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  1. Originally posted by hoserama:I can see on the syntactic difference there

    Thanks for posting the stars FAQ. I almost feel there should be a different ranking system for audience recordings vs SBD/ALD/IEM/Line recordings of some sort. I've seen a bunch of horrible wireless recordings get high rankings just for the novelty of it.
    Fair feedback that. It does take a bit of time going through each of them for review but I have many audience recordings I'd rate at 3-4 stars that I think sound substantially better than 5 star rated soundboards or IEM's.

    We will continue to review the ratings system.
  2. i'll listen today and submit a review of the recording tomorrow. so far imo, pasadena 1 is the best boot from this tour followed by the santa clara recording.
  3. i mean pasadena 2. not 1.
  4. I think people get wow'ed with wireless recordings just for the novelty. I'd argue that the pristine clean single Edge or Bono feed should be rated no more than 4 out of 5 stars at the most, since it's an unbalanced representation of the show.
  5. The ijwthstd AT831 source?

    I'd argue the Santa Clara Schoeps source is better. A nice DPA 4060 source of both Pasadena shows may be coming forward soonish.
  6. yeah the ijwthstd one. i love the raw loudness of the recording yeah. yes santa clara may be, or is, a little cleaner.
  7. I haven't listened to anything from the tour yet just to keep it fresh. I did try the ASOH/Bad clip though. It's great to hear it from an entirely different perspective but it's not a recording I could enjoy in full. I prefer to listen to a recording that best represents what I heard at the gig. This is why I always struggle with IEM/ALD.

    No doubt a brilliant technical achievement though.
  8. My point exactly--it's an incomplete recording It clearly needs some life breathed into it with an audience recording, and sounds like a dry soundboard.
  9. Originally posted by hoserama:I can see on the syntactic difference there

    Thanks for posting the stars FAQ. I almost feel there should be a different ranking system for audience recordings vs SBD/ALD/IEM/Line recordings of some sort. I've seen a bunch of horrible wireless recordings get high rankings just for the novelty of it.
    In principle the rating system should be able to cover poor iem's too. There is, for example, a funky 3,5 Paris iem in the database and perhaps that rating was even to optimistic .
    Same goes with perfect audience recordings that receive a "soundboard" grading (like MLK's 2015 Turin 1).

    5 stars: Near-Perfect Proper Recording; could be released as a proper live album (it may have already).
    4.5 stars: Good Proper Recording; recording sounds great, but doesn't properly represent event i.e. improper mix/incomplete soundboard (poor audience to band ratio/one sided to a certain performer).
    Strictly applied, the 4,5 and 5 stars should only be used for the "SBD/ALD/IEM/Line recordings of some sort," but I think it make sense to stretch the categories now and then. After all it's only an indication and general idea of quality. But I agree that the ranking should somewhat consider the nature of the source as well.

    I also think that a rating is good when it represents an average. The Pasadena 1 iPhone 6 recording could safely be argued as 2.5 stars, but also as 3,5 stars "considering it was done with internal mics" (thus 3 stars seems like a safe average).
  10. Disagree that 4.5-5 star recordings should only be used for SBD/Wireless recordings. I've heard (and taped) many bad recordings on wireless end. I'd rate a very solid audience recording over a fuzzy Terry IEM mix. My point is often the novelty of the SBD/Wireless recordings can obscure the true sound quality.

    Not to mention my argument that a straight IEM recording is an incomplete presentation of the show. An interesting presentation to be sure, but incomplete. A pristine AUD recording can capture the whole sound stage.

    Which again, goes back to my point about the possibility of different rating scales for AUD vs. Wireless vs SBD.

    (More an intellectual exercise at this point--I know the high amount of time & effort that it would take to re-rate existing recording and wouldn't happen for a long time).
  11. That's why we are applying the 4,5 & 5 star ratings rather more pragmatically than strictly to the letter

    Perhaps the term "proper recording" is somewhat outdated and misleading - not exactly sure what the original author of the ratings had in mind. Not sure what the alternative is either - we will have to think about that...we are thinking about that!
  12. It all comes down to personal preference. I am with you and always have said that I'll take a mediocre audience with a lot of clappers and out-of-tune singers than a mediocre soundboard/ALD with no life to it whatsoever. Any day.

    As Gerard said we are constantly reviewing the rating system because it's very hard to achieve a fair system rating that effectively compares audience microphone recordings with "line-sourced" recordings, and recordings that are 40 years old with others which are 4 days old. For some people, a poor soundboard will always be preferrable (a.k.a. higher rating) than the equivalent audience recording, while objectively both should be rated as "fair to poor" in the old standard of Justin CDR, achtungbootlegs, etc. The stars are just a more graphical and less biased method to rate the recordings, but of course there are multiple issues with them.