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I patch off rigs that cost anywhere from 3-7k and generally consist of very high end mics, ususally Scheops or B&K, a preamp, and portable DAT usually a tascam DA-P1. Anyway, quality is of the upmost in importance. Check out Etree to see what I mean. Click here to check out some equipment.

You typically can't find good quality CD-Rs at the major computer stores and you definitely won't get good prices on them. They don't have the lowest prices out there, but I've been pretty happy ordering 100 lots of 80 min Mitsui unbranded silvers from american digital and haven't burned a coaster or had a CD-R go bad yet. Hunt around and I'm sure you can find some better deals online.

... rjs

You typically can't find good quality CD-Rs at the major computer stores and you definitely won't get good prices on them. They don't have the lowest prices out there, but I've been pretty happy ordering 100 lots of 80 min Mitsui unbranded silvers from american digital and haven't burned a coaster or had a CD-R go bad yet. Hunt around and I'm sure you can find some better deals online.

... rjs

There is also a plugin for .shn's for winamp...

I wasn't implying that this was better or worse than any other lossless compression, merely that it was better than any bitrate of Mp3 [a lossy compression].

• encode your .wav's to shorten format.
  

• play them back (after expending them, on-the-fly) to an spdif card such as the c-media 8738 or midiman series of s/pdif cards. alsasound supports the 8738 just dandy - better than the latest linux kernel does (sadly to say).
  

• connect the s/pdif out on your sound card to a quality DAC (digital to analog converter) such as an audio alchemy DAC, as found used on ebay for cheap.
  

• connect that DAC to your home stereo and enjoy.
  

you'd be extremely hardpressed to tell the diff between a silver stamped cd going thru its audio chain and this setup as I described. in fact, my setup will be better, on average, since the audio alchemy (or even midiman) DAC will usually be better than the one built into your cd player.

Also, check out Etree if you are interested in getting or distributing live shows in Shorten format from bands that allow taping and trading.

Only ametuers...audiophiles will never use 'em since they employ lossy compression. Also, the amount of music you can get on them (compared to DAT) is small. DAT's still definately in force - you can get 3 hours onto a DAT tape (that's DDS-1! If the DAT players started started recognizing DDS-2, it could go up to 6 hrs...and DDS-3 or 4 would be just crazy...). The break in the music when you change minidiscs sucks.

have good quality

That's debatable...For casual use, yes, but for creating a master recording or trading music, definately not...check out the FAQ on etree.org.

Only ametuers...audiophiles will never use 'em since they employ lossy compression. Also, the amount of music you can get on them (compared to DAT) is small. DAT's still definately in force - you can get 3 hours onto a DAT tape (that's DDS-1! If the DAT players started started recognizing DDS-2, it could go up to 6 hrs...and DDS-3 or 4 would be just crazy...). The break in the music when you change minidiscs sucks.

have good quality

That's debatable...For casual use, yes, but for creating a master recording or trading music, definately not...check out the FAQ on etree.org.

shorten is a lossless (and sometimes lossy, but who'd use that?) format popular among dead head geeks. See ETree.
It's not open source, but it's free($) for non commercial use, which any legal tape trading must be.

you can even get a streaming shorten plugin for xmms.

in the tape trading network (such as the grateful dead tapers), shn is the preferred format.

while it initially wasn't designed for realtime playback (it was meant for batch compression and file transfer transmission, like ftp), its now considered a streamable format as well.

you can even get a streaming shorten plugin for xmms.

in the tape trading network (such as the grateful dead tapers), shn is the preferred format.

while it initially wasn't designed for realtime playback (it was meant for batch compression and file transfer transmission, like ftp), its now considered a streamable format as well.

i personally dislike mp3. i've never actually used ogg. i'm sort of the audiophile type and do not believe in destroying music by compressing it and ripping out the warm lows and lushes highs. the format i use is shorten (shn). it's a lossless audio compression format that achieves a compression ratio of up to 2:1. not spectacular, but i feel it is well worth the preservation of the audio. i can listen to the shn files directly using winamp, or xmms (there is also something for mac) or decompress them (to exactly the original file i started with) and burn to an audio cd. my audio system isn't spectacular, but i do notice when the bass end bottoms out and my speakers cackle. i'm also taking into consideration that i will one day have an audio system worth thousands of dollars (being a student sucks in that respect...). for more general information on shorten, try www.etree.org. not the official shorten page, but they have lots of free software and scripts for different platforms.

