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  1. Lossy for remasters and lossless for original source is perfectly fine
  2. At what point does better sound quality equate to more enjoyment of the listening experience?

    I can sorta get on-board your argument that there's not much sound quality difference between decent lossy & lossless, thus no real change in enjoyment. Fair enough, most folks generally don't operate that way but ok.

    I'm particularly confused of the argument that remasters are better kept lossy as to distinguish them from the original, but the originals should be kept lossless? Previously you basically argued there's no real difference lossy vs lossless, but now it's useful for demarcation purposes?

    Why not just label files appropriately?
  3. I think it's in order to avoid "dilluting the pool", that lovely taper's phrase
  4. Isn't releasing remasters then diluting the pool to begin with? Why not just label something "U2 - 6/6/6 - Live from Hell - Remastered by Lord Mammon". I don't think keeping it intentionally lossy effects the original?
  5. I’m glad you joined the discussion with some fair remarks Hoserama

    I will address them chronologically:

    I would say that since it is a subjective and qualitative matter, it is not really fair to think of it in terms of “equation.” As far as I’m concerned it is not a question of mathematics, but rather one of feeling. My point – or argument – basically was to say that both mp3 and flac are means to an end. The “end” is, as far as I’m concerned, enjoying the music.

    Bad encoded mp3’s surely compromise the listening experience, but lossless “raw” live audience recordings can also compromise this experience. Please note that I say this with deliberate emphasis on “can” – in my opinion this is certainly not in all cases but, yes, there are plenty examples and that is when remastering can enhance the listening experience. I think you will in principle agree as I think of your recent share!

    I can sorta get on-board your argument that there's not much sound quality difference between decent lossy & lossless, thus no real change in enjoyment. Fair enough, most folks generally don't operate that way but ok.

    I'm particularly confused of the argument that remasters are better kept lossy as to distinguish them from the original, but the originals should be kept lossless? Previously you basically argued there's no real difference lossy vs lossless, but now it's useful for demarcation purposes?
    Well, I only argued that in terms of “listening experience” there is not much difference (and even 24/96 – or 24/48 - captures can be decoded to high-end mp3’s with virtually no real audible difference – that this is not always done properly is another thing!). But it does, of course, matter if one wants to do his or her own remaster, equalization, hairball, etc.

    Anyway, my concern is basically to avoid a jungle of “remasters,” “upgrades,” and “enhanced youtube-audio files.”
    In fact I am trying to be careful and considerate of the taping & trading community. I don’t claim to have the best solution and I really appreciate to share some ideas about the sharing of remasters, either lossy or lossless (or both!).

    Why not just label files appropriately?
    Exactly, you are absolutely right: files should be labelled appropriately. And I would like to add that files should also be stored appropriately. This way the whole discussion whether or not it is better to “keep” remasters lossy is rather superfluous. But you also know that not everybody does that and then, in a couple of years from now, someone out of the blue decides to share remaster and “forgets” to mention the original source…
    With lossy remasters this would not happen so easily - at least they would not stay long on u2t. or dime.

    ***

    As far as my own remasters are concerned (thus not speaking about remasters in general!), I share them in particular for those who do not have the time, equipment, programmes, etc. to enhance – or somewhat “optimize” audience recordings for their own listening pleasure. Through the years the mp3 format has become the preferred medium as people asked for them. Way, way back I only shared .wma as they would enable gapless cd burning. Then I changed to flac and/or so-called fulltrack (=gapless) mp3’s. But in all these years one thing remained the same: the request for separate (track by track) mp3’s!
    And as soon as iPod’s enabled gapless playback, I started to share my remasters in mp3.

    The idea of “keeping” remasters lossy sort of grew from a concern of people in the trading community about the “jungle” of remasters and “what-have-you” being shared more and more.

    But then again, I also made a few “pitch-corrected” remasters based on absolute timing of the PA intro (e.g., Lovetown and Unforgettable Fire shows). I think those remasters deserve to be shared lossless, but it is also where the grey area begins. In such cases I think, for example, compression should be avoided.
  6. Ok, so basically, as long as the mp3 encoding isn't too bad, then there's a null effect on the enjoyment of the music for about ~90% of folks. I can agree with that.

