I can,t tell the difference. Can anyone? And with a live boot recorded from someones hat??? Really?

WAV (or WAVE), short for WAVE form audio format, is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing audio on PCs. It is a variant of the RIFF bitstream format method for storing data in "chunks", and thus also close to the IFF and the AIFF format used on Macintosh computers. It takes into account some peculiarities of the Intel CPU such as little-endian byte order. The RIFF format acts as a "wrapper" for various audio compression codecs. It is the main format used on Windows systems for raw audio.

Though a WAV file can hold audio compressed with any codec, by far the most common format is pulse-code modulation audio data. Since PCM uses an uncompressed, lossless storage method which keeps all the samples of an audio track, professional users or audio experts may use the WAV format for maximum audio quality. WAV audio can also be edited and manipulated with relative ease using software.

WAV files can be used as an intermediary storage type for ripping songs from cassette tapes. People using Windows's Sound Recorder can redirect the output from their old Walkman-type cassette players's ear phone jacks to the PC audio input jacks via an audio cable. Although Sound Recorder can only record for 60 seconds, there are easy ways to lengthen the file for long songs or even the entire tape (record something, choose decrease speed from the effects menu, repeat until file is sufficiently long, and then record over it from the beginning). The WAV file is then converted via freeware packages to other, more compact formats.

As file sharing over the Internet has become popular, the WAV format has declined in popularity, primarily because uncompressed WAV files are quite large. More frequently, compressed but lossy formats such as MP3, Ogg Vorbis and Advanced Audio Coding are used to store and transfer audio, since their smaller file sizes allow for faster transfers over the Internet, and large collections of files consume only a conservative amount of disk space. There are also more efficient, lossless codecs available, such as Monkey's Audio, TTA, WavPack, FLAC, Shorten, Apple Lossless and WMA Lossless.

The WAV format is limited to files that are less than 2 GiB in size, due to the way its 32-bit file size header is read by most programs. Although this is equivalent to more than 3 hours of CD-quality audio (44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo), it is sometimes necessary to go over this limit. The W64 format was created for use in Sound Forge. This format can be converted using the LGPL libsndfile library.

Contrary to the popular misconception, audio CDs do not use WAV as their storage format. The commonality is that both audio CDs and WAV files have the audio data encoded in PCM, but WAV is a data file format for computer use; if you rip an audio CD to WAV files and burn them onto a CD-R as a data disc (ISO) and insert it into a player that can handle only audio CDs, the CD will not play.

MP3 is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format invented and standardised in 1991 by a team of engineers working in the framework of the ISO/IEC MPEG audio committee under the chairmanship of Professor Hans Musmann (University of Hannover - Germany). It was designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent audio, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. In popular usage, MP3 also refers to files of sound or music recordings stored in the MP3 format on computers.

The name is derived from "MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3" more formally known as ISO/IEC 11172-3 Layer 3. The files recorded in this format are saved with the .mp3 filename extension. This extension is also sometimes shared by audio files encoded using the newer MPEG-2 Audio Layer 3 standard. The invention of this file extension name (.mp3) would be due to the FhG institute.

MP3 is a lossy compression format. It provides a representation of pulse-code modulation-encoded (PCM) audio data in a much smaller size by discarding portions that are considered less important to human hearing (similar to JPEG, a lossy compression for images).

A number of techniques are employed in MP3 to determine which portions of the audio can be discarded, including psychoacoustics. MP3 audio can be compressed with different bit rates, providing a range of tradeoffs between data size and sound quality.

The MP3 format uses, at its heart, a hybrid transform to transform a time domain signal into a frequency domain signal:

* 32 band polyphase quadrature filter
* 36 or 12 tap MDCT; size can be selected independent for sub-band 0...1 and 2...31
* aliasing reduction postprocessing

MP3 Surround, a version of the format supporting 5.1 channels for surround sound, was introduced in December 2004. MP3 Surround is backward compatible with standard stereo MP3, and file sizes are similar.

In terms of the MPEG specifications, AAC (Advanced audio coding) from MPEG-4 is to be the successor of the MP3 format, although there has been a significant movement to create and popularize other audio formats. Nevertheless, any succession is not likely to happen for a significant amount of time due to MP3's overwhelming popularity (MP3 enjoys extremely wide popularity and support, not just by end-users and software but by hardware such as DVD and CD players).

CONCLUSION TO THIS LONG AND BORING STORY:

WAV is a raw audiofile without quality loss of the original recording. MP3 (unlike FLAC) has a loss of quality, and although this loss may be small and may appear unhearable for a leek, bootlegs must not be spreaded in this format.

Christ man you must tyupe fast, i only posted this a couple of minutes ago!

