> On the whole mp3 issue... look, here's the thing. On the one hand, there is > NO QUESTION an mp3 can sound better than a shn-- if the mp3 is hi-bit-rate, > low-gen, off a good source, while the shn is from a poorly recorded > hiss-laden source.
I think this it's important to underscore this, and I'd go further - lossy audio compression has come a long way. They could be the same wonderful source, and sound identical, with a good 256k ogg vorbis encoding. There will be differences between the encoded version and the original, but arguments about how large the difference is are very subjective. The argument shouldn't be about sound quality - at least not in the first generation. In my opinion, the problem is in the long run - imagine your kids listening to these same recordings, or your grandkids. As long as people are putting in the extra effort to trade SHN files, there is no doubt about what you're going to get, and what your kids will get, etc. But if people start trading shows in mp3/shn/wma format, inevitably people will start to convert those shows to .WAV files and burn them to CD. (Don't gripe about track breaks, that doesn't address the point. There are ways to encode seamlessly, either by encoding the whole CD as one mp3 or using ogg vorbis). And then inevitably someone will EAC that CD and SHN those WAV files. And then inevitably someone will encode those WAV files as mp3s, etc. At some point you will have ten md5s for the show - and the original *will* sound different than the 9th generation copy. > Bringing mp3 into etreeland is like, and this is a stupid analogy. . . This isn't much better, but I'll try as well. Suppose there's a Great American Novel - a lost work by Steinbeck, that no one has published, and no publisher is interested in publishing. There's a digitized version of it that's sort of big and unwieldy. It compresses down a little bit, but still takes a while to share. Some impatient people get tired of this 'exchange and print to read the book' scheme, and just start faxing it to each other - it's a lot faster, and it looks great, and what is everyone being so tightassed about? Then, two generations later, when your granddaughter wants to read _Of Mice and Men Two: The Return Of Lennie_, every copy she can find looks like crap. So, encode them as mp3s if you want to listen to them on your portable - but really think twice about trading them, out of respect for the long-term survival of the music. It's going to be less and less of an inconvenience as time goes on - bandwidth is getting faster and cheaper. Fifteen years ago people had 2400 baud modems - and that was if you were one of the chosen few. At some point, trading SHNs will be about as quick and simple as sending email. But you run the risk of blowing it if you're impatient now. Peace, Mike _______________________________________________ etree.org etree mailing list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://mail.etree.org/mailman/listinfo/etree Need help? Ask <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
