide (= FAQ =Rules) is out. Both in Russian and English language. PLEASE click here: AvaxHome 3.0 for Dummies and read it!!

As someone tries to tell you over and over that bitrate is mandatory, it is now also checked by modrators! Since today (March 10th 2006) you can see some publications refused because of missing bitrate information. Some examples:

Apr 10, 2006 - Simply Red - It's Only Love - Author: ***
Refusing reason:
Please, specify Bitrate! Plz, plz!
refused by: Avax

Apr 10, 2006 - V.A. - Love On The Rock - Author: ****
Refusing reason:
Please, specify Bitrate!
refused by: Avax

Apr 10, 2006 - Special Love And Romantic Songs - Author: ****
Refusing reason:
Oops! Bitrate?
refused by: Avax

OK, just to remind you: If a publication is refused, just follow the moerator's words of wisdom and EDIT your publication. There is no need to create a new one! Just edit it. Check "My news"!!

As some of you might have noticed, one of the moerators spent much time in re-editing some publications. Removing links or duplicate text from promote area, fixing unclosed tags, copying bitrate information from last line of news area to promote area and so on. PLEASE do not trust on this re-editing! Try do it correct by yourself. PLEASE use the PREVIEW button before storing your publication!

BTW, a good collection of useful tools can be found here:
MP3 Collector's Pack by Hanumanz

And don't miss this one (written by Sunsponge)
AvaxHome 3.0 Help F.A.Q. for submitting news

Doing a good rip and upload is one part, doing a good publication is another part. :-)

Since the first days of AvaxHome there are some rules for publications. You can find them in the FAQ (new versions will soon be available, both in Russian and English language). These rules are not to torture you :-) all of them make sense if you think about them.

Let me sum up the most important rules for music publishers:

1. Use SEARCH ENGINE before you publish. It really makes no sense to publish the same album again and again. Exception: If the download links of the former publication are no longer valid. In such a case, please clearly mark the new upload as REUPLOAD or similar.

2. Give the needed INFORMATION full and at the place where they belong.
The old FAQ had many samples how the header of a publication should look. If uploaders keep to same style, it is much easier for all of us to browse through many new publications. The usual style for music uploads is:

<artist> - <album> (<year>)
<picture of cover>
(repeat of title line / additional important info)
<genre> | <filetype> <bitrate> | <filesize>

On the real page of your publication you can give any information you like, you can include biography and/or album review and/or additional pictures. I wrote: CAN. The only mandatory information: The tracklist. And the download links, of course :-)

3. The URI of your publication
With each publication you create, you have tto chose an URI for it. The URI is a string which is used by the database to handle your publication. It has to be unique! It also should make sense. If you upload a Zappa album, do not use "music" or "zappa" or "yxz123" for it! Everyone will see your URI, because it will be part of the URL to your publication. A good URI would look somehow like "frank_zappa_hot_rats".

4. If you publish links of files you did not upload yourself, do an own download first to check that the links are OK. Unpack the files and check that the files are OK. It eally makes no sense to do a publication but to have no answer for the correct password :-)

5. Please check your files before upload. If an album has 13 tracks, your upload should also include 13 tracks. Please LISTEN to the files. If there are dropouts, jitter or similiar problems, please think at least twice before uploading them.

6. Encrypt archives & password
It really helps to keep your files longer available for download if you encrypt them. The password should be the default password of AvaxHome, which still is www.AvaxHome.ru. If you upload your files exclusive for AvaxHome, you should have no problem with that. Exception: If you publish your files on different boards besides AvaxHome, it is OK to use your own password. If possible, stay to that password.

OK, this should be enough for the next days. :-) When the new FAQs are out, there will be a special add-on for the AvaxHome Music Community. Most parts of it will be suggestions, no iron rules, just things many of our famous uploaders are doing with each of their publications since ages. :-)

No matter that the main aim is to increase quality, there will be no censorship. If people want to upload 128 kbps files, they of course can do. If people want to upload so called mp3"pro" (96 kbps 22 khz) trash, they can do. But as AvaxHome rules clearly state: Mentioning the bitrate on top of publication is mandatory.

ADVERTISING »

High Speed Download

« ADVERTISING

Posted By: Bully Date: 10 Apr 2006 04:21:40

Looking at the quick-jump menu, where for example ebooks does have sub categories, I just thought about same for the largest catergory, music. I could try to persuade TDz to do it, but we first should discuss _IF_ we want sub categories and if yes, WHAT the categories should be.
The main category music would of course include ALL publication, but users looking for classic could directly select this sub-catergory to get rid of "noise" :-)

As a start, this comes to my mind:

Blues
Classic
Country
Electronica ..........I think about "old style" like Kraftwerk )
Ethnic
Folk
Heavy Metal ..........incl. Gothic
Instrumental
Latin
Pop
Reggae
Rock
Songwriter
Soundtracks
Techno

Instead Rock it could also be splitted to Soft Rock, Hard rock and Progressive Rock, as our largest amount of publications are rock.

How about Rap, Hip Hop etc.? What else is missing?

The problem is, we cannot do 100 sub categories, so we need to find a good structure.

(I will update above list as needed)

Posted By: autumn Date: 10 Apr 2006 05:59:45

The idea of subcaterogy is very interesting. It will make we find favourite music easier. I hope it will be implemented soon :)

Also, 6 rules above are essential. Everyone should obey them :)

Posted By: gandallon Date: 10 Apr 2006 07:38:59

"The problem is, we cannot do 100 sub categories, so we need to find a good structure."
We have to give a good consideration to: "The AvaxHome Music Community is a great TEAM of people from all over the world - different cultures, different views, but one aim: to be the BEST Music Community."
Based on my personal experience since I found Avax and the time that I was off-line for a couple of weeks, I believe that the majority of members don't let a week or so pass by without checking what's new.
Maybe simple implementations that would be easy to fill by members, like Key Words (eg: Artist name for Music or Topic for other categories) in separate fields, (For search purposes); the usage of spaces in between key letters (rather than underscores as an example).
Possibly the best "rules" are simplicity and consistency.
Something simple that's not clear enough may discourage members from posting.
I also propose the usage of multi-language in the areas of membership application as well as of posting material, it's essential that we have more members to do their shares

Posted By: sunsponge Date: 10 Apr 2006 10:38:32

Having subcategories for music is very problematic because many albums can be legitimately classified in at least two categories. For example, old-school traditional blues are easy to classify, but there is a lot of overlap with jazz. And I suspect the distinctions between progressive rock and modern rock will be lost on many people.

A very very simple subcategory structure is probably okay (e.g., classical, rock/pop/hip-hop, jazz/reggae/blues, soundtrack, ambient/chill-out/instrumental, other). Anything more than about 5-6 subcategories will lead to confusion and be a management/moderator headache.

Posted By: Bully Date: 10 Apr 2006 12:00:22

@ Sunsponge

I just added a missing link to above preview :-)

"... and be a moderator headache"

Oops. How could _I_ oversee this fact. Eh, yes, I have to think again if we should have sub categories at all :-))

Yes, we should try to find some "combined" category names. But I question if jazz lovers like to see reggae, and I'm sure a bully67 has not much interest in hip hop in the rock category :-)

Posted By: LIMBO Date: 10 Apr 2006 15:56:04

Many thanks, vert useful tools...

Posted By: musicbook Date: 11 Apr 2006 06:36:44

Very useful information, thanks

Posted By: tarkus Date: 11 Apr 2006 09:23:17

Thanks for the information.

Posted By: Harry Stottle Date: 11 Apr 2006 11:26:20

I do not like categories.
My taste in music is very eclectic and I find the same pleasure listening to hip-hop, classical, rock or 1930's blues.
Moreover, I am always keen to listen to tunes that someone else likes and has taken the time to upload and if I don't like it, I delete it.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
It really does not take a great deal of time to scroll.

Posted By: Bully Date: 11 Apr 2006 22:49:47

@ Harry Stottle

You misunderstand how AvaxHome sub categories do work :-)
Have a look on the quickjump menu for ebboks. BESIDES the sub categories there is still the MAIN category ebboks. If you select ebooks/deusch you only (should) see german books, if you select ebooks/english, only english books. If you select the main category ebbos, you see all of them, no matter what sub category.

"It really does not take a great deal of time to scroll"

Depends what you seek :-) If you are looking for country music or Rap, you can "scroll" over many pages until you have 1 or 2 hits.

Posted By: nightsender Date: 13 Apr 2006 07:40:04

nice concept. wish it was available when i first started posting. would have saved me a lot of learning grief.

still a problem with consistency i think. i just downed an album that was posted during the last 24 hours, which did not have any posted bitrate that i could find. However, i figured, since it was in 5 parts, it had to be a decent audio quality. turned out to be all 160 kbps amd even worse, all xing encoded, which@160 bitrate and 30% less freguency responce than a equivalent Lame rip, means the audio is less than one 128 Lame rip.

I do not think it would ever be appropriate for avax to direct method of encoding, but you might consider making some recommendations.

Posted By: Bully Date: 13 Apr 2006 12:31:55

@ Nightsender

We are aware of this problem, but it is hard to handle. Each new publication is checked by a moderator at sourcecode level. Most moderators even fix broken tags, add a better formatting for the lines shown on the index pages and so on. Since 10th of this month we have finally fixed that music publications without giving information are refused.

If you check http://avaxhome.ws/post.php?t=refused
you get a feeling what poor mods have to deal with :-)

But - no matter that some users think different - AvaxHome moderators are human beings - in each aspect. Sometimes (very rare, of course, hehe) they even do mistakes, sometimes they oversee problems in an ugly designed code of a publication. This also depends on stresslevel :-) If you have 2 or 3 waiting publications, you can concentrate on good work. If 20 are waiting, you have to go faster. If 50 are waiting and users are flooding the moderators with personal mail "Where is the publication I created 5 minutes ago?" ... Eh, I think you understand.

