nailz
Member
Likely you moved the files and just need to point iTunes to the new location. Or stop using iTunes to listen to music.
Actually, that's starting to change too.
New Suspyre Album Announcement!
- Thread starter GreggSuspyre
- Start date
Likely you moved the files and just need to point iTunes to the new location. Or stop using iTunes to listen to music.
Actually, that's starting to change too.
That's one thing I like about digital; there is no overhead and it's much more environmentally friendly...that's why I wanted to do some research if it's even worth it to produce physical copies of my projects. The physical footprint of CDs is annoying as well. I'm completely OCD in that I would alphabetize my collection into binders, divided my genre. The thing is, when I'd get a new one, I'd have to shift the rest down to make room. And where do you put your recordings of the Mahler Symphonies by the Chicago Orchestra, under Solti (conductor) or Mahler (composer)? Too much unnecessary stress! Hence why a few years ago I ripped everything to a 1TB hard drive and threw the cases in a box until the rainy day when I can re-organize.
That said, CDs sound better and as AMBR eluded to, iTunes messes things up...and hard drives crash more frequently than houses burn down...(I would hope!)
Silverlinings
Member
- Jun 11, 2010
- 118
- 11
- 18
Hey Gregg, what about sites like bandcamp or mindawn? Their digital releases are available with booklets and multiple formats including FLAC. Mindawn doesn't have booklets, but has all downloads in FLAC format. Just a thought, as I get stuff from both sites all the time.
SkiBumMSP
Member
+1 on Mindawn!
Hell, listening to an album right now that I recently got off of Mindawn - CETi - Shadow of the Angel. The thing is, the FLAC downloads cost the same (and sometimes cheaper) then getting the same thing off of Amazon or iTunes (if it is even available on Amazon or iTunes, which I've found more often that it is not). I end up burning the FLACs to CD and playing them on the CD player instead of through my music server.As for the iTunes question, do a search on the music files (or at least look if they are still in the same place). It is very unlikely that iTunes would've deleted the files simply due to an upgrade.
And lastly, back to the topic at hand. I was prepared to pledge, but I forgot as I got busy the past week, plus I was also in the camp that I did not want to create yet another account on yet another website. I am very interested in the physical copy as myself. First, because I have all three of the previous albums on CD and would like to "keep my collection complete" by having this new one on CD as well. I do like digital downloads as a matter of convenience (and is much easier than to hassle with import copies of albums. How many times I've seen an album on Amazon that is listed as "import" and charging $40 for it, only to have the MP3 album for like $8?) But in the end, I much prefer the better sound quality of the physical copy when it is available. Even though I did not get to pledge, do at least count me down for a physical copy when they become available.
Also to add, if you MUST go digital only, please, for the love of God and everything Audiophile, offer it in full lossless FLAC format! Not is just MP3 - even if you must charge an extra dollar or two for it (like Mindawn does). I've listened to your music enough to know how good your stuff is typically recorded. A few years ago, I was in Indianapolis and playing A Great Divide to a room full of audiophiles, on a $20,000 pair of speakers, fronted by another $30,000 worth of electronics and I've seen quite a few jaws drop to the floor! One guy went and copied the website off the back of the jewel case! So, please, at least give us the ability to download in a full resolution, lossless format and not mangle it up as MP3 only if no physical copy will be made available.
SkiBumMSP
Member
At the risk of sounding like I am repeating myself, but if that is going to be the case, then just offer it up as full lossless FLAC format download with the insert booklet as a companion PDF file (including an image of the CD imprint itself). If somebody wants to make a physical copy, they will have everything they need to do it themselves in terms of music and artwork.
I don't know much about FLAC files, except when I downloaded one it crashed my computer, so I have avoided them. But believe me, if we were to do digital only, it will definitely be a download from our website as CD-quality .wav files!
I actually just signed up for bandcamp the other day. The suspyre handle was taken already, so that was a little strange, but I hope to get that site started soon for hosting purposes. The more I thought about hosting the album on our website, the less I liked the idea, as 1) our website was recently phished and they want a ridiculous amount of money for it back, and 2) if I hosted a URL somewhere, how do I know people aren't just going to share it? Piracy happens, but I don't want to make it easier. Also, the traditional iTunes release will happen as well because more than 50% of people seem to prefer that anyway; the fact that our CD can be suggested from similar purchases makes it worth it.
Now, I must hear what you heard on that pro sound system!
Not mass-producing means we'll make copies in the hundreds, not thousands. And fear not, they will be professionally done regardless. I could do it in house like I do for local bands' demos, but that'll be cheesy for this project. We're leaning towards digi-packs because very few people read the liner notes anyway (do you know how many reviews I've read where people list the wrong drummer, quote the wrong lyrics, or even get the song titles incorrect?).
usaprogmusic
ProgPowerGRRL
That's because many promos that labels send out don't have liner notes included so that information is not readily available with the music. However, a responsible journalist should research that on the Internet before publishing their article to make sure information is accurate.
AngraRULES
Member
Yeah... but consider two things:
1 - "Responsible journalist" in metal is very rare these days. 95% of them aren't professional journalists.
