Why are some bootlegs only available in lossless?
Most of the bootlegs you hear on U2start have kindly been recorded by a taper who has attended the venue with a lot of equipment (often against venue rules), located a good recording spot and often has had to stand still during the show in order to get a good recording of the show. When tapers share their recordings, they will often do so in a lossless format to ensure that what is shared is of the highest possible quality. Very often a taper will request that their recording is not shared in a lossy format because this reduces the quality of their recording. Although a lot of us may not hear any difference between lossless and lossy, we at U2start feel it is important to respect the wishes of tapers as not doing so may mean that tapers may be put off from sharing future recordings which is of no benefit to the whole community.
Where a show only available in lossless, you can download it and convert it to your desired format. Feel free to ask for help on our forums if you need any help with how to do this.
Originally posted by patrickwaldron:If somebody takes the time o firstly record the show and they then tweak it and improve that recording and then go to the trouble of adding in the info and track listings and in some cases covers too....they may request that their recording only be downloaded or reshared as a flac format but you can download it and run it thru any audio converter and you will have a mp3 version in under 5 minutes which is a hell of a lot less than the original uploader spent.....so be thankful
Originally posted by patrickwaldron:If somebody takes the time o firstly record the show and they then tweak it and improve that recording and then go to the trouble of adding in the info and track listings and in some cases covers too....they may request that their recording only be downloaded or reshared as a flac format but you can download it and run it thru any audio converter and you will have a mp3 version in under 5 minutes which is a hell of a lot less than the original uploader spent.....so be thankful
Originally posted by cesar_garza01:Like Remy said, it's not that we don't want to convert it to mp3s for you, is that if we do that violating taper's wishes, they'll just stop sharing their recordings and everyone looses.
Originally posted by Remy:From our lossless FAQ:
[..]
Also, we make it very easy and accessible to convert it to MP3. We display a help icon on the download page when a recording is only available in lossless that points to this page which explains how you can convert FLAC to MP3, which takes 2 clicks and 5 minutes. Given broadband internet and speed nowadays and such easy tools, it's almost NO effort at all to convert it to MP3 for personal use. And if by this way we please everyone, why shouldn't we?
Originally posted by u2met86:[..]