About 25 % of all new publications are perfect to go public. About 30 % needs some light correcting. About half of the rest CAN be fixed if the moderator spents his time on it like moving complete tracklists from promote to news area, shortening the text info in promote area and so on. The other half can only be refused. No picture at all, no mandatory information, sometimes even no links for the downloads.

OK, this is only about the publication itself. There is no way that a moderator also downloads and unpacks all files to check if bitrate is correct or not. But for such puposes we have the comments. If some uploader gives false information, write it in the comment so other people are warned. If same uploader does it again and again feel fre to a mail to me.

BTW, to make some people "happy": There are new mp3"pro" files (96 kbps, 22khz) on the way. As mentioned in above preview, there is no censorship on AvaxHome. Might be that one of the moderators will mark the bitrate in red color or so :-) other modertors will handle them normal. Just be prepared :-)

Posted By: nightsender Date: 14 Apr 2006 05:46:14

Speaking as one, who gave the moderators 'all they could handle' with my initial publications, i know full well the difficulty of that task. I am still 'screwing up' royally on things like password encryption, so perfection from any moderator is not and never should be expected. I like everything about Avax, including the right of everyone to upload whatever music, at whatever bitrate and encoding they feel appopriate. I just felt a little betrayed by the fact that i invested into someone's rapidshare account, to the tune of 5 downloads, for an item that easily could have fit into one file, which i would never have pursued had the product documentation displayed, either encoding or bitrate. However my feelings, I would never throw water on someone else's parade, by making a comment that could be construed as negative in the product documentation. Just not my style. But as you have this format open, thought i would add my 2 cents worth, regarding retaining bitrate disclosure, and possibly adding encoding, just in case you were getting snowed with only negative reaction from the gallery.

Posted By: Bully Date: 14 Apr 2006 07:18:07

@ Nightsender

Sure. Feel free to discuss anything you like. On top of the Fuidelines I wrote "... a great TEAM of people ..." and this exactly how I see it. About 99.99% of the AvaxHome users come here, click the download links and leave. The remaining 0.01 % contibute, either by doing own uploads, writing comments or at least complain about something. We like all of them. You see, you can DECIDE if you write something negative or not, moderators have no choice. If something is wrong, they have to tell it. But somehow they get used to mails or public comments with words like "idiot", *sshole", "f*cking b*stard" and a few others I am not willing to repeat here. A more anonym and quicker way to tell uploaders how people enjoyed or hated what they did was the rating system of the old AvaxHome software. Hope it will be back when current software upgrades, but current aim is still the performance to avoid 502 and 504 errors.

About the small-sized download archives: Some of them are really done just for the case you mention. But we also have uploaders using modems on noisy phone lines. It is impossible for them to upload a 100 MB as one file. Personally I have very high respect for a modem user spending half a day to do one upload for us.

Posted By: Nagiants39 Date: 14 Apr 2006 15:05:26

Ok here´s my suggestion

1) I tottaly disagree with bitrates limitations, this will disencouraged someone that have some nice music to share, BUT DON'T HAVE THE INTERNET SPEED CONNECTION to do with more than 224kbps... depending of kind of music maybe I agree with this limitations.

For example : A John Coltrane album deserves a 224 kbps ripping at least, but for me is not make any sense, if I upload The Exploited Album or even a classic old stuff like Jerry Lee Lewis, where the difference between 128 and 320kbps simply does not appear on the final product.. :-))) You can make a fine rip with VBR (128kbps average)...

For me is OBRIGATORY the uploader tell us what quality of his ripping .. but not reject the upload, there a lot of people that don't care about the bitrate..this must be rethink...

Regards to all and my respect to the Avax's crew

Posted By: semeni4 Date: 15 Apr 2006 01:37:56

@ Nagiants39

As it was already mentioned, there are no real limitation on bitrate. You can upload and publish music with any quality you want. Only one thing is mandatory - to show visitors the bitrate of the publication.

Posted By: Bully Date: 15 Apr 2006 02:15:10

@ Semeni4

This is not fully correct :-) If you look into the refuse list, you will see that Alexpal REFUSES 128 kbps uploads.

The sentence in the ENGLISH manual about 128 kbps is a bit strange, I will check the Russian version if I can find anything about it.

In other words: The situation about 128 kbps is a bit unclear at the moment. Personally I think we should NOT censor such uploads, as written in above preview. And yes, I put Nagiants upload even to the main pages (home). Special in this case, with such a famous uploader, 128 kbps uploads are very rare, normally Nagiants has 192 kbps or higher.

Eh, as I know that you can read Russian very easy, would you be so kind to check the Russian version about 128 kbps limits?

Posted By: Bully Date: 15 Apr 2006 02:23:48

@ Nagiants

First of all, great to see you back with us! No matter of your great own blog, never forget that AvaxHome is also your HOME :-)

Yep, was funny that you came back just at this time with just a 128 kbps upload, while 99% of your uploads are much higher bitrates. My view of this topic is almost same as yours.

Posted By: Bully Date: 15 Apr 2006 02:40:51

@ All

This is the quote from the (current version of) ENGLISH FAQ:

Do not upload music with 128 Kbps bitrate (do it only as addition to an album with higher quality).

Special the exception "as addition" makes no sense to me.

IF an album is here with good quality, WHY publish it again in worse quality? If somehow has to take care for limits of a portable mp3 flashmemory-based player, he/she can downsample to each lower bitrate prefered without any problems.

And finally, to have some fun: The above quoted rules only tells that you should not UPLOAD 128 kbps files, it says nothing that you should not PUBLISH 128 kbps files on AvaxHome. So: ask a friend to do the upload for you :-)))

Posted By: Bully Date: 15 Apr 2006 03:13:50

@ All

Here is my current suggestion - feel free to discuss.

Published music should be in a good qualitiy (suggested: 192 kbps or better) fitting to the quality of the original sound.

128 kbps rips should only be published if original quality is not high (old not remastered material, vinyl rips, old bootlegs) or if they had been done with the latest version of the Lame encoder.

Music with bitrates below 128 kbps - special the so called mp3"pro" (96 kbps 22 khz) format - should not be published on AvaxHome.

Posted By: tonylevrai Date: 15 Apr 2006 05:37:40

Bonjour,

I allows itself to take part in the discution concerning the quality of the music. As some among you owe the knowledge, I post only of the albums in MP3Pro 92 Kbs.

While following this bond : http://www.digit-life.com/articles/mp3pro/index.html you will be able to consult the study which has ete realise by specialists. In conclusion of the study it appears that the mp3pro 64 is equivalent to the mp3 128. And my albums in mp3pro 92, therefore of better quality that minimum requested.

Bonsoir

Posted By: Fa Date: 15 Apr 2006 08:36:31

Nice to have the facts put out clearly, cheers.
I absolutely HATE MP3 Pro. It is totally subjective as to the claims that they sound like MP3 even at 128k. I feel the same way about WMA files too, with their claims: Low bitrates with higher quality sound! If that were true then why do so many people prefer MP3.
Anyway, I think the last comment from bully67 is (almost) fair, if a little naive. Hehe.
My COMPLAINT(and I'm sure I earned it somewhere along the line) is this:
Asking people to decide if their files have high original quality or not is another thing that is completely subjective and the statement above from tonylevrai serves to illustrate my point!
You are talking as if everyone has the same 'ear' for their music files. This is definitly not the case.
So you would still have the problem (if it is aproblem!) of people posting 128k or lower MP3Pro files and saying their is no difference from their original recordings quality. When others might well disagree!
That is why you need to have either:
1) No rules on bitrates whatsoever!
2) A Clear CUT-OFF point rule for bitrates.
Say...
ABSOLUTELY NO 56k MP3s
But then...what about speech files?
They sound fine at even 32......
hehe.

Fa.
http://www.mp33pm.blogspot.com

Posted By: Bully Date: 15 Apr 2006 11:03:02

Great you joined the discussion, Tony!

There are a few problems about mp3"pro" - I wrote a long comment about this last year in one of Tony's uploads - I will check if I can dig it out and include here.

The worst problem - besides the sound itself - is, that almost no serious hardware manufacturer does sipport it. I myself own a rather high priced PMP (Portable Media Player) which is on market since just 4 month- it supports new formats like mpeg4, xvid and WMV movies, but no mp3"pro". Same as most other hardware based players.

Fact is, mp3"pro" files are nothing else than 96 kbps streams limited to 22 Khz. For only one reason: To reduce size. Which means less bandwith on the internet for streaming background music and advertising.

The plugin which is needed for software based players running on computers includes a synthesitzer, which synthesizes the high frequencies missing in the files based on stats calculated. In other words: It might "sound" nice, but what you hear is synthesized, not the real original music.

Without such a plugin - and this is the problem for most any hardware player - you hear exactly what is really stored in the file: 96 kbps, cut off at 22 khz.

Make a test, Tony. Burn some files from your large archive to a normal DVD and play it back in any DVD player you like. You will hear yourself what we talk aboit. :-)

I'm really sorry that Tony stored all his files in this format. The former hype about mp3pro and special the misleading "pro" fooled many peoples at launch of mp3"pro".

Posted By: Bully Date: 15 Apr 2006 11:12:35

@ Fa

Great to see you here. Just for my records: What is your current uploads / compalints ratio? :-)))

Posted By: semeni4 Date: 16 Apr 2006 00:30:08

alejx007

The funny thing is that in the russian FAQ it is no one single word about bitrate limitations.

Posted By: Bully Date: 16 Apr 2006 03:19:43

@ Alex

"Except that Avax, as owner of the site, decide to apply his own rules."

The last music album (Ayumi) Avax uploaded himself was at a128 kbps :-)

"So, we are lost"

Not all all. As most moderators just do not have enough time to email to each publisher to confirm that he did not UPLOAD the 128 kbps files himself, or to ask him if he did read the Russian or English FAQ version, they currently handle this topic a bit more flexible.

