5 pounds for .MP3?
 

Anyone who cares about quality audio knows that MP3 is a lossy format with audible artifacts. I'd gladly pay even more than £5 for 25 minutes of new Underworld material, but the not in a format where cymbals sound like white-noise. Doesn't Underworld care about giving their loyal fans a quality listening experience? Do they not know about lossless formats like .FLAC and .APE? Are they just trying to keep download times faster for better profit margins? They've got to be saving a bundle by skipping all the expense of a CD release. Can't they afford the bandwidth to let us suck down a better sounding file? This isn't a gift to the loyal fans. We're being milked like suckers.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

lol.

white noise.
that was terrible movie.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

Seriously mate, get over it.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

the more i read the line the more i giggle.

to myself.
i'm in a library you know.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

You know tox, not everyone is an audiophile...

About %90+ of us cannot tell a difference.

Why increase download time/file size for a marginal difference that most of us will never be able to hear?

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

I hardly think that 192kbps mp3 is white noise but I appreciate the point youre trying to make.

I too would like an option of FLAC, like the Soma Records store where you can download mp3@192kbps or a FLAC for £1.09. For 12" releases this is great, if a little expensive for albums with many tracks, but I like the choice.

What you have to understand is that right now, we have only had one downloadable release and that its very much at the experimental stage. Who knows if we ask nicely that we may get FLAC in the future, but I'm not exactly criticising the mp3's as they sound ok to me. I remember when they were trying to tell us that mp3@128kbps was "cd quality", so this is a great improvement.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

i hardly think UW is doing this 'for the money' but rather for the fans. no one is being milked. im not an audiophile. i dont notice the difference nor do i have the equipment to notice the difference.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

jesus christ almighty...

when Underworld started out there was one format, Vinyl...

ok so times have moved on, but come on...mp3 quality is good, especially at 192kbps...

people do have various quality equiptment on which these files are played...

i know we are living in a digital age, but calm down a bit...at least we are getting decent quality audio of unreleased stuff at a decent price...

i agree that there should be an option to release stuff in different formats, but most people in the world are only just getting used to mp3's, this is not an excuse just a matter of fact...by offering various other formats it may confuse the issue rather than improve it...

i think that when your ITunes & other big mp3 sites start offering other formats, many will follow, but until then, its mp3 i'm afraid...

and based upon what we had before (vinyl or cassette tape quality) its not THAT bad...

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

well, i am an audiophile, and these mp3s are teh suxxxies on my f*cking rig. nasty artifacts, metallic highs, flat lows, etc.

typical mp3 complaints. and ones the UW dudes should be well aware of. that's our boy's point, i think.


i say all this while listening to the JAL to Tokyo EP on f*cking repaeat, blood dripping from my ears 'n all.


:)

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

i've posted this before, but it's worth repeating:
http://www.mp3-tech.org/tests/gb/

192 kbps mp3 is just fine for most people. Unless you're planning to remix the new tracks, i don't think any of us really require huge over-encoded files, especially as they'd probably get converted back to wav or mp3 for CD burning anyway.

Remember, UW is doing us a favor by offering this new service to get music to the fans quicker! i don't think we should look a gifthorse in the mouth, as the saying goes...

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

192 kbps mp3 vs CD quality AIFF/WAV is entirely discernible to me, and every person i know who's listened to stuff through my semi-audiophile grade setup.

seriously, as the author of the linked material states, there's just *something* missing... and that something is flattened bass and mid sections, and metallic highs.

it didn't stop me from buying stuff of iTMS Japan, nor will it kep from buying any and everything UW put out via UWLive, but i do think its important for people to understand that if one takes the time to properly A/B original source with ripped 192 kbps mp3, that one'll readily hear the difference on any decent system.

/rant

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

I can't tell the difference..........