    I'll agree that a poor recording can have a significantly stronger effect on the enjoyment of music for most folks. Hence my prior statements about the hockey puck recording--I would consider that a poor recording. But I do agree--as a whole, I would rather have a 192kps mp3 of an excellent soundboard than a 24bit/96k recording of another hockey puck type recording. But given the opportunity, I would much rather have the lossless recording of the soundboard.

    I'll agree that the goal of remastering is to increase the effective enjoyment of the recording, which is related to the sound. Increase sound quality, increase enjoyment (more or less echo'ing the paragraph above).

    I'm just not seeing where the argument for "remasters should not be spread losslessly." People forgetting or losing the information is going to happen regardless, whether or not there's remasters or not. Multiple shows have multiple different recordings. On this current tour, I was routinely running six independent recordings. If I were to release all of them, they're all independent recordings which could get shuffled around on the interwebs.

    You made an interesting point that lossy remasters would not hit the "mainstream" sites, such as U2T/DIME, because they're lossy. So by intentionally keeping it lossy, you intend to restrict the audience, thus reducing the chance it would reach a person that would relabel the files? Again--I would say the chance of a person relabeling something is there regardless.

    I would argue that once it's out there, you've basically lost control. I've had recordings of mine sold, remastered, butchered, insulted, mislabeled, other people take credit, etc. It happens. You can do the best you can to police it, but you can only do damage control. There's a good argument that if you spread it out far and wide, then you've increased the initial "seeding" of the lossless properly labeled recording, thus increasing the chance that people will naturally police it themselves.

    I do agree that there does tend to be a jungle of remasters. I do strongly feel that the taper (assuming its a recent recording where the taper is accessible) should give the blessing on the remaster before release. Which, as in this case, you did. So not a huge issue there. I do remember a couple years back when U2Freak999/Whatever was cooking up all sorts of crazy shoddy remasters. He'd post a remaster, then post another one six hours later "I had my stereo on bass + high boost when I remastered this, here's a fixed one". To make matters worse, he'd post another one two months later and say the original one was crap because he didn't know what he was doing. That's a prime example of flooding the market with crap remasters and making a mess.

    Too bad there's not a way to embed metadata that can't be stripped into the wave for file identification. I know how to create audio watermarks that are easily discernable but inaudible, and have done that before. But in any case, I don't think drawing the distinction between "remasters = lossy only" is a big deal.
  8. Originally posted by hoserama:[...] I'm just not seeing where the argument for "remasters should not be spread losslessly." People forgetting or losing the information is going to happen regardless, whether or not there's remasters or not. Multiple shows have multiple different recordings.
    [...]
    Too bad there's not a way to embed metadata that can't be stripped into the wave for file identification. [...] I don't think drawing the distinction between "remasters = lossy only" is a big deal.
    I think I agree with you there. It is indeed a bit absurd to hold that remasters should in principle be kept lossy.
    But, to be honest, my concern was – and still is – primarily a practical one. The remasters I share are recordings with no restrictions to “lossy share” and remastering and I don’t have to ask permission to share them here on u2start. By keeping the remasters lossy I avoid them ending up on u2torrents or dime. Not that this would be in principle wrong (because the taper has not restricted his or her recording), but being “published” on u2torrents does give it some unofficial “official” status. And particularly with the ‘i+e’ recordings it seems not quite right do this without tapers permission (we seem to agree on this one).

    Now I don’t mind asking permission, but I also think there should be a good reason to do so. I think one person asking for lossless publication is a bit too easy (and I’m not even sure what I shall do if 10 people ask for lossless publication).

    And, again, I am still not sure how much is gained in terms of sound quality*. I mean, the mp3’s are 256kb/s (16/44.1) and converted straight from (lossless) flac. Even for burning private cd’s it is more than sufficient (at least for most of us, I guess! )

    * edit: this is a practical question, not a theoretical one!
  10. Please everyone, lets keep this duscussion productive. I mean with arguments and things like that.

    The question basically has come down to "at what point do I ask Andy87 for permission to share lossless?"
  11. To which I might reply--what's the harm?

    If taper says lossy only, then all good by me. Taper call basically trumps anything, although I'll argue about the ethics of selling.

  12. This thread right now ^^^

    Let's thank the tapers and thank Joyce and others for their remasters, and move on