For me it was no problem to accept an historic recording of Edith Piaf at 128 kps and even put it on main pages. On the other hand, it was a real pain to put a 320 kbps new record of "Las Ketchup" on main pages. And when the next Crazy Frog "music" album shows up, I might perhaps even reconsider my "No censorship" view :-))

Posted By: Bully Date: 16 Apr 2006 06:13:02

@ Alejx

"About "Las Ketchup" upload ... let the things stay quiet... :-)"

Of course I stay quiet. As I promided you. Only a handful people recognized so far themselves that the voice on the AvaxHome FCK editor video is the same as the background singer of Las Ketchup :-;)

Posted By: zhenix Date: 16 Apr 2006 17:54:37

I think as far as I listnen to wma-files with 128 k these not sound ral bad if in version wma8 format. I not can hear then differece betwwen this format and mp3 at 192k or so

Posted By: pete2004 Date: 16 Apr 2006 22:16:53

<at>bully67: I don´t know why you always talk about censorship in regard to a bit minimum? Censorship is preventing publication(s) anywhere, anytime thru a gov. entity usually. What we are talking about are "restrictions" NOT censorship! Now finding music at a lower grade bitrate is really NOT a "world wonder", just google. If you don´t know "any", then just pm.

I agree w/Alexpal to refuse "128kbps/mp3" deals, except when published as an addition. I would raise it to "192kbps", which is basically the "standard" bitrate accepted by the mp3-crowd. This way ppl w/ a lower bandwidth still have a chance to download an album of interest, i.e..

I feel that at the moment Avaxhome gets swamped with a lot "junk". Pages of kiddie pics, icons, windooze maintenance junk software left&right and so on. Thank "god" there are always alternatives, but AvaxHome could do better !

If above is not feasible, how about creating 2 Music Subdir_s ? One could be called "Low bitrate" and the other "320 and better". Publications get separated according to their highest mentioned bitrate.

What it basically boils down to is: Does AvaxHome want mass/incl.lots of junk OR quality/but less **** ?

Posted By: pete2004 Date: 16 Apr 2006 22:22:16

<at>zhenix: The problem and dislike of wma is not the "sound", it has to do with DRM (Digital Rights Management) and it´s proprietary implementation by MS (Mi*ro*of*t).

Posted By: Bully Date: 17 Apr 2006 03:52:29

@ Pete2004

Please read a bit more carefully what I write.

We currently have the problem that a RUSSIAN user, who read the Russian FAQ, is ALLOWEWD to publish 128 kbps, while an INTERNATIONAL user who read the English FQ is FORBIDDEN to do so. Does this make sense to you?

Besides that, the English FAQ forbids 128 kbps, but allows 96 kbps at 22 khz. Does this make sense to you?

The creaotr of the English FAQ (Yes, of course I know who wrote it but despite you I do not mention it as long has he does not himself) follows the same aim as I, to raise the quality in the music section.

But is it not as easy as it looks on first sight. There are many old records where it really does not make sense to encode them at 320 stereo. (The "difference" between stereo and joint stereo I do not even want to touch here).

The quality of encoding is not only a matter of bitrate. A 192 kbs encoded with old Xing sounds worse than same encoded at 128 with lastest version of Lame encoder. What about the problems of a high bitrate file encoded with the buggy version Fraunhofer had out?

Fact is, that we also still have many users having to access AvaxHome by modem. We also have many users with ears who really do not hear the difference between 128 and 192 and not even 320 :-) /Don't worry, _I_ hear the difference. But I also hear the difference between real music and the 44 khz downsampling to a CD).

As I wrote somewhere else, my view is to not forbid 128 kbps at genereal, but of course also not to encourage them.

And for sure people should know WHAT bitrate a file is before doing a download. Since months I did fight that this information has to be given, and as you can see on top, since 10th of this month EVERY moderator refuses files without given bitrate.

What we need is a COMMON rule for BOTH Russians and not- Russians and not only for 128 kbps, but also for below 128 kbps. The current situation, that 3 moderators aloow 128 kbps and 1 moderator refuses them is very strange for publishers.

Posted By: pete2004 Date: 17 Apr 2006 06:05:49

<at>bully67: Well then simply change either the russian or the english FAQ version. I don´t see the problem, unless you guys can´t make your mind I´ll do it for you :).

Yes, in regard to bitrate I´m talking about the standard "lame", not some other exoctic or buggy encoder. Now ppl. should be able to use a freely avail. encoder, or not ?! If the source is LP, then make an exception of the rule and put in the FAQ (no big deal either).

The bigger problem for modem user is NOT necessarily total file size, but the split, especially if lines are "buggy". If lines are slow in some eastern european countries or regions, then make exceptions...For most western european nations a DSL-line is nothing special and a RS dl goes fast.

As far as the "info" section goes, I´ll agree it´s definitely helpful and should be enforced.

Posted By: nightsender Date: 17 Apr 2006 06:41:17

To me, it appears that the discussion of bitrate here to date, has in itself created a huge number of misconceptions and continues to cause a great amount of problems.

I do not think the average Avax user understands that an .MP3 file is a compression of a .WAV audio file, and to that extent, not unlike a .RAR or .ZIP file, except the amount of compression for an .MP3 is much greater. Bitrate is the actual amount of compression applied to the .WAV file. The lower the number, the greater the compression. In example, 128 kbps has more compression than 192 kbps. The more the compression, the smaller the file, but the kicker is the greater amount of compression applied, the more likelyhood exists of inducing some distortion in the process.

.MP3 industry standards long ago established that 128 bitrate presented the most economical use of storage space, with the minimum amount of distortion risk. The user public quickly began using 128 kbps, as the minimum acceptable audio standard. These same .mp3 industry standards also established that 192 kbps was near CD quality, with the reasoning that it presented a much smaller chance of compression distortion, although requiring an approximate 50% larger file size.

Lost in all this technical discussion is the fact that, few people can hear compression distortion beyond the 160 kbps range, particularly if they have been exposed to much on the job noise or attended a lot of rock concerts. It is estimated that less than 1% of the user population can hear compression distortion above 192 kbps. No human can hear compression distortion above 220 kbps, so if you are ripping at a higher than 224 kbps, you are ripping for your dog or cat, because you sure are not hearing it, particularly on a PC sound card, or a home theater with a BASS speaker (which is just about all of them, i think).

That said, I rip at 256 cbr, but not because of advanced audio concerns. Long ago, when I first started collecting, many of the CD audio clubs had a minimum .mp3 audio standard of 256kbps. CD audio clubs were a group of people, that on a rotational basis, would have one member buy a CD, voted on in advance by the membership, and then rip it to share with the other members. In order to ensure the members actual bought the CD, and not lift it off the internet, 256 was selected, because at that time it was much harder to find than 192. This was of course, before most users learned how to 'stretch' files.

Most experts now agree, that the best proximity to CD quality is a vbr file with a preset high of between 192 kbps and 256 kbps. However, vbr format presents other issues, primarily with the file headers. All .mp3 files have 2 (V1 & V2)tag headers which in the vbr format are not automatically sycronized. While there are tools now, that can correct this condition, most users are unaware of this issue and leave the headers unsycronized. If the headers are allowed to stay unsyncronized, over time or just with a lot of transferring, the headers will corrupt. This accounts for why you now see so many .mp3 files with 'unknown bitrate' or strange bitrate disclosures such as 388, on the P2P networks. So I stay with 256 cbr.

All of this leads to the real 'sticky wicket'issue of 320 kbps. For all users that subscribe to the theory that 'bigger is better', there is absolutely no supporting audio evidence for a claim that 320 kbps is the best setting to obtain audio quality. In point of fact, all evidence supports that it is actually a poorer standard, because the larger file size induces hysteresis noise, not present in compression rates closer to the maximum human hearing capacity of 220 kbps. By fostering the misconception that 320 kbps has the best audio quality, advocates have made the matter even more severe. In order to comply with this vision of best audio, memebers are now taking all manner of lesser than 320 kbps files, decompressing them back to .wav files and then recompressing them at the mythical 320 kbps standard. Not understood it seems, is that once a .wav file is compressed to it's greatest (lowest numerical value), whatever distortion results, will be forever included in that file. You cannot remove this distortion noise by uncompressing and recompressing the file at a higher bitrate. If anything, the only thing that is achieved, is that the noise is even more pronounced. An 'honest' 128kbps is often better audio quality than a 'stretched' 320 file.

Besides audio concerns, the other 2 principle factors in determining bitrate compression, are genre and age of recording. To throw 320 kbps at any recording made prior to about 10 years ago, and not digitally remastered, is a real waste of space. The engineering in these recording can not be improved or enhanced by anthing beyond 192(and some would say less)kbps. Larger file size, offers no audio advantage for any genre with a lot of built in BASS, such as electronic or (dare i say)rock. No one on the planet can hear the difference between a 192 kbps format or a 320 kbps format of the original (not digitally remastered)Jimi Hendrix'Purple Haze', home theater nonwithstanding. You may see some differences on audio spectrum equipment, but you cannot hear it. And I like Hendrix!

All of this to say, that in my opinion, Avax should continue to encourage it's membership to upload 'honest' audio material in any and all bitrate format. Just please hold the line on bitrate disclosure, so that the rest of us can determine if is something worth addition download investment. Not discussed here, but equally important, is frequency response and the various encoding engines available.

Posted By: Bully Date: 17 Apr 2006 09:32:13

@ Pete2004

"Well then simply change either the russian or the english FAQ version."

The Russian version was written by "the boss" himself. :-)

"I don´t see the problem, unless you guys can´t make your mind I´ll do it for you :)."

Hehehe. We are working on it. But there are much bigger problems of higher importance. As you might have noticed, we are running a new software - a total rewrite from scratch ro fight performance problems with the high amount of users - and this software srill has many problems and many fetaures are missing. Besides all that, AvaxHome is running at full service, that means even the software problems have to be done "besides" all normal work. And in the few minutes left, we all have a normal life and a job because somehow we also need to pay for food and living :-)

"Yes, in regard to bitrate I´m talking about the standard "lame", not some other exoctic or buggy encoder. Now ppl. should be able to use a freely avail. encoder, or not ?! If the source is LP, then make an exception of the rule and put in the FAQ (no big deal either)."