It will turn a 650MB cd into around 400MB of files.

Not the best compression in the world, but:

• you lose no bits
• there need be no debate over which sounds better
• you can listen to the files straight from winamp with this plugin
• you don't wind up regretting the many hours you spent ripping and encoding when in three years a terabyte is within reasonable reach
• these files, being exact copies, will serve as a backup of your collection

And while you're at it, check out shnapster (flash warning), a peer-to-peer system of trading live music in the shorten format with over 1TB of shows currently hosted.

-Jackson

It will turn a 650MB cd into around 400MB of files.

Not the best compression in the world, but:

• you lose no bits
• there need be no debate over which sounds better
• you can listen to the files straight from winamp with this plugin
• you don't wind up regretting the many hours you spent ripping and encoding when in three years a terabyte is within reasonable reach
• these files, being exact copies, will serve as a backup of your collection

And while you're at it, check out shnapster (flash warning), a peer-to-peer system of trading live music in the shorten format with over 1TB of shows currently hosted.

-Jackson

I should also state that in that time, thanks to the efforts of the phine pholks at etree.org, I've amassed a collection of over 1500 cds and 600 concerts. It's addictive. "Hi, my name is John and I listen to Phish."

Seriously, I have bought maybe 15 cds in the past 3 years. Three of those were replacements of cds I'd have for years had been remastered, and the rest were by bands that allow me and others like me to freely record and trade their live concerts. Radiohead and U2 are two big name acts that have recently figured out that people who trade their concerts are more likely to buy their albums and attend their concerts than someone who doesn't trade.

Check out the links above, there is something for all tastes. There is plenty of music to be had for the price of your bandwidth and blank CDs.

One hopes that "the need for both legal protection and legitimate alternatives" will take into account the fact that some users, myself included, don't use CD-Rs to burn "pirated" music or data. There is a never-ending stream of live music that can be downloaded for free, because the performers allow their performances to be taped and traded. Check out etree.org for an example.

Some of us make (gasp!) backups of our data as well.

What you fail to realize that the copyright laws, in their present form, are stealing off of you and me and everyone else. Copyright is supposed to encourage the useful arts and sciences for the benefit of the public . It is clear that the copyright laws of today are written not to benefit the public, but to preserve the excessive profits of a few major corporations. Disobedience of unjust laws is not only justified, it is our duty as citizens.

Current copyright law doesn't even benefit the artists. There is much less live music in this country than there was 30 years ago, before the wave of corporate mega-mergers hit in the music industry. The etree model of music distribution is preferable to the copyright-heavy oligopolic distribution model we have today. It works like this: Musicians derive their income chiefly from live performances. In turn, they allow their fans to record the live performances for free, and trade the recordings for non-commercial use only. The recordings serve to generate a larger following, so demand for live musical performances rises, and the venues are always filled. The Grateful Dead outearned Micheal Jackson in his heydey using this approach. Today, the model is being increasingly used, and there are hundreds of taper-friendly bands . The benefits to the public are both immediate and far-reaching: Not only are most of the live recordings free, but this also has the effect of increasing the total number of musicians by encouraging live musical performances, as opposed to spinning discs in nightclubs. Just as importantly, it has the effect of cutting out the middleman, the huge corporations that impose their "corporate tax" on everyone else to benefit no one except themselves.

I would recommend the widely-used Shorten format. There are encoding tools for both Windows and Linux and plugins for both WinAmp and XMMS. Compression is usually around 50%.

If you want more information, a good place to look is etree.org.

Ho boy... not hardly. I have acess to thousands of hours of high quality live music from musicians all over the country... plus it's legal, with the artists' consent, no ads involved, and more importantly, no damn record companies!!