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

maybe the boys should ship around the master analog tapes? That'd be most efficient, high-quality, and cost-effective :p


i agree that higher encoding could help and wouldn't be that much larger of a file. But i also agree with BSS's point above that mp3 is where it's at for most of the downloading public. So that's what we're likely to get for the time being.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

i cant tell the difference either since i dont have the original uncompressed version to compare it to. ;)

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

yeah who says the original doesn't sound exactly like this....

;)

nothings prefect...





















;)

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

i can tell the difference, but frankly i couldn't give a fuck.
new underworld music is new underworld music.

:)

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

I think they ought to at least give us VBR mp3s, encoded in --aps, because that's the closest you can get to CD quality, and since it's MP3, any program can play it. The only real complaint I had of LBT is the "vision...come on" part which sounded terribly compressed.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

I dont know or care about the difference, maybe thats because everything I have is converted to mp3 in the end.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

I can tell the difference....and it's kinda dumb not to be able to download a wav or at least a 320kbps vbr......:rolleyes:

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

A bunch of musicians and production whizzes will be even more discerning. Underworld is state or the art and don't normally skimp on quality. MP3 is no gift to those of us who value UW enough to listen with discretion.

LIke I say, £5 for 25 minutes of quality UW material would be a bargin in my book. But if you think a £5 .mp3 is a gift, you are a push-over. (The problem with 'fans' is they think whatever turd their band lays is worth something and they stop thinking about what is good/bad.) With no manufacturing or marketing cost, and no record company taking a fat slice, UW is probably getting over 90% of our £5 per download. With traditional CD releases they may have seen 10% return. They could encode a .flac and plop it on the site while they wait for a a cup of coffee to cool.

If you don't do a comparision then don't talk about it sounding the same. You don't know until you try. Rip your fave CD track to both .wav and .mp3. Make sure there is no gain correction so the levels are identical. (Louder always sounds better, even if the difference is barely noticable.) Play both back simultaneously and switch between them with whatever mixer app your computer uses. If your speakers really suck so bad you can't tell the diff, use headphones. If your computer is not plugged into the system you listen to, decompress the MP3 to wave and burn both to a cd. The loss occurs during .mp3 compression so the resulting .wav will sound like the source .mp3.

If you still don't hear the diff, lucky you. Your collection of crap quality pirated MP3 will still have some value for you. I can hardly wait for my hearing to be that shot and I can quit spending money on decent audio.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

I hope UW continue to milk us for some time...

Seriously, if you don't like how it sounds, don't buy it...

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

it's an mp3 only release. what exactly do we have to compare it to? :cool:

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

why have a format that only 5% of us can use? i'm one of those 'audiophiles', and having it in .wav format would be ideal.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

so you don't know what FLAC is then? FLAC is Free Lossless Audio Codec. Its basically a compressed wav without any loss in sound quality whatsoever and can be decoded to wav or CD once downloaded if you so wish, only half the size of wav (anyway, as UW use Macs the files would be AIFF).

Only a limited amount of mp3 players can play FLAC (the iAUDIO range do this as well as Ogg) but most people burn these to CD. FLAC is a great way of distributing lossless audio and without any codec royalty payments.

The Grateful Dead offer their download albums in mp3@128, mp3@256 and in FLAC (although the site incorrectly states that the FLACs cannot be played in iTunes or Windows Media Player).

Also, Internet record label Magnatune are really leading the way in the way you can download and/or order your music from them in a variety of formats one of which is FLAC (and also AAC/mp3/Ogg.wav). Actually, check em out, they have a great catalogue.

But, right now I'm not gonna shout out and demand FLAC. I would like to see all of the songs that have been released so far, released in a lossless format at some point but I'm not in that much of a hurry. For now, I'm happy enough with 192kbps. TypeCross/34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j's comments about using VBR with --aps are valid though and in the meantime its certainly something that the guys at Underworldlive could take into consideration because it does make a difference to quality whilst retaining the same filesize and compatibility. The Soma shop mp3s are encoded using the lame encoder at 192kbit VBR quality level 2 and then ID3 tagged.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