2 - Professional journalists (as well as amateur ones) many times have a pile/list of 40 albums to review before the end of the week. Mistakes happen. Guarantee you that lots of times, there's no extra time to go out there and research to make sure you got the exact information, especially when (as you said), the labels don't provide the liner notes, etc. more often than not.
Cool. I thought the minimum production run on CDs was 1000. Glad to hear you can produce a quality product in lower quantities.
Justin G
Member
Very good points. As an amatuer hack myself, I can say out of the dozen or so albums I receive for reviewing purposes each month, approximately zero are physical CDs, and precious few of the albums I get digitally have even basic press info. I'm left with sites like Metal Archives or the band/label websites for info on history and lineup, and we all know that is only as reliable as the person updating it.
The lyrics are another matter. With the average Frontiers album it's not an issue, because they all boil down to "blah, blah, love, love, love," but not having lyrics for progressive metal albums - which tend toward more complex themes or full-on conceptual works - makes it harder for me to do the album justice when I'm reviewing it. Review copies of the last Suspyre album - just to keep things (relatively) on topic, went out in cardboard sleeves with minimal information about the album. That probably has a lot to do with whatever inaccuracies Greg encountered in the reviews for the album.
That's right, I remember the promo copies being only in slipcases, but at least they shouldn't write about what's not proven. But, not everyone that writes a review is a recipient of a promo copy; some are amateur reviewers that bought a retail copy.
AngraRULES
Member
AngraRULES
Member
Justin G
Member
SkiBumMSP
Member
FLAC is Free Lossless Audio Codec. They typically take about half the space of a full, uncompressed WAV file (saving considerable bandwidth on the downloads), plus also has metadata tagging as well (like MP3), whereas WAV does not (so you can imbed artist/album/track title, track number and so forth in the file.
When you mean 'download', are you saying it crashed your computer just from the actual downloading itself or when you actually tried to play it? The likes of Winamp, iTunes, and Windows Media Player does not support FLAC naively. You typically have to find some kind of "plug-in" to get these program to play. I typically just use a free program called Foobar2000 to play FLACs, plus it has the built-in capability of converting to WAV. I then use Exact Audio Copy to make an actual CD out of it after converting to WAV.
Though I don't believe the quality can be the same as a .wav at half its filesize, it's good that one can embed metadata tagging. I will try A/Bing that format with .wav to find out if I can hear a difference.
I do a lot of studio work that requires various sound effects, so I'm a member of a site that hosts thousands of them. When I downloaded a FLAC and brought it into my DAW (Sonar) the computer crashed. Thanks for the links; it's good to know I could convert them to something safer!
dcowboys311
Member
Think of it like a zip file for .wav files.
It's the same thing, just smaller filesize. You can convert the FLACs back to WAV and vice-versa.
It's the same thing, just smaller filesize. You can convert the FLACs back to WAV and vice-versa.
SkiBumMSP
Member
Believe it! That is why it is called Free LOSSLESS Audio Codec! There is absolutly no loss of quality converting to FLAC. You could just as easily simply zip them up using standard .zip compression and get the same effect, but for FLAC, the compression scheme is more optimize for audio, thus is able to be a bit more efficient (about 1/2 the size vs simply zipping them up will gain you maybe 20 to 30 percent reduction in file size). In fact, I went and took an MD5 checksum on a .WAV file, ran it through a FLAC compression (again, via Foobar2000), and then uncompressed it again to WAV. Took another MD5 checksum and they came out the same. Just as was said immediately above, it is like zip for audio files. After all, do you zip up Word or Excel documents to email them and then be able to unzip them and have Word or Excel be able to open them up without error? Same thing here.
Okay, so it did crash when you actually tried to open/play the FLAC file (instead of merely downloading it to the machine). Obviously that software (are you talking about Cakewalk Sonar? Surprises the hell out of me that would have issues with FLAC files!) does not support FLAC. Sounds like piss-poor implementation for it crash (or possibly a corrupted installation) instead of simply kicking it out as an unsupported format (I am a software engineer, so I know a thing or two about dealing with crap like that
) You will then probably need to convert them to WAV (again, Foobar2000 is a good, free program that can easily and safely do it).If you really need help if setting up/converting to FLAC when you want to release this album, I will be more than happy to help you out with that regard gratis (won't ask for consulting fees or such) - consider it support for Suspyre, of whom I am a HUGE fan of and would love to see succeed. Believe me, I am really looking forward to hearing this new one. Hell, I still spin your very first one from time to time! I will assure you that I think that using FLAC will be the best route to take if you want to release this new album digitally, with absolutely no loss of quality. You may also want to take a look at Mindawn or that Bandcamp site as well as avenues for release as well.
nailz
Member
For non-tech people, what this means, basically, is that the file went through a compression state and then was uncompressed with no change.
Example:
A WAV file could look like this: ABCDEFGHIJK - This is called "lossless" - all of the digital information is there, which is then translated back into audio information
The MP3 would look like this : ACDGK - This is "lossy" - you'll see "B, E, and F" are gone. When you listen to this, the computer knows B,E and F are missing, and ignores them completely. Normally, you would not notice these missing gaps.
The FLAC file would look like this: ACDFHJK - Bigger than the MP3 file, but still with missing pieces. HOWEVER, when it's run through the program that plays it BACK, it uses an algorythm to fill in what's missing. This is "decompression" and allows it to be "lossless".