Check out sites like etree, sugarmegs, and gdlive for examples of how music is thriving on the net in a noncommercial environment. But I suppose those sites, though working well for users, have actually been crushed also... as the standard for 'crushed' apparently is 'failing to make money for corporations'.

Besides... really, Napster and the like sucked from the start, interesting computer science concept and great place to download mp3's of questionable quality at 1KB/sec though... if that's what you're into.

-Jackson

Etree.org is a large reference site for bands that allow taping. I know that, as a fan of Phish and Dave Matthews, I was able to find another 15 bands that I really liked thanks to the bands taping policies, and high bandwidth becoming the norm.

-mb

Might I also suggest .shn, which is what is used by the etree crowd.

As one possible alternative, I'd like to point to the etree project. Their goal is to create a collection of high-quality recordings of various concerts from artists that permit such recordings.

One could argue that it's not quite the same as mp3's (it's nice that it's higher quality, but it's a bit more unwieldy), but it does provide an alternative, particularly one that should be free of an legal problems.

Assumption: If Napster charges, that means they are guarenteeing a certain quality. (this is a basis for my arguments, i do not intend to argue this statement)

Napster really needs to do something about quality of the music. MP3 is bad to begin with. People who don't use DAC (or even better, EAC), encode at low bitrates, and don't ID3 tag files make it worse. Napster will need to do something to guarantee a minimum quality. My suggestion is that they go hide under a rock and never be heard from again. No, seriously, they should store a large portion of more popular songs on their servers. These songs should each have a full ID3 tag, including lineage in the notes (i.e. CD>WAV via EAC>MP3 via MKWact)*. Each song on the server should be accompanied by an .md5, which would be downloaded with the song so the song could be checked after download. Less popular songs could have only the .md5 for the 'offical Napster seed' on the server. Each client could then tag the songs it has as matching the official seed or not. Then users could have the choice of searching only the official seeds.

* to learn about EAC (Exact Audio Copy) and MKWact (MKW Audio Compression Tool) see www.etree.org


shorten: because friends don't let friends use mp3

or maybe even shorten.

encoder: shorten-3.1.tar.gz
xmms plugin: xmms-shn

it's loseless compression, too. this software is somewhat more complete (and mature?) though.

I messed up the http://etree.org link in my last post.

Here it is again: http://etree.org.

I messed up the http://etree.org link in my last post.

Here it is again: http://etree.org.

For more information on a great organization that's involved in trading live, losless concert recordings, check out etree.org.

The GratefulDead, as well as other bands, explicity allow the taping and trading of their live music. They only forbid the sale of said recordings.

Follow the link above, and you'll get more information on this topic than thousands of /. posts could possibly provide.

it was expressly designed for just this task, in fact; some kind geeks have been extending the format so it's seekable under WinAmp and XMMS. Its primary use these days is lossless audio compression, but it _does_ support a large variety of lossy modes, including some expressly designed for speech.

Go here for source/rpms/debs...

Check out Etree. This is a loose group of people that legitimately trade live concert recordings compressed with Shorten (lossless compression). They use FTP. People setup FTP servers and then announce to a mailing list what they have available.

The problem is that all of the public servers are staggering under the load. They limit the number of concurrent connections betwen 2-5 users to prevent complete mayhem on their bandwidth. So many people are trying to get in that the servers have scripts that automatically route ban anyone that attempts to connect more often than once a minute (or even two minutes for the bigger servers). The files are so large (350 megs per CD, 1-3 CD's per show usually) that it takes forever to get in. Standard Operating Procedure for downloading from public Etree servers is to open 12 terminal windows, each with a script trying to login to 12 different sites (once per minute, of course). After a few days you might get into one or two of them.

Hotline is a relatively modern BBS like system (it has integrated file transfer, message bases, and chatting). It's a little more advanced than FTP: it lets anyone connect but downloads are placed in a queue. So instead of redialing over and over and over again you just connect and start your download, and wait for the people in the queue ahead of you to finish. On popular sites that have lots of goodies I have literally had to wait in the queue for well over 24 hours to begin the actual file transfer.