Besides a few well know names here who really rip themselves, most users re-publish music they grabbed anywhere else. They have not the slightest idea how it was ripped. Many files posted here are ripped a few years ago. The mentioned problems are not rare on Avaxhome. A few times I just deleted the downloaded files after a first listen - 320 kbps means nothing to me if it is full of jitter or other problems. It has a reason why I ask people in my above "Guide" to LISTEN to the files before thy publish :-)

I mentioned the modem users because it was brought up last year when we also had a discussion about 128 kbps. Vesiiedes filesize it is a matter for them if they can download 2 or 5 albums while they are online.

"As far as the "info" section goes, I´ll agree it´s definitely helpful and should be enforced."

TNX. It is just a start. 3 days ago I wanted to launch the second part, the "User Guide" - above text is for uploader / publishers only. I had to delay it because of the high traffic of publications which need to be processed before going online and the high amount of PMs from users. So it will start during the next days. And no, it will not be written by me. Forget that :-) I will try a new concept for it by asking all users to take part and write parts of it. and yes, Pete2004, OF COURSE I exspect that you contribute some text :-))

OK, I'll finish now with some stats from tonight (European based time). From all musicdownloads I processed there was exactly ONE 128 kbps file. As it was a rip of a rather new CD, it was not placed on main pages and I underlined the bitrate so it is easy to recognize.

Most new publications are on high bitrates, mainly 320 kbps. We even have an audiophile release as full CD image copy. I marked it in blue color.

The 128 kbps problem isn't such big ...

Posted By: Bully Date: 17 Apr 2006 09:48:21

@ Pete2004

OK, as the premod queue is currently empty, one more note about why we are so "slow" :-) Most of our time is wasted by users not reading the FAQ. Have a look to the REFUSED list, which is currently public for all:

http://avaxhome.ws/post.php?t=refused

What you do not see in this list, are all the wrong done publications which are re-edited instead of refused. Tonight I had 8 or 9 publications with the full complete publication text also in the promote part (what is shown on index pages). 2 had the picture on news part, but not on promote, about 10 had errors in the tags and so on.

All this time could very easy be saved by users doing their publication correct by themselves. _IF_ this would ever happen, we would have enough time for discussing 128 kbps and similar things :-))

Posted By: Bully Date: 17 Apr 2006 10:13:28

@ Nightsender

A very well writen article! Nothing real to citisize :-)

@ All

One thing we should not forget: HOW or WHERE the mp3 files are used. I guess most people do same as me, using them on a portable player. On such devies or on a software player using the crappy onboard-soundchips of a PC (argh) there is not so a big need to worry about 256 or 320 kbps :-) How many people do really connect an mp3 player to a high-end hi-fi ystem?

When I fully want to enjoy music, I play it on my hifi system. And I do not feed mp3 to it. And in most cases I do not even feed CDs, but analog material.

When I do a rip, I listen to it on my portable player, using normal priced headphones. For most material there is no real difference between 192 or higher. One exception was Zappa's Hot Rats. There are a few parts with very high dynamic fast impulses. and besides that, it was a record worth to be done at 320 kpbs :-)

Posted By: nightsender Date: 17 Apr 2006 16:23:51

Once it is established that bitrate has only to do with .mp3 compression of a .wav file, and the possible inducement of distortion in that process, the focus on actual .wav file audio properties should be on method of encoding.

It is commonly accepted that not all encoding engines are not created equal, but the amount of difference is not commonly known and many users select a RIP tool based on ease of interface use and speed of process, with little regard of susequent audio impact, which they veiw as slight, if any.

Encoding with a Blade or Xing engine, will result in, on average, between 22% to 38% less audio frequency response, depending on bitrate selection, than a comparable Lame Rip. If you examine audio files with a tool such as Encspot, it will rate Lame and FhG Rips done at 160 Kbps, as high quality. If you examine Xing or Blade Rips, done at the even higher 192 Kbps bitrate, they will be rated as marginal quality.

The point being, that to filter audio file acceptance, based on bitrate alone, appears to be folly. To me, the emphasis should be on product disclosure without filtering of any kind. Files collected off the internet by a user that does not know the encoding, mixed or otherwise, can all be accepted and processed as unknown encoding. Thus published, would be in itself, sufficient
warning to those of us that do care about this criteria.
If sufficient data is provided in posting files, the most effective filtering will be from the potential downloaders. Users should be able to access files according to individual need and intended useage, without the appearance of any heavy handed, officially imposed filtering. Download activity, or lack of, will always provide the best solution.

Posted By: Hungry Mind Date: 17 Apr 2006 22:40:35

For me -and my 200 GB hard disc- 128-160 is good enough (I don´t burn CD´s).

Posted By: Fa Date: 19 Apr 2006 15:25:33

@Bully67

I have sufficient credits.
Now I want to take you up on something you said further back in this amazingly protracted discussion.
Why won't you venture into the intricate world of 'the differences between joint-stereo and stereo'?
I think it is a very important point and it obviously needs to be addressed immediately. How can the users of Avx be expected to know quality when they are not informed? We need to be as informed as humanly possible. Of bitrates, Channels, Which ID tag version, and erm.
Well ok then fuckit.
Who cares.
It is simple really.
I say have two sections for music. that is the simplest and cleanest solution. One section for low bitrate and one section for 192+
Oh and erm...
...another section for 44,000hz
and another section for 32,000
maybe just one more for 22,000?

There. Told you it was simple.
and this doesn't count as a complaint mind.

One more thing...my PC links to my hi-fi. I ONLY feed it MP3 or FLAC files. CDs are a thing of the past as I am such a pauper. So not everyone has a friggin ipod.

Fa.
http://www.mp33pm.blogspot.com

Posted By: Bully Date: 20 Apr 2006 00:34:51

@ Fa

Your upload / complaint ratio has been lowered much by using the word f*ck 4 times in the RTFM thread :-)

When I say that I do not rouch the joint stereo topic does in now way mean that no other one acn touch it. Feel free to discuss it. But do not follow the old shit about JS because of the bug of the old Fraunhofer codec. Use a current codec like the new Lame, enocde 2 versions, one in joint stereo and one in "full" stereo and listen to it. It would rather amzae me if you really hear a difference. :-)

Today we had 2 (TWO) 128 kbps releases so far. I leve it to you to calculate how many percent this is. Even more funny: the "128 kbps" upload of GI Toolbox - Songs of WWII about 2 days ago. After unpacking, all files are 192 kbps (not-hoint) stereo. So much about uploaders giving correct information :-)

If people really see need for 2 sections, we can dicuss. As far as I see now, 2 or 3 people out of around 150.000 registered users ask for it. I'm not against it, but seeing how much (or better: less) 128 kbps uploads we have, it makes not much sense to me.

And what about uploaders writing "128-256 kbps"? Should the moderator first download and listen to the files? :-) What about "VBR" without further details? Third category "unknown quality"? :-))

May be a bit provocative now, but no matter: With each music upload _I_ FIRST look on the uploaders name. His / her name tells me much more about quality as the usual information. A few names I strictly avoid (based on earlier downloads) even if 320 kbps is written.

Posted By: bgtip Date: 20 Apr 2006 01:22:59

So where is the fun part?

Posted By: Bully Date: 20 Apr 2006 03:03:03

@ Bgtip

"So where is the fun part?"

The fun part will be in the "AMC Users Guide" (does not exist today, but soon). Here is the Guide for Publishers.

OK ---------- TEMPORARY fun part ----------
Here are a few of the famous Alejx007 pictures and ... eh... ok ... yes ... me with banana :-)

http://avaxhome.ws/music/carol_thompson.html

And my personal quote of this month:

> Posted by :: Serial | Date :: Mar 29, 2006 03:42:08
> @Alejx
...
> ... If i post anything in near future, it will be bitrates under 96Kb. Anything better are pearls for pigs.

----------

Before now everyone tells me that this ist NOT fun, just send me better urls :-)

Posted By: galmuchet Date: 21 Apr 2006 09:32:31

Hi to everybody
Thx for these explanations ... Sorry but I think that "Las Ketchup" was from me :-)
You know, sometimes I like to post some frivolity or wink like that or "Les Fables de La Fontaine" ;-)
Long life to Avax (I just regret to be so quickly deleted by RapidShare...)

Posted By: Bully Date: 21 Apr 2006 10:12:45

@ Galmuchet

I quickly forgot who the iploader was :-) Nah, I never give names with examples here. Besides, it was a brand new album, perhaps this time it is really music on it :-)) No matter, I'm almost sure there had been people on AvaxHome who liked this album, I cannot exspect that everyone shares my views. And would be very boring if so :-)

We have a lot of high quality albums, both from technical, as also from music view. As long as we keep this, a few other albums should be not a real problem for us. Many people writing here are about same age range as me, but there are also many very young people with us who have a very diffrent view what they call music and a very different view about need of technical quality. Eh, no, I also do not think an age-baed sub-category splitting would make sense :-)

Posted By: phil_ga Date: 21 Apr 2006 12:29:44

@nightsender: Thanks for the detailed info. I enjoyed reading it! I could not agree more! I rip my own CDs at 160 for playing in the car or on a plane/train. What would 320 offer me while listening in a plane?

We need to keep flexible on bitrate - because many of us appreciate getting certain albums at all...

Posted By: incerta Date: 22 Apr 2006 06:22:03

Hi all. I've been following the discussion here with some interest, and I would like to add a few thoughts. I've seen some fairly decent information here regarding ripping and encoding, but there also seem to be some misconceptions. I personally only use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) in secure mode to rip my CDs (not to insult or demean other's choices of CD rippers). Secure mode compares the results of two reads of a given sector. If they are identical, the read is assumed to be good. If they are different, then EAC re-reads that sector up to 64 times (I think), in an attempt to recover the information there. There are also many other configuration options with EAC which may have a critical impact on ripping quality, including read/write offsets, gap detection, and track synchronization. I'm putting together a guide for EAC, but an excellent resource for learning about proper EAC configuration is here: http://users.fulladsl.be/spb2267/index.htm. Of course, obtaining a good rip in only half the battle, the other half being encoding.

