HW: Live at The Kinetic Playground

[Paul Mather]

On Mon, 6 Jul 1998, Horse Whisperer wrote:

> MP3 is definitely the format I'd use.  I haven't checked the difference
> in size between 44.1 stereo RealAudio (non-streamed) and a similar
> Mpeg3, but the comparison must be close, if not favourable.  Certainly
> the quality is a vast improvement.

IMHO, this is a no-brainer.  MPEG is an open ISO standard, developed and
refined over several years by lots and lots of people, including the
folks that produce professional broadcast audio and video.  The audio
part has gone through extensive blind listening tests to ensure high
perceptual fidelity.

RealAudio, on the other hand, is a proprietary format that works on a
few platforms, mainly Windoze.  It does not have nearly the developer
base that MPEG enjoys.  I can handle MPEG fine, but RealAudio isn't
supported (last I checked) on my desktop workstation (a DEC 3000/500S
Alpha AXP).

Digital audio sampled at CD rate (44.1 KHz; stereo; 16-bit samples)
consumes about 10MB per minute of audio.  Compressing using MPEG layer 3
audio with a 128 KHz bitrate often yields about 1 MB per minute in the
compressed stream, and the sound quality is perceptually close to the
original source.  Greater compression (and greater loss of fidelity) can
be achieved by lowering the bitrate, e.g. to 56 KHz, or, by resampling
at a lower rate (22 KHz, etc.), or by squeezing into mono.

The problem about digital audio is that folks often forget the basic
fact that it consumes a lot of bandwidth, so, for great quality, you
need to use more megabytes.  Sad, but true.

> If I were in a popular band who's fans recorded gigs, all I would ask
> would be that they let us know and send us a decent copy (burnt CD?).
> I'd then make either the CD available through Mail Order (costs only),
> or, if we made enough money, get a site with lots of space and upload
> every track in MP3.

I think band attitude is the key.  I am on the Govt. Mule mailing list,
and people are openly trading live shows on there all the time.  In
fact, there's a permanent tape tree allied with the list, called the
Mule Trane.  The seed for that tree often comes from soundboards
provided by the band.  This is all made possible by the bands official
taping policy: they sanction taping at their shows, and sanction trading
so long as no profit is made when trading shows.

Many of the shows I've received recently are really superb quality in
terms of sound and performance.  Again, this is thanks, really, to the
band: they've actually said they'd rather be open about taping, and
allow people to set up proper equipment (good mics, etc.) and get a
great sounding recording than to have to sneak in crappy equipment and
make a lousy recording.  Bad recordings make the band sound crap, so it
makes sense to let fans get the best recording possible.

> Or just call me irresponsible.  My (hypothetic) record company would
> then sue us then kill us dead then market all our back catalogue and not
> pay us a bean.

I guess it depends on the clout of the band.  For example, The Allman
Brothers Band are on Sony, and they officially allow taping.  Metallica
are on Electra, and they allow taping.  Both are major labels.  Both
bands have no problems selling records, despite the taping policy.

Cheers,

Paul.

obCD: Allman Brothers Band, _Fillmore East, 1970_

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"I didn't mean to take up all your sweet time"
        --- James Marshall Hendrix