I think the solution to the problem is a market based solution. Create a barter system for disk space, bandwidth, and CPU. In order to download something from someone and depelete their disk/bandwidth/cpu resources you must provide a comparable amount of resources. Since disk/bandwidth/cpu is a commodity, you can use a digital bearer instrument to represent those resources and create a fungible currency backed by the disk/cpu/bandwidth. Mojo Nation does exactly that, but you probably already knew I was going to say that.

Burris

Only bad thing is that they are very short on siteops. A couple dozen or so support a community of thousands so it's a pain to try and log on and find something, so help out if you can!

I run http://db.etree.org

The legal issues I often wonder about are right along these lines. My web site allows people to list boolegs of concerts they own so others can contact them if interested in a trade.

My legal problem is: other people have artists listed that do now allow trading of their music. I have a flag that specifies whether a user owned show is tradable, and this is up to the user to control.

If I run into problems, I intend on flagging my artists table with tradable-non-tradable flags and forcing all non-tradable bands to not be displayed.

This is a backup plan, so, in short, I plan on keeping my site free to people to use as they see fit for as long as I can, and if I get shit from some corp., I've got a plan in place.

unless it was a phish show. Then you'd be a phan.

Check out Etree.org

Grateful Dead fans have been doing exactly that for years and years. Basically, the Dead allowed their fans to tape their shows and trade them freely. It was one of the big reasons for their enormous popularity. There are a lot of newer bands that have taken the same attitude. Phish, Medeski, Martin and Wood, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, and countless other bands allow you to freely trade tapes (and now CDR's) of their concerts. The best way to get hooked up with their music is by going to http://www.etree.org and subscribing to the mailing lists.

I love E-Tree. I've downloaded and burned dozens and dozens of excellent live shows that I never would have been able to hear if it weren't for the loose network of fans that make this kind of stuff possible.


========
Stephen C. VanDahm

-

One key issue that's vital to us in the live recording trading community is the lossless compression. MP3 is just not good enough for the DAT-head and other audiophiles among us, since it's by very nature a lossy compression algorithm, chopping off key bands of audio information. Shorten avoids that by not cutting any audio information. True, it does not compress as much, thus making download times longer, but that's no excuse for sloppy sounding audio.

We've been trading cd-quality live music online for almost two years now. The best part is that what we do is acually sanctioned by the bands, most of which have big-time record deals (namely Phish and the Grateful Dead). They've given the RIAA the finger and so have we.

CowboyNeal, I'm surprised I haven't seen you on the mailing list yet...

I am totally disgusted by the way the popular music is created and distributed now-adays. A big name band gets noteriety by getting their song played to death on the radio, and everyone seems to go along with this, somehow thinking that the changing songs on the radio indicate what songs we are supposed to like. Then the band makes money from millions of people buying the album, usually for the one song on the radio. (I'm not specifically referring to metallica here.)

I'm a fan of performance-oriented bands, such as Widespread Panic, Phish, the Dead, etc. Most "Jam-Band" fans recognize that the studio recording is nothing but a shadow of these bands, a mere echo of what they are capable of at a live performance. They don't try to make thier songs "radio-friendly" in order to sell albums. They just play great music, which their fans reward by attending shows, and telling their friends about the band. And these aren't garage bands either.. (nothing wrong with small bands, just making a point.)

EVERY jam-band that I know of allows live recordings of its shows, and allows free non-commercial trading of the recordings. And in the case of the Dead, this free-trading has gone on for DECADES! You don't have to listen to the exact-same song that has only been released on one album. You get to hear variations as the bands sound changes and evolves.

Sugarmegs.org has been making this kind of music freely available for many years, in many formats. The etree facilitates the cd-quality distribution of such shows.

OK, so they are important, but there are a lot of musical groups that have built a degree of freedom into their business models.

Phish, for example, allows people to bring DAT recorders to their concerts, record the show, and give it away to anyone who wants it. The only catch is that no one may take money for them. You have to either give them away, or trade for another concert. They do not collect copyright royalties on this stuff, but they've more than made up for it, because tape trading is probably what gave them such a rabid fan base.