Why encode? While it is theoretically possible to share the raw WAV file(s) obtained from the ripping phase, these files take up a great deal of space. To optimize bandwidth and space usage, the WAVs need to be compressed. Here is the first major decision needed: am I going to encode with a lossy or lossless codec? The distinction is that lossy codecs such as MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, and AAC reduce the original WAV to approximately 1/3 to 1/8 of the original size (specific compression depending on specific codec and bitrate), but actually discard audio information in the process. The hope is that the audio information discarded is not perceptually important. In other words, if a WAV is encoded to MP3, then decoded back to WAV, the two WAV files will NOT be identical. This highlights the futility of reencoding a 128 kbps file at 320 kbps and hoping for an increase in sound quality (the opposite is likely to be true). Lossless codecs, on the other hand, are much more analogous to ZIP or RAR compression, optimized for audio data. The most popular lossless formats in my experience are APE (Monkey's Audio), FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), and Wavpack. These codecs result in compression of WAVs to 50-60% of original size (so much larger than MP3s or other lossy codecs), but NO audio information is discarded. If a WAV is encoded to APE, for example, and decoded back to WAV, the WAVs will be bit-for-bit identical in their audio portion (they may lose tagging information, but no audio information will be lost). The advantage is that if one has a lossless encode of an album, then one is able to convert that encode to any lossy format at will with no generational loss. For example, I rip all my albums to FLAC files. I keep those on my hard drive, and am able to generate lossy files of any type for the sake of portability.

One further point regarding CBR vs. VBR at various bitrates. I only use LAME to encode MP3s, starting with version 3.90.3 and now using version 3.97b2. I highly recommend reading about the various LAME presets and recommendations here: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME. To briefly summarize, I disagree with a previous poster's statement that 320 Kbps encodes result in hysteresis noise. As has been noted at the above link, sound quality is generally better with VBR files than with an equvalent CBR file, EXCEPT at the highest CBR bitrate of 320 kbps. At that bitrate, there is the lowest probability of audible artifacts. The problem is the large increase in filesize. The highest quality LAME VBR preset is very, very close to the 320 kbps CBR in terms of quality. The point I would like to close with is that I think there is room for many formats and many bitrates here. I am primarily interested in transparency and full disclosure. I think a music post should include ripping method (including program, version, and relevant settings), encoding method(s) (including CBR bitrate, VBR average bitrate, encoder type and version), and whether the files are tagged (bonus for type of tags). Obviously, if one or more of these things are not known, then that should be made clear. That way, individual users can make up their own minds regarding what they do and do not wish to download.

Posted By: Brother No 1 Date: 23 Apr 2006 06:10:47

In addition to everything said here I'd like to add a comment about TAGS!

Good tagging is like the final polish - not absolutely necessary but it certainly 'makes' the final product. I make sure both 1 & 2 are filled, complete with a review in the comments tag. And of course, and album cover! I even make sure any of the audio books I post have covers.

Posted By: gandallon Date: 23 Apr 2006 07:17:02

I have over 12 Gigs of music @ 128 Kbps that I've put aside 'cause it's not to Avax's standards but I sincerelly wouldn't mind having it (If I was another user) even at that bitrate.
So why not leave it up to users and let them make the decision for their downloads?, the rule should be to ALWAYS publish the real bitrate.
"Good" publishers always try to post at their best but sometimes, for whatever reason, this is just not possible.
Probably some monitoring between bitrate/downloads ratio could be done and based on results a wise decision could be made.

Posted By: jimoxii Date: 23 Apr 2006 14:00:46

Well, well... I think I am getting a headache from all the "technical" terms in here. Suffice to say, from where I stand, or sit, the bitrate is immaterial TO ME. Statistically, except for rare ocassions, majority (about 70-80%) of music listeners will be contented with what they have (128 kbps, higher or lower).

Regardless, I personally think, and agree with gandallon, that if the user really likes his music to be, higher or lower than 192kpbs, let him be the one to convert it to the bitrate he wants. Or, to the format he wants. I feel there seems to be an "emphasis" on the downloader rather than the uploader. The latter is the one contributing and putting in the effort. He must be given some breathing space and consideration. The former, on the other hand, simply downloads and some even have the guts to "say something" about the quality. If TonyLevrai want his uploads to be in mp3Pro, then let it be. If FLAC, then FLAC it is, and so on. If gandallon's music is at 128kbps, why should he suffer for someone else's desired standard?

Before Avaxhome, I never knew what all these things are nor am I able to convert one thing to another. But I learned with the help of several gracious Avaxhome members. So, if I want my music to be at 192, or even higher or lower, I do the work myself.

My point is, why not let the downloaders do the work. Let us teach them how. I am afraid that in the long haul, uploaders will be skilled "converters" and many downloaders, simply good listeners and "professional" critics. As a CHinese saying goes, "Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime."

Posted By: laska Date: 23 Apr 2006 15:22:54

Большое спасибо
:-)))

Posted By: semeni4 Date: 23 Apr 2006 15:24:16

@ jimoxii

While uploading and publishing content is indeed improve one's knowledge and PC user skill, being only downloader doesn't require special skills beyond knowing how to grab download links. "Professional critics" - that sounds funny. There are tens of thousands of downloaders here, but most of them keep quite when coming here. Most of publications here don't have even one single comments, not thanks nor critics at all.

Posted By: jimoxii Date: 23 Apr 2006 16:13:17

@semeni4

I surmise you must have misunderstood what I have said or taken it out of context.

I agree that "downloader doesn't require special skills beyond knowing how to grab download links." That is why I said "The former, on the other hand, simply downloads and some even have the guts to "say something" about the quality."

"Professional critics" is indeed intended to be a goofy phrase to simply connote a group of people who loves to negatively comment on other people's contribution. Professional here is meant to mean "It's their life" - to criticize.

I think you missed the word "many" in "many downloaders." Many means a number of people but not majority or most. I know exactly what you mean with "most of them keep quite when coming here."

No offense taken or even harm done, my friend. We all share our views to improve life for everybody in AvaxHome.

I only have one comment on your message,i.e., re: tens of thousands of downloaders (in AvaxHome). I feel that that is figurative rather than literal. I take it to mean thousands of downloaders. I don't know the exact membership figures but based on the number of views I have seen on old posts, I estimate, meaning, more or less, AvaxHome membership to be at a high of about 3,000 (meaning it does not exceed 3,000) members. Needless to say, I could be wrong since simple observation can be misleading too.

Posted By: semeni4 Date: 23 Apr 2006 17:20:28

@ jimoxii

Yeah, you're right. I was talking about the last part of your comment without reading the whole thing. Sorry for that.

What for number of members - AFAIK there are more than 100,000 registered users on AvaxHome. The question is how many of them come here constantly so the actual number of downloaders is smaller.

Posted By: jimoxii Date: 23 Apr 2006 18:09:53

@ semeni4

Well taken my friend.

Posted By: Bully Date: 24 Apr 2006 02:41:12

@ Semeni4 & Jimoxii

For "downloaders only" we now have a different "Uer Guide" to keep them free from such discussions :-)

For uploaders and special for uploaders doing the rips by themselves it cannot hurt if they know at least a bit about the technical facts.

@ Jimoxii & All - Bitrate conversion

"Regardless ... that if the user really likes his music to be, higher or lower than 192kpbs, let him be the one to convert it to the bitrate he wants."

Outch ... the old discussion again :-)

If it would be sooo easy, all these talks would be useless. Last year, I think it was in the discussion about mp3pro, I wrote a long article about that. Somewhere on AvaxHome it is hidden ...

OK, in short: You CANNOT make good quality out of poor sources! Of course you can take a 96 kbps file and re-encode it at 320 kbps. But it still sounds as bad as before!!!

When you compress files with ZIP, RAR and similiar programs a LOSSLESS compression is used. When you unpack the files, you receive exactly the same files as the original files before compressing.

MP3 is NOT LOSSLESS!!! With each compression you lose part of the original sound! The higher the compression rate is, the more is lost and the worse the sound is.

What was lost during compression can NEVER be brought back again, no matter how hard you try. Or to give my old non-technical explanation: It's rather easy to create a Hamburger or steak out of a cow / bull, but you NEVER can create the cow / bull out of a Hambuerger or steak. Much too much is missing :-))

In other words: It fully makes sense to convert a high quality downloaded file to a higher compression for use on a portable player, but it is useless to convert a downloaded poor quality file to higher bitrates.

Posted By: jimoxii Date: 24 Apr 2006 08:06:12

@bully67

The cow-hamburger analogy drives your point very well! Perhaps, it could not have been said or written better. But, I am not sure who's missing whose point. Maybe, the limitations of the written word. Not per se, but how it reaches the other party; how it is comprehended by the receiving person.

The very reason why mp3 is a music phenomenon is because of the vast majority of people who want to make the "music size" smaller. It caters to a huge mass base. They are people who prefer storage over quality. Sure, storage is becoming cheaper but they (the vast majority) still prefer storage over quality. Otherwise, mp3 should have been a thing of the past.

Let me reiterate the fact that that vast majority do not and cannot distinguish the difference between the original and lower bitrate version of say 192kpbs. One might argue, "That's 192! It's near CD quality! Oh well, I am not sure about that. While it may be technically true, the human ear can only hear so much. Did you know that CD quality covers a range of 20Hz to 20,000 Hz (20 kHz)? That's the "listening capacity" of young children. A 20 year old can only normally hear up to 16kHz; a 30 year old, about 12kHz. The older the person gets, the lower the kHz. Of course, that's just the rule.

Ok, so let's bring it further down to 128 - the de facto standard before (not sure now, maybe it's 192). Again, one does not usually hear any difference at all. Only a trained ear can. But what is the percentage of members who have trained ears compared to the vast majority of members representing AvaxHome? According to Semeni4, AvaxHome has more than 100,000 members. Trained ears? 10,000? No way. 1,000? Hmmm... Not sure. Maybe less. Assuming it's 1,000 or 1%, what about the other 1% belonging to the other side of the spectrum (people who want it real small like, say 96 or even lower)? Shall we not also cater to them?

