Has anyone purchased from fsoldigital?

Feel free to talk about anything and everything FSOL related in this board.
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Ross
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Re: Has anyone purchased from fsoldigital?

Post by Ross »

When I released the Xan Alexander album on Jerky Oats, he posted it over on some 'we only listen to electronic music that sounds like it was made before 1988' forum (there's such a huge scene for traditional/Berlin School electronic music - weird), where they seem to get really arsey about their sound quality, to the extent that people refused to download a free album because it was in 320kbps MP3. "Thanks, but unless it's FLAC I won't bother" sort of thing. I do kind of wonder if these people ever really enjoy music, whether they can hear the chord changes and samples beneath the fucking miniscule digital artefacting they think they can hear. I have no issue with 256kbps MP3 and above as I'm too busy listening to the music to notice a missing frequency that I never knew was there in the first place.

The one thing I do agree on is that FSOLDigital should at least state what format is being downloaded. They've always been DIY and not as high-tech as people think they are - any interview with the band from the 90s should reveal that, along with Brian circuit bending toys and making clockwork keyboards - so I'm not actually that surprised they don't have FLAC, maybe they're not all THAT bothered and are more interested, like many of us, in the music rather than the digital file format technology. But I do think the format and bitrate should be displayed on the website.
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seedy
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Re: Has anyone purchased from fsoldigital?

Post by seedy »

well i guess one big difference for me personally is like i stated earlier the fact that i ultimately burn all of my music to disc

when people are comparing flac to mp3 i feel like they are talking about listening to those files themselves and not files that were decoded to wavs.

i feel like the decoding back to wav exposes more flaws in mp3 than in flac

for me in the end...there's nothing that could ever go "wrong" with flac in the way that i use it....and really....i have about 400 gigs of flacs that i've yet to even listen to! that's more than enough for me to rest on ;)
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mcbpete
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Re: Has anyone purchased from fsoldigital?

Post by mcbpete »

seedy wrote:i feel like the decoding back to wav exposes more flaws in mp3 than in flac
Aye it would do - ' wav -> mp3 -> wav ' would end up with a file with the quality of the mp3 but a file size of an uncompressed wav. Whereas if you did ' wav -> flac -> wav ' you'd end up with the original wav file, bit for bit identical.

Let's put it in the very simplest forms -
mp3 - Lossy - If you encode a file to this you'll never get back all the information contained in the original file
FLAC - Lossless - If you encode a file to this, you've reduced the file size but not lost ANY, ANY information and you will be able to get back the original uncompressed file

Lossy - You lose stuff that you can't get back
Lossless - You lose nothing, not a jot


Though as I say, I really can't tell the difference by just listening, I honestly can't - but objectively I know there if one - plus if I end up reusing that compressed track and save it as another compressed one (e.g. when making mix sets) then I start noticing artefacts. It's like when you keep resaving a jpg and start getting digital mush like this -

Image
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Pandemonium
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Re: Has anyone purchased from fsoldigital?

Post by Pandemonium »

OK Pete, FLAC is totally lossless :) you win :P

the only real problem is many softwares & equipment have trouble with it, decompressing jitter & stuff - but fuck that, audiophiles are crazy freaks :) - this is resolved in converting back to WAV, so the real purpose of FLAC remains archiving lossless sound (this was the primary purpose of its making).

- the point that FLAC compression is nothing like ZIP still stands and the geeks from the FLAC site should remove/change it :)

- another point - for freaks - if you have > 5000W speakers in a bar or whatever, you can't go higher than 80% volume on FLAC, its the same level to 100% :) - this goes for 62% on MP3 :) - but who cares...

- this was a nice read though:
http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/WAV-FLAC.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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RazorJack
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Re: Has anyone purchased from fsoldigital?

Post by RazorJack »

As of yet, I still have never bought a digital copy of any music online. When I like music, and want to buy it, I want the real thing that I can hold in my hands and put in/on the player, not just 1's and 0's stored digitally on a hard drive. I guess I'm just old-fashioned ;-) Got really pissed off when I had to buy one of my favorite games online to be able to play it on its release :(
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dubmasta
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Re: Has anyone purchased from fsoldigital?

Post by dubmasta »

i think we should not be complaining about mp3 quality, whether it cuts above 19k or not is not an issue in my opinion. Because as Ross said above, we can hardly hear anything above 19-20k. i believe mp3 is a fantastic achievement for humanity, pure magic. there is definitely a difference between FLAC and mp3 but i can hardly feel anything, i guess the difference can be spotted when played on major sound systems, in clubs for example. especially 320kb/ps is almost a perfection, in my opinion anyway...
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RazorJack
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Re: Has anyone purchased from fsoldigital?

Post by RazorJack »

I believe children/teenagers can hear well up to 21-22 kHz. The sampling frequency of a cd is 44.1 kHz, so theoretically the highest possible audible frequency is half of that, according to the Shannon criterion: 22.05 kHz. The real issue is whether or not the used equipment can handle frequencies that high.
mp3 is a great invention indeed for discovering new music, the sound quality doesn't have to perfect.
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