There are many other bands that allow trading. The coolest place to go to get hooked up is http://www.etree.org.

This sounds bad, but maybe recorded music just won't be marketable in the future. The recording industry has tried for years to build copy protection into digital recording and playback gizmos, but people just don't buy them. I think the idea of being told what they can and can't do with the stuff they buy turns them off. That's why I've been afraid of investing in a DVD deck. The industry cannot control piracy without replacing the current technology (compact discs, MP3, etc) with copy protected technology. However, people won't buy something unless they can do all of the things they are accustomed to doing with their current systems.

Back in the 1950's and earlier, when recording quality sucked ass, musical groups made their money from touring, and recordings were viewed simply as a way to maintain boost ticket sales. I would like to see the industry swing that way again. There is nothing better, in my view, than going to hear a great live show in a club or small theater. And God knows how hard it is to find a good live show these days.

I think the overall quality of music will improve this way. If they can't build a loyal fanbase on the touring circuit, they will either evolve to the point where they can, or they will have to grow up and get day jobs.

Just think -- no more Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears.

These are just my thoughts, and I haven't thought too much about them. Let me know what you think.

Take care,

Steve
========

Everyone has to learn about a band before they can be fans of that band. Tape trading allows new fans to check out bands. It is It is very similar to swapping mp3s (or other formats) on the web, only it has been around a few decades longer. in fact, the web has allowed for quicker and more trades (see links at end of post for more info on this). This has resulted in a boom to the jamband scene.

So others know, the scene is not made of just the big names you know of (and that many people think of as "hippie dippie bands"). There are in fact hundreds of bands in the scene that range from a more classical jam style to jazz to funk to Latino, etc. There is no one style of jamband (Check out Jambase.com for dates of a jamband playing in your area).

What I am trying to say is what the jamband community has known for a long time, allowing your music to be traded free of charge to the public, can pay off in many other ways in the long run (more ticket sales, album sales, merchandise sales, etc.). We are in a new age, where record labels need to learn that a 35 minute CD for $16+ is no longer acceptable, and the fans have the power now to prove this. As it has been said many times before, labels are going to have to figure out new ways of doing business because the old model just doesn't cut it anymore. These labels have to come to a realization, stop fighting the inevitable, and change their models of business. We are in an age where the consumer has the upper hand, and many more companies are learning this the hard way.

If you are interested in seeing more of the jamband community and how it operates check out these sites (these are only a few of the thousands of sites on the web about/for tape trading, if you are seriously interested in more sites or information just follow the links from these pages):

etree.org - This is a community dedicated to freely trading tapes (only of bands that allow it) via shorten format (a non-lossy form of compression).
Sugar Megs - a community that trades full shows in the mp3 format

Etree rocks. Of course, most of the folks on etree are anal - don't expect to jump on any etree sites and pull down MP3s (sorry, modem uers). It's geared (as HHaygood stated) towards the high-speed folks. Phish is by far the biggest band on Etree. Recently, the Pepsi Project attempted to have the 10/9 and 10/10 shows available for download within 24 hours after they were played, and except for a couple of small hangups, they were pretty close to being successful.

Curse off MP3 forever and see the light.

BTW, a typical show is usually closer to 1000 MB, since the music doesn't fill up the entire 3 discs. Of course, there's always room for filler.

And sorry, no time for B&Ps right now, but I am accepting login requests. More info can be found on etree.org.

Etree is a collection of volunteers who distribute entire Phish (and gDead, and SCI, and MMW, etc.) shows, compressed with the non-lossy SHN format. A typical show (3 CD's) is around 1350 MB or so.

They collect only the highest-quality digital source tapes (for Phish, anyway), master them, and split the tracks (no more one-track sets!).

It's free, and it's the highest possible quality, and you're free to do whatever you like with your burns (give them away, trade them) as long as you DON'T SELL THEM. Check it out!

• the Etree - high quality (no lossy compression) Internet distribution via volunteer FTP sites
• SugarMegs Audio - modem-friendly; everything from RealAudio to mp3 and Shorten