What I am trying to say is, we should be thankful enough to people like Gandallon and TonyLevrai and other contributors for their personal sharing. We all are, I know. But effectively, what AvaxTeam is trying to say here is something like "Starting from hereon, you must contribute better quality or else...(we shall not publish your contribution)" Personally, I think it's discriminatory. But hey, I am just a member. At the end of the day, AvaxTeam still rules.

I personally think that it strategically wise not to limit a person's contribution. Instead of rejecting a person's contribution, why not an AvaxHome rating system? Something like: CD Quality=***** (or, excellent; or, highly recommended), Near CD=**** (or, very good), 128kps=*** (or, good), 96kbps=** (or, poor), below 96kpbs=* (very poor; or, maybe, might be bad for your ears) and let the people decide whether to download it or not.

This will be my final piece. I rest my case.

Posted By: binbonbeach Date: 24 Apr 2006 13:06:20

Hi.
Interesting points of view..... I agree don´t limit bit rate the music post....if you want it you download if not, don't download...finish.

@ nightsender
I don´t agree with you, Many technical details but in real world this not works so easy. Maybe you remember why a vinyl record "sound" better that cd......Maybe you remember why a good preanplifier and amplifiers specs are on 100,000 hz....Why lame encode update continue? Why exist dolby digital and DTS? Why exist many encoders? Is it a waste of time? Why? You say "Most experts now agree, that the best proximity to CD quality is a vbr file with a preset high of between 192 kbps and 256 kbps" who? Sorry but if they are "experts" they can hear a difference. If you use a software to encode a music you follow a rules for encoding (all of them suppose that people can't hear the changes for "natural human limit")in fact they lost (throw to thrash) many data bite for a algorithm pre-writer (best proffesional cd software included)..this a reality. In the real world the average people hear 20 to 20000 hz (many people hear 10 to 25000 HZ or more, medical talking) but almost all "sense" the music up to 45,000 hz or more (do you remember vinyl vs cd or good amplifiers?), they do you "hear" a sound in the real live music world different from the digital music world. The Sound of the music is not only hertz and if you have a point of view you are wrong. How about the natural clear sound: you must can to hear and to distinguish each musical instrument on a musical piece. How about soundstage: in all encode music file it is close (many software try to open this close soundstage). Of course I agree that the avaxhome users use a last lame encoder or similar update encoder. As well I agree that average people play you music on consumer electronic players and on these players almost all files "sound" similar, it doesn't matter bitrate.... but I can say a thing: if you let these people compare with original o better bitrate, they will can to hear a difference.... average people can´t compare or it doesn't matter for their...... this is my opinion, this is nothing personal.

@all
Please don´t copy or say what other people write.... You need believe in your ears, You make a double blind test (compare a low bitrate file vs high bitrate file) with encoded files that you make them (Hear which "sound" more close to your original cd), hear in you regular music player and choose which is better for your necessity. Thanks.
PS:The rules are the rules and in this place avax write the rules...this is the fact.

Posted By: gandallon Date: 25 Apr 2006 16:06:46

My son worked for many years as a technitian on a world reknown speakers manufacturer, I know for a fact that He has a very well trained ear since He is also a musician, it happens that all his mp3 music is at 128 Kbps, the reason is the space, first of all I mentioned to him about the "new" (at least to me) standard of the 320 kbps and that He should consider re-doing his entire CD collection to bring it as close as possible to "the real thing", He kind of explained what it's said above about quality, while driving in the city traffic you just can't pay that much attention to quality, you just want the music, with a few exceptions He carries the actual CD's of "favourites".
I'm talking about a trained ear for quality versus the average guy like me; one example: when I drove on the highway (where is not much traffic) if a favourite mp3 comes out of the changer I just pump up the volume and period, we all know that with the windows down the only thing you want is defeat the wind sound factor, quality sound in that moment doesn't matter.
Maybe our buddy alejx007 does the same when He flies in his long trips.
Bitrate of music is important to know but again, it all goes to the application, so let's focus in the average downloader and let him/her make the decision to download or not.
There'a whole discography of Juan Gabriel just posted yesterday of 37 Cd's, do you think that I care for the bitrate?

Posted By: binbonbeach Date: 26 Apr 2006 02:23:46

@gandallon
"so let's focus in the average downloader and let him/her make the decision to download or not."

I agree with you and your son. The answer for your question is yes or not. You answer yourself in your post. What is you want for?
Many people don´t care about muscic quality , it is only background. But others take to care of music quality, they "listen" (not only hear)the music.
All is a taste question.
One advice to you: make to easy test that many music lovers and audiophiles use frecuently: Go to the room, close your door and windows, close your courtains, turn the ligths off, in the dark play your original favorite music cd, relax and put attention in the music sound, try to listen each instrument and vocal, its position in soundstage....ok...now repeat the test with same music but in MP3 128 kbps (any bitrate) file...Do you can hear a difference? I hope so. Otherwise if you only hear music while your driving, don´t care about this....but test it or prove it! You have not to lose nothing (maybe only a bit of your time). Disfruta la música...Saludos.
Enjoy the music!!!

Posted By: gandallon Date: 26 Apr 2006 08:49:39

To binbonbeach:
Probably I didn't explained myself completely; I love music in it's more pure form and I am a perfectionist by nature, I love Beatles' music due to the complexivity of their chords, they use them in such way that they are totally out of the established, same with the harmony of their voices.
I said this just as an example 'cause I know you must have the highest quality in order to be able to appreciate the "little" details.
But in defense of uploaders I support the idea of allowing anything above the 128 kbps., as long as it's published and (said again) let the downloader determine if it's worth the effort to download.
All my posts are @ 320 kbps (with exception of the very first one) 'cause I felt that I had to be caught up with the rest (didn't know any better) and I love to give the best that I can.
To me it would be a real pitty not being able to download something that was never posted because the candidate to upload was discouraged from posting due to a low bitrate (128 kbps.)
Thanks binbonbeach for your advise, you're very kind.
Saludos afectuosos.

Posted By: DiceCracker Date: 27 Apr 2006 20:04:38

@all,

Not measuring my ears capability, all I can say is:
1- I deeply hate mp3pro
2- I dont give a cent to 128 or under
3- I can live with 160 or 190, no problem
4- I love 256 and more
5- CBR? that depends on witch ripper was used and the source.

The rest is just the rest. I dont care about discussions on what to forbid, I dont mind. Only thing I really care is: BITRATE MUST BE INFORMED, so I'll choose on download it or not and, off course, I'll download absolutelly nothing under 160 (must probally not under 192). But that's my humble opinion, and I dont see any sense in "forbide" low bitrate likers to have their files. Some people likes steak, some likes sh!t. Let's eat steak and let sh!t lovers eat what they like too.

It's all about grow and learn. In a near future we will come back here blaming 320 because some nerd will discover that he can pack a very small sample at 1024... and we will love it while sh!t eaters will stay here saying that 512 is the best.

No ofense to anyone ok? It's just my humble opinion on the freedon of choice. Afterall, who I am to say what can be done and what cannot?

DC, over the tree in some hot tropical forest.

P.S. I just loved that cow/steak exemple... can McDonalds do that? I believe that they can hehehehe (bout the music, it's 101% correct, it's impossible (till now), to upgrade a low quality sound to anything else than a BIG low qualitiy sound)

Posted By: laila Date: 03 May 2006 07:57:13

Thanks to all, I learned a lot.
In my opinion binbonbeach is absolutely right, I too "feel" the difference, but I agree with Nagiants40.
A min of 192 is good and enough for "daily" use.
Powering up our valve amps (US$ 1400.- and up) to hear our favorite music, - anyone has thought about to BUY his favorite discs to hear
the "absolut" quality?? I think its a must, otherwise why buy those
expensive stereos? To feed them with mp3?
Therefore 192+ is good enough, I don´t think you listen to ALL your
1,2 3 GB of music in your harddisc all the time, its impossible.
And the few favorite discs, do yoursef a favour an buy them or make
a 1:1 copy of an original disc.

Posted By: dvdhack Date: 05 May 2006 03:21:16

I started collecting MP3s a few years ago and only recently started listening to them on my stereo rather than the PC (my stereo was in storage - moving around a lot). I was so disappointed with the outcome of 128kbps. I also bought an ipod which I use with Etymotic ER4 Earphones (these are as good as my Martin Logan Electrostatic) - 192K and above sounds great but 128k was so bad I did a bulk select and delete nearly all - only kep those albums that were satisfactorily recorded at 128.

I did some further testing and also found a difference up to 256K - I'm not sure why I'm sure its not coz I can hear to the limits of the file but rather I think its a pschoacoustic effect not a direct hearing - the same way that a 96KHz recording sounds better than a 44.1 file.

Disk space is cheap, download bandwidth is improving all the time - why not do them at 256K - for home I now use AAC at 256K.

My 2c worth

Posted By: Bully Date: 05 May 2006 03:53:50

@ dvdhack

What you describe is the same experience some of us with both good ears and good equipment talk about since ages :-) On the other hand, most of the downloads are used on either PC or portable devices where I also normally live very good with 192. And for a record I otherwise would not have at all, I can also live well with below 192. :-)

"I think its a pschoacoustic effect not a direct hearing - the same way that a 96KHz recording sounds better than a 44.1 file."

It's a very compelx topic you can write large books about :-) Many people claim that the human ear cannot haer frequences in the 22 Khz area, which is mainly true, but music is a complex signal and many music instruments have a lot of so called harmonics up to very high frquencies. You cannot hear them as separted single frequencies, but if you fully cut them, it's not to difficult to hear the difference.

The higher sampling frequencies like 96 or 192 khz have a different reason. It's mainly to avoid so called sampling artfacts, which can heavy sum up when you are mixing and/or manipulating usamples in audio processing software.