I would like to see then mp3s at 256kbps and possibly FLAC in the future. I cannot tell the difference at 256 but I definitely can at 192. What would probably be best is a choice so that people who do not care as much about the quality can get a more compress file faster and those that do have to option to get a better sounding one.
Jazzanova's label, Sonar Kollektiv, just started releasing all of its stuff on mp3 at 256kbps and it sounds pretty damn good. Much better than BLT from a purely audio standpoint.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

I have to agree with stimpee here. This is more what I was looking to say. This is the first time UW has ever released their music in this way, therefore it is very reasonable not to expect it to be perfect right off the bat. It's also smart, if I were in there shoes, not to release their absolute best material this way until they know more what to expect.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

ok, i get the quality issue, but why begrudge UW getting paid their dues for something they made...the same issue of royalties would apply if this was in any downloadable format and is irrelevant to the issue of quality...

there's no point picking up on the issue of mp3 quality and making it into a "UW are money grabbing bastards" point when making it in wav or Flac or whatever would produce the same monetary issues...

Ok UW could and perhaps should have issued it in other formats, but the fact is they haven't yet...but come on, if £5 is too much for you to pay for an mp3, then don't pay, you've already said you'd pay £5 for a decent quality version but that would have the same 'royalty' issues

its still 'milking the fans', if that's how you see it, whatever format its in...

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

Like, whether or not 1 person would download it and then spread it free on Kazaa?:D

Well, that means they might not be giving us quality mp3s because they don't trust us enough to. The bastards.:p

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

Seriously, I really fucking love bad recordings. Distortion is ace.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

The no record company taking a slice part is excellent and I dont begrudge Underworld a penny of the money they are taking. What is good in this situation is that they are in control of what they are doing. From pricing, to distribution model to file format. In this case i'm sure we can make our voice heard and maybe persuade them to change things in the future. Not because we are nit-picking and really criticising the service but because we want to make it better.

themongoose: all recordings released in any format will find their way onto the P2P sites no matter what. All record companies (Sony/EMI/BMG etc) and technology companies (Microsoft/Apple) do is make it a pain in the arse to transcode/transport the music to the places you want to and ultimately piss you off.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

FLAC would be great, although I can certainly not tell the difference between cd and 192 Khz mp3, and out of all the blind listening test i've seen done (by audio magazines etc), most audiophiles who claim to be able to hear it are full of shit in reality ;) :D

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

Thanks for the tips. I'll go back to enjoying the crap "lovely Broken Thing" file that i bought. :rolleyes:

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

random tox,what a boring w..... !

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

I think Random Tox's point (if he has one) is that we are taking a step backwards in terms of quality. We used to buy CDs and bow we buy inferior quality mp3s (whether we can tell the difference or not). At least I think thats the point he's trying to make.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

we also used to buy tape cassettes. we also used to dub tape cassettes off of already dubbed tape cassettes.


i think mp3s are fine. cheap and quick for this project. when they release an album proper, im sure it will be with all the quality one can hope for.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

yes but thats because that was the way cassettes were copied - with a generational loss. mp3's ARE fine but they are a step backwards in terms of quality from CDs and dont cost any less to produce than the lossless (although they do cost less in terms of bandwidth), hence the choice I would like to see future. However, whatever, I do have faith in Underworldlive.com to get it right in the end.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

no need to explain things,what he was really doing is implying that fans are idiots,underworld are ripping us off and unless you don't see things his way then you're a fool.don't be polite, he's a bore with nothing new or clever to say.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

omg i'm listening to it right now and it's totally crappy and complete gibberish.

what about the pictures though? they're not at 400 dpi, what a rip! i can't exprience the full journey or purpose of his photos at this quality at all. they may as well not even be there. i think they're in inferior quality because he wanted to save space on his camera/phone for better profit margins...

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

let's also take into consideration that we probably would not have heard these tracks at all if UW were still tied to a "cd only" record deal and we would still be waiting for the album to come out. UW have said that there will still be an album coming which I'm willing to bet will be released on cd/vinyl as usual.

Re: 5 pounds for .MP3?
 

i give that a double ;)