Captain Jack Sparrow Wrote:
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> Christ man you must tyupe fast, i only posted this
> a couple of minutes ago!

Though my typing skills are not remarkably bad, I didn't write all of this myself. I got it partially from the "Wikipedia" online encyclopedia.

Captain Jack Sparrow Wrote:
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> I can,t tell the difference. Can anyone? And with
> a live boot recorded from someones hat??? Really?

of course you cant.having said that i never trade with people for MP3s.im not fussy myself but most people are.though ,like you say,how can they tell the difference ? its cobblers..............

i aint got time to read all that.he asked can you tell the difference ?

in a word...........NO



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-10-20 17:39 by billy318124.

If anybody here can tell the difference in quality listening to, let's say, an average audience quality recording from the mid seventies (like many boots owned by the people here), I'd be scared...

How can I tell the difference if I hardly can hear the drums?

[There'll be no wedding today...]

Ok, it may be attractive for people with your average discount Sony stereo-combo. The quality loss is small compared to the size. But I'm a so-called "audiophile"(I like HIFI) and I disgust MP3.

Why?

Put two audio tracks beside eachother. You can see a difference. So your recording is different from the original bootleg. That bothers me because when you're manipulating the sounds(IE equalizing) you definetly DO hear the difference.

Having MP3's is fine, but trading them or spreading them in an other way without making clear it is less quality than the original recording is unacceptable for serious bootleg collectors.

I'm not trying to criticise the audiophiles here, as I can see your point perfectly when talking about studio recordings and some live ones, and after all I think it's a matter of taste, but isn't it too hard for an audiophile hearing any boot from the 70 European Tour, for example??

[There'll be no wedding today...]

bruno Wrote:
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> I'm not trying to criticise the audiophiles here,
> as I can see your point perfectly when talking
> about studio recordings and some live ones, and
> after all I think it's a matter of taste, but
> isn't it too hard for an audiophile hearing any
> boot from the 70 European Tour, for example??
>
> The IORRean formerly known as Cousin Lou
> (There´ll be no wedding today...)

That doesn't really matter, the recording is different from the one on the original silver, so you're not listening to the same soundwaves.

Bruno:

I have to agree with reptile here (though I am not an audiophile, i put together a quite good stereo equipment over the years and i DO enjoy it!!).

To make it simple: even on a "bad" recording there is at least something listenable. If you compress it you will have a loss in quality of the "listenable" part as well.

Reptile:

What do you use to make your neighbours happy?


C

Yep, I see your point, reptile, but after all I'm listening to some guitars and one bass and some drums and a guy singing, when they can be heard, not soundwaves.

I can see the difference when comparing high-quality recordings, it's pretty obvious; but when comparing some relatively-shitty-quality live recordings (and we all must agree the sound quality on bootlegs is for at least 95% of them shitty when compared to official releases) I find this whole issue difficult to understand.

[There'll be no wedding today...]

I understand your points, but let me put an example:

Let's suppose we have a recording with the best possible quality (100). On a true HIFI equipment you hear it with 100-quality. With an average equipment you hear it at, let's say, 80% quality, so you hear it at 80-quality.

Now I manage to get a boot which has remain unsurfaced from the Stu tribute gig, but sadly it's only with a quality of 40. On the HIFI equipment I hear it with 40-quality, and on the average equipment I hear it with 32-quality.

My point is, after all it's a shitty 40-quality at best.

Let me tell you that I'm talking about this issue without having any serious knowledge about thi subject, so don't be too hard with me )

[There'll be no wedding today...]

In these digital days, you can copy an original 1:1 and have another original as a result. Thats why traders like flac. It hasn't been tampered, hopefully.

I don't think anyone can hear the diffrence between a 256 kbps mp3 audio and its original CD Master. Even tho its been compressed, it will be 50% guess.
edit: just useing your ears, mind you.






Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-10-20 18:45 by open-g.

How many more times are we going to have this debate? The problem with MP3 compression is not whether you can hear the difference, it's the very fact that sound information has been lost forever. In that respect, it's no different to cassette generations. If you had the choice, would you knowingly go for a high gen tape over a low gen copy? If a recording is passed through, say, ten or twenty people, and each person encodes it to MP3, then you'd have no trouble hearing the difference.

Well, I must admit I haven't thought about this related to the matter of spreading the recordings. With your "cassettes example" I see the reason about why mp3 shouldn't be used.

About the crappy sounding boots, well, I suppose you have to train your ears to some audience recordings. And I admit I sometimes prefer a good audience rec. rather than a cold, direct, dry SBD with no audience-feeling at all.





[There'll be no wedding today...]