Each sampling, no matter if at 44 khz or at 192 khz is NOT a true reproduction of the original sound. I try to explain in short leaving many details. If you have an original sound of a sine signal and view it at a scope, you see a very smooth, round shape of that signal. You can compare it to the smoothness of a female breast. When you sample this signal and look again on a scope, you see many little "stairs". How big theses stairs are depends on the sampling frequency - sampled with 44 khz the stairs are much bigger and less in number as compared to a sampling at 192 khz. The higher the sampling frequency, the smaller the steps and the closer the steps to the orginal signal. Closer I said - not identical. Stairs are stairs and will be stairs :-)

And even if some people will not believe, this is one of the reasons why people grown up with high-end anaolg sound equipment tell you that they hear the diffrence between an original analog sound and a downsampling of just 44 khz as used on CDs.

No matter, for audiophile ears we now have the MFSL project - ejoy it!

Posted By: majkinetor Date: 05 May 2006 13:58:13

2 bully 67
Everything you said is OK and I am very glad that sombody care for music quality on this level, but you obviously gone to far. Explaining this to people that are not in digital music production or composition makes this topic exaggeration. 192KHz or 44.100 is the thing that music producers have to deal with not "normal" people who just want to liste and enjoy music.

BTW, I really much doubt that there are people who can hear downsampling. MP3 produce far more artifacts then downsampling, but it if you do it on 256 CBR you can be sure you have audio quality - this was tested before several years in US, with headphones worth 50 000 $ with about 200 people which were famous for their "gold ears" (they can hear frequencies you and me can't). Testing was implemented on 128 & 256 MP3 and 44.100 original CD. Results: 95% of 128bit material was recognised as bad, so people didn't distinguish 95% of 256bps materila. From that moment, 256bps MP3 was considered as "AUDIO QUOLITY".

I can recognise 128bps mp3s on my simple Tanoy M2 speakers but sometimes, depending on material, it sounds very good. So, I have this principle, that if I can't find it among better Qs, I am quite happy with 128bps.

So, to cut the this story, people should upload 128bps only if there is no alternative. 192 should be a stnadard, and everything above that is just as same as original for 99.9% of the people.

Posted By: majkinetor Date: 05 May 2006 14:04:46

At this point I must say, that I heard some preaty amazing jazz flacs but I don't know was it sound quolity because of flac or because of original digital remastering.

Anyway, people can be full of preconclusions so are not relevant in mesurement of sound quality. Only spectroscope. And those curves I saw on once famous r3mix.net clearly stated that Lame 256 MP3 is almost the same as original while some other encoders like Xing New didn't look good even with 320bps.

Posted By: Bully Date: 10 May 2006 10:35:36

@ feerab

If you post questions, please also spent the few seconds to read the answers written to you. Here is what I wrote to you - 5 days ago! Was exactly the same question you ask now.

-----

bully67 | Date :: May 5, 2006 10:08:35
@ Feerab

Why the hell is everyone asking questions about publishing in the User Guide instead of the Publisher Guide???

OK, to your question: You click the image icon, select the picture you want to upload and upload the picture to the AvaxHome server. After the ipload is done, you will see a number the server assigned to your picture. THIS NUMBER must be INSIDE the IMG tag. That's all. Did you read the FAQ which carefully explainsdis the IMG tag?

Good luck and never forget: REFUSING a publication is much more work for moderators as just clicking the "Confirm" button.

-----

It really makes no sense to store the publication to our database if the picture is missing. It only wastes moderor time. PLEASE use the PREVIEW button to check your publication before saving.

Posted By: Jozzie121 Date: 14 May 2006 17:29:49

I have seen that some uploaders take the time and trouble to post APE or FLAC format as well as MP3s of the same file. Anyone who is seriously interested in the musical software scenario knows that there are even good programs that can covert APE or FLAC into MP3.

I thank wholeheartedly uploaders who do this double work. It goes truly appreciated.

Coming to the bitrate and encoding process, I have a huge collection of Music CDs and uncountable GBs of music process in MP3 [it used to be the most popular standard at the time] and yes, alas, a great chunk is in 128Kbps though still good quality...

I agree also that quality is for discerners. I was going to suggest that, being that I have seen postings of albums at 128Kbps and people still download these albums, why not allow the posting at 128? Of course, I also think it is a MUST to indicate all the info about the files posted such as bitrate, size, length of tracks, Info about encoder, etc.

Those who, like me, are old Napster users and who have been downloading for quite some years [old diehard speaking here, LOL] have also some good music that was, then [speaking of way back in 1995 and 1996] encoded with Xing. The music is good, the quality is good and in some cases better than average... so what do we do with these "old" files which might interest other AvaxHome users? I use dBpowerAMP [the most recent] for encoding and recently have found the joy of using AShampoo for certain conversions, for example from OGG to MP3.

For tagging, which is something I consider a must, I use Tag & Rename. I hate those downloaded files which prepare you to a shock, finding that tags are inexistent, for example, or inexact, or mixed up... or worse still, you get a number instead of a track name, or just track 1, track 2, track 3 etc.

I have an idea though... in my case I am going to prepare a list which will grow progressively, I guess, of music I am willing to share with you, indicating all information there. Then upload the document for information purposes and whoever is interested can contact me and I will upload. How does that sound as an alternative prior to posting? I would like your suggestions!

I have only recently started posting on AvaxHome though I have been visiting this site for quite some time now... and I have to add that I LOVE this community immensely. Which is why, I believe, one has to be open to suggestions to make this a better place. It is already marvellous as it is and I thank the mods for doing such an excellent job here.

Cheers,
Josella [in art and Avax known as Jozzie121] ;-)))

Posted By: Bully Date: 15 May 2006 16:03:32

@ Jozzie121

Yep, in most topics we have same view. I also sometimes feel like killing someone when I unpack a donwload and see BOTH filenames and tags are fully missing. As AvaxHome mods really cannot download each file to check, I strongly recommend again that if you see such problems, please leave a comment in the publication. Same as for giving wrong bitrates! When a publisher writes "MP3 400 Kbps" I know for sure that this is wrong :-), but publishers claiming 320 Kbps and unpacked files show up as 192 or even 160 Kbps is for sure not a typo and I also cannot see it as some kind of joke. Whenever you see such wrong information, please write a comment to warn other users.

The situation about 128 Kbps files is still as strange as I described on top of these comments. Too much other things of higher importance have to be done first, sorry. I keep it same as secribed above (allowing , but marking), 2 others mods also allow, but without marking, and one of us refuses them. Yep, a bit strange, but not such a real problem, as 128 Kbps publications are very low in number at AvaxHome.

For my own collection I follow the very easy rule: When I can get an album at high bitrates, I gladly take it. When I can get it at 192, it is also full OK for my portable player. When there is no chance of a good bitrate, I also accept lower ones - a bit quality less is still better as nothing at all :-)

Your idea about publishing your list is not fully new - we had something similiar last year and if I remember well, it did not find much attention. But this might also be based on content of the list, so perhaps it will be fully different with your one.

Current AvaxHome rules do not allow such a publication of only a list, as any publication is checked by us and refused when no download links are included. OK, you could bypass this by just putting your list on Rapidshare :-) But different mods have different views and you do not know which moderator will process your new publication. So here is my suggestion:

As I know, you do regular publications with us. So just INCLUDE your list or a link to the list, together with needed information, INSIDE one of your new publications. This way user acn access your list and you can be fully sure to bypass moderation without troubles. :-)

And a last hint: At the moment it is not the best time for such an experiment. Our users are flooded and cannot keep track with downloading. Just 2 of the main examples: During the last 1 1/2 day Peetje uploaded 40!! CDs of the Mastermix collection (and yes, all 100 will be uploaded during the next days), 2 hours ago Dirk1 uploaded all 23 CDs of "Now The Music" in a single publication, so just these 2 users are 63 CDs to download :-) A page to access the 100 CDs of mastermix
can be found here on top of the AvaxHome Music Community, just below these Guides.

Posted By: Gino_Gino Date: 28 May 2006 18:53:05

TO ALL - ALL - ALL

ATTENTION PLEASE !!!

When you are doing RAR archieve, please ALWAYS add
the RECOVERY INFORMATION 3-5%

This is very important for safely downloads.

ThankX

Posted By: Bully Date: 04 Jun 2006 09:01:57

@ ALL

Just a temporary note here, as I am a bit under time pressure :-)

Some of you might have notued that we released a new version of the FAQ yesterday. PLEASE READ IT. Beside more detailed descriptions what information is needed in new publications, it also contains some hints and tips to make life easier for both publishers and moderators. :-)

You might also notice that the rules for 128 Kbps (and lower!) music uploads did change a bit. To be exact, it chnged in BOTH ways. The moderator, who until now refused all 128 Kbps files, will let them go public when it makes sense. On the other hand, I will from now on also refuse 128 kbps when it makes no sense in my view. If , for example, someone uploads again a Queen album at 128, be sure I will refuse it :-)

In other words: CD rips, which can easy be done in good quality, will be refused at 28 or even lower, historic material, old bootlegs and rare records not available in good quality will be accepted.

As soon as possible I will update the above guidelines to adapt to the new FAQ. For now: For differences between above guideleines and the FAQ, keep to the FAQ.

Posted By: andi64 Date: 06 Jun 2006 23:04:09

Hi, who the Master-Mix CD´s 1-100 ??

Please help me !!

Posted By: Bully Date: 10 Jun 2006 12:55:44

@ andi64

??? Two ways: read the text and URL on top of this page

or

Click on quick jumop menu on left upper corner of each page, select music, click Go button. Scroll about 4 or 5 paublications down and you see it at once.

Posted By: Bully Date: 10 Jun 2006 13:01:34

@ All

Bitrate vs. Frequency range

Just wrote somewhere else some background about difference between bitrate and frequency range of mp3 files. seems a good idea to put a copy here :-)

Posted by :: bully67 | Date :: Jun 10, 2006 12:37:55

"320kbps is a waste of disc space. The frequency response of these old recordings rarely get above 8kHz, and even 160kbps is overkill."

This time I cannot agree with you :-) I'm glad he did it at 320 kbps.

You mix trwo different things - bitrate and frequency range. You could have also done this as 320 kbps with 22 khz or even lower. Or in other words: The bitrate has nothing to do with the frequency range - it just controls how much detail of the original recording is still available. Less bitreate = less detail, but not less frequency range.

See it as a diagram. The x-axis is the recording, the y-axis is the frequency. For compression you can cut both - either limit the frequency range (lower values on y-axis) and / or decrease bitrate - shrinking the x-axis values. For example. instead of storing each x-axis value, you store only each second value. Not fully exact, but helps to imagine.

But also for the frequency range itslef it is not so easy :-) Leads us again to so called harmonics - more details in the discussions in

http://avaxhome.ws/music/amc_faq.html

For _ME_ this version is great. For use on portables or for use with normal Avaxian ears :-) you are right that it is a bit "overkill". :-)

----------

And a special addition for this page:

This might sound opposite to what I wrote above when I talked that we will allow 128 Kbps for historic recordings and similiar. The reason is easy. When this material comes from old private tapes, cassettes and similiar, there already is much lost from the original sound. But if a recording like we discussed in above lines is a remastered recording for CD release, it is fully different and makes sense to have higher bitrate.

Posted By: sunsponge Date: 15 Jun 2006 01:18:25

@bully67

Re, bitrate versus frequency range:

Yes, there is some truth to what you write when discussing harmonics, but if you view these old recordings on a scope or spectrograph, there are no harmonics to sample because the original recordings don't have any information above 8kHz or so. The technology that existed when these recordings were made originally was severely limited in the range of frequencies it could capture. Remastering cannot add musical information that is not there.

This began to change with the introduction of "stereo" sound, especially in the 1960s, but even with much of the material recorded in the 1950s.

The reason for the relationship between sound frequency and sampling rate is that with higher frequencies the number of sine wave cycles per second increases, and if you don't sample often enough, the resultant reconstruction is not able to distinguish between a say, 12kHz and 19kHz signal, so they would both sound the same. In other words, if there were a 19kHz signal to sample, but the sampling frequency was such that 12kHz was the upper limit, there would not be a blank spot or skip in the music, rather the 19kHz signal would sound just like a 12kHz signal.

Getting into the psychophysics of this way beyond what is appropriate here. Just recall that sound is compression waves (higher pressure peak followed by a lower pressure trough). The digital sampling rate needs to be only high enough to permit the physical reconstruction of the waveform within a specified tolerance, which is a straightforward mathematical function. The tolerance is more or less a function of the "just noticeable difference" in the ability of the human ear to discern a difference between two sounds (which varies over the range of the audible spectrum). Yes, there is "less detail" in a 128 kbps sampled 1000Hz tone compared to a 320 kbps sampled one, but it is not a difference you or anyone else can hear because that degree of resolution does not exist in the original. (I.e., Instead of measuring something say, two times, you measure it five times. Guess what? The measurement is the same all seven times.)

In the case of these very old recordings, there is no 10kHz signal to sample, or 15kHz, or 20kHz. There is nothing there. (There do exist some of these very old recordings with a surprising dynamic and frequency range, but they are much to fragile today to ever be played. There are some research groups developing laser-based players to try and non-destructively capture these, such as with Edison's wax-based recordings.)

Now, if we are talking about archival purposes, that is another story. (Ego falls into this category too!) For this even the wav standard of 22,100 is not adequate. Sony some years ago proposed tripling or quadrupling this because the 20-20kHz is simply not adequate to capture the full range of harmonics produced by musical instruments, nor is it adequate for research purposes (such as capturing the range of sounds produced naturally by many animals).

For these old recordings, 96 kbps is probably sufficient even for a so-called "golden ear," and 128 kbps is safe overkill. When I wrote the 160 kbps above, it was only to stave off angry rejoinders. (Bully67's is not, it's reasoned, I just disagree and these are my reasons why.)

Posted By: daveza Date: 20 Jun 2006 19:17:31

Lots of interesting comment here - I must say Avax has made me realise the huge quality difference between mp3 and other lossy formats. I used to think 192 was a good compromise between size and quality but no longer. Hard drives are cheap !

A question if I have a 192 and a 320 version of the same album and need to transfer to IPod.... would it matter which quality I converted ?

Posted By: daveza Date: 20 Jun 2006 21:46:24

Ooops - I meant the difference between mp3 and other lossless formats !

Posted By: sunsponge Date: 02 Jul 2006 11:11:39

I decided to try an experiment with file compression types and the resultant archive size. The recently uploaded Al Jarreau album "Breakin' Away" was in flac format (nine audio files), a lossless compressed file type. Using GX Transcoder v2.24d I converted the flac files to wav files, and then converted the wav files to mp3 format using LAME v3.96 VBR -extreme. Next I put each file type into a WinRAR archive using normal compression without a recovery record. Here are the results:

File Type Uncompressed Size WinRAR Archive WinRAR Time
--------- ----------------- ----------------- ------------

wav 434,897,626 287,818,969 3:35
flac 253,629,229 253,631,281 7:51
mp3 68,568,176 68,520,949 1:32

For wav files WinRAR compressed the files 33.8 percent. For flac files, WinRAR compressed the files -0.01 percent (i.e., increased the storage space required). For mp3 files WinRAR compressed the files 0.07 percent. The difference between wav and flac WinRAR archives resulted in an 11.9 percent savings. The most surprising part of this was the time required by WinRAR to compress flac files, it took well over twice as long as it did for wav files, almost 8 minutes compared to 3.5 minutes.

Flac files have a clear advantage for storage on an individual computer, but for sharing (via compressed archive) I don't think the relatively small space savings is worth the trade-off in terms of time requirements and the hassle of having to keep track of yet more plug-ins compared to the ubiquity of wav file format support.

Just so I am upfront here, my personal preference is for high quality VBR mp3 files for day-to-day use. (But for archiving, a lossless format.) The main advantage of digital encoding is not frequency range or fidelity or harmonics captured, rather it is the absence of noise (pops, clicks, hiss) and that repeated playings do not degrade the medium (as phonograph needles do). There are also numerous editing advantages with digital storage. Analog recording techniques have long been used to capture ultrasonic (very high) and infrasonic (very low) sounds outside the range of home and commercial audio equipment.

Technically speaking, any digital recording is lossy compared to an analog recording, but the standards for formats such as wav files ensure that the sampling frequency and the range of frequencies sampled (~20-20hHz) are sufficient so that the resultant reconstruction is indistinguishable from the original to the human ear.

Posted By: adamjk Date: 03 Jul 2006 20:23:53

@susponge,
Knowing just a little about compression YOU SHOULD USE just store, not normal compression!!! And compare the time then! And save our time to read your post. Think twice in the future, please.
"Technically speaking, any digital recording is lossy compared to an analog recording"
You are more than totally wrong, everything depends on analog source.
"Don't worry, be happy, keep smiling"

Posted By: adamjk Date: 03 Jul 2006 20:26:55

Are we really in year 2007, according to the date of main post?

Posted By: sunsponge Date: 04 Jul 2006 21:38:28

@adamjk,
Re, compression vs store: Okay, show me. You may be right, but unless you run a little experiment and show me the results, you're just blowing air. Programs don't always work the way you think they do. I did a little experiment with a few files, posted the results, and if you want to challenge them, prove me wrong. I'm more than willing to learn, so have at it. :-)

Re, Your sentence, "You are more than totally wrong, everything depends on analog source" doesn't make any sense to me. Of course the range of sounds produced by the source is important. But all digital reproductions of that source are lossy, this is why some CDs brag that they use a 96k sampling frequency rather than the standard 44.1k (if memory serves), because they achieve a higher resolution by taking measurements over a smaller time period. The algorithms used to reconstruct the wave form that use shorter time periods (i.e., higher frequency) are closer to the original. A square wave of period 1 can approximate a traditional sinusoidal wave of the same period, but it won't be very pleasant to listen to. Digital encoding looks at both the frequencies being encoded and their rate of change, and is lossy compared to analog encoding methods (but analog methods are usually much nosier, which is a separate issue).

Posted By: aatash Date: 25 Jul 2006 19:43:37

Hi Bully67; i have posted 3 items in music section but my posts hasen't come on the main page yet. its my first time posting and am afraid i mistake in posting new items. could anyone help me find out the prob.
thanks

Posted By: jorgeluiz Date: 11 Sep 2006 00:18:32

hi all
i don't want to upload my cds for the team in low quality,then...
i read the last 5 posts and have one idea:
as we(i in few days) upload in rap..share as .rar archive,why not in lossless?
just rip the cd as wav and compress with winrar.
the size is not so different if you compress flac or any lossless.
i'm sure that everybody will like to have the wav files inside .rar because is secure,lossless,the .rar can be tested before upload and all this work in less steps.

anyone is in favor....against?

regards for all!
:-)

Posted By: Dr. Spankenstein Date: 04 Oct 2006 02:11:49

@ all

Just wanted to introduce myself to the group.

I had a question regarding the material that is in the MFSL project.
I have a few MFSL recordings of "The Firesign Theater" comedy troup from the early 70's. Is the project specifically for music or are we going for a complete MFSL catalogue?

I want to contribute to this wonderful community, so if anyone could point me in the direction of where this would be the most appropriate, it would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Bryan

Posted By: jreinsch Date: 14 Oct 2006 23:40:45

In regards to the questions of music scategories/subcategories, how about allowing posts to be tagged like Flickr photos or del.icio.us bookmarks. Then it matters not that they are fundamentally all stored in one big pile. Users can filter the list by tag. When I post something, I don't have to decide between blues or jazz, I can add both tags if I think some blues lovers and some jazz lovers might both be interested in it.

Posted By: mahajaroussky Date: 26 Jul 2010 23:47:29

hello

why some french magazines is not uploaded since 15th , such as

Elle france july and august , Elle Us july 2010

point de vue since 15th june , Diapason july and upcoming august 2010

as well Gala , Paris match , classica , bbc music .

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