Graycap23 said:

TheEnglishGent said:

But it's a flac, so it must be better.

I think this is where I'm getting at, there's a lot of ignorance regarding sound files. People say it has to be better because they know it technically is better regardless of what happens in the real world.

[Edited 2/6/13 7:19am]

I have a sneaky suspicion that some people actually KNOW a great deal about music and how is is supposed 2 sound while other simple don't care.

+1

TheEnglishGent said:

Graycap23 said:

I have a sneaky suspicion that some people actually KNOW a great deal about music and how is is supposed 2 sound while other simple don't care.

I would say most don't care so long as it's not stupidly bad, I'm quite content listening to iTunes stuff if that's all I'm listening to. In know it's not the best, can tell in a blind testm, but don't really care. I'd say it's even more true for the younger generation where music has been largely reduced to something that's expected to be freely downloaded and not paid for.

For what it's worth, Breakfast Can Wait is a 320k mp3 sounds bad to me. Not because of the encoding but becasue of all the damn clipping. It hurts my ears!

That is a real issue these days with lots of releases, agreed.

itsjustaroundthecorner said:

id LOVE to hear it live.. think as with most of his stuff... live is better..

Yeah, that seems to almost always be the case with Prince. I think one exception would be his best ballads, such as "Adore" which relay a warmth (and a vocal mix) that a live setting cannot recreate.

But my first exposure to R&RLA was Jimmy Kimmel, I loved the sound of the charging horn section, the gutteral singing, and the propulsive beat. And when I heard the studio version, I was amazed at how little energy it had by comparison.

Also amazed that on the maxi-single, there was not one live recorded version that mirrored the Kimmel mix. Instead, we get some dj no one cares about taking anything that was "Rock and Roll" out of the song for no less then what?...five lame dance mixes?

Yawn.

Graycap23 said:

errant said:

that's true, but it does take more bandwidth to download it and effort to tag it (in the case of a WAV anyway).

I'd prefer a lossless version as well, but economically, it doesn't always make sense, sine the majority of people who are even potential customers are going to down-convert it to fit on their phone anyway.

and that does, shockingly enough, even include Prince fans.

hell, we're moving into an era where people barely even want to bother with owning music at all and would rather stream it from Pandora, Spotify, or satellite radio.

[Edited 2/6/13 8:04am]

Honestly the arugent about the "majority" of people means nothing 2 me.

Why would anyone want 2 go from Blu-ray to an old VHS tape? That is what mp3's are........

I could not agree more with you!

djThunderfunk said:

NDRU said:

errant said: Still, to my ears, the WAV of screwdriver sounds the best of the four songs. I am not sure which part of the process caused it, but I suspect that it's every part of the process that matters, from engineering to recording to mixing to mastering and the format. Breakfast can wait is filler material, and I think it got filler treatment. I think he put more care into the original version of screwdriver and it shows [Edited 2/6/13 8:30am]

I bought the Screwdriver wav from Purple Music and the Remix mp3 from 3rdeyegirl. On my high quality home system AND on my crap car stereo the difference is clear. The wav sounds better...

But, here's the thing. I also converted the wav to mp3 for the ipod. The mp3 conversion of the wav from Purple Music sounds MUCH better than the mp3 of the Remix from 3rdeyegirl.

So, it's not JUST format at issue. I would say the original version was also mixed and/or mastered better than the remix.

Just my 12 cents. (inflation )

True.

TheEnglishGent said:

djThunderfunk said:

I bought the Screwdriver wav from Purple Music and the Remix mp3 from 3rdeyegirl. On my high quality home system AND on my crap car stereo the difference is clear. The wav sounds better...

Well done, you have just compared an apple to an orange!

For what it's worth the wav on 3rd eye is clipped to all kinds of buggery and is not an example of audiophile material. It's obvious and not nice.

An excerpt from the 'awesome' screwdriver wav, one of the snare hits.

See where there's those large areas of flat lines at the peaks and troughs, that is clipping where the sound gets distorted. This is not the exception, pretty much every single beat is clipped like this, an awful lot is missing from this 'lossless' file. This sort of stuff sounds far worse to me than mp3 artefacts. It's pretty much how all pop music is these days and I don't understand how professional recording engineers allow it to happen.

But hey, it's a wav, wicked.

[Edited 2/6/13 8:58am]

The issue of clipping aside (which you would see in mp3's too), a wav would still be a more accurate (sounding) representation of the original recording than an mp3 of that recording.

I am not dissing anyone who is happy with mp3, but fact is that those people are listening to compressed audio, and thus not the most accurate and best sounding representation of a piece of music.

For me it is easy, at home i want wav or high res, for my phone AAC or 320 will do just fine. As a consumer I would like to be able to purchase music in the best possible quality. All that I and some others here ask is make wav available as well, I'd be happy to pay slightly more for it. If people call that snobby or whingy, so be it...

I'm no techie or audiophile so I can't weigh in on all this fascinating discussion about clipping etc. I guess I would have to hear the WAV and the MP3 verisons back to back to see if I could even tell the difference.

My hearing is not that great to begin with so maybe that would be a blessing to not be able to perceive what the humbug is all about. (Hats off to English Gent btw for rendering the controversy visible).

I do however have a question about the Breakfast Can Wait track and would like to get a confirmation or correction on something about it.

I found a version of BCW online to listen to without having to purchase. About 2/3rds of the way through the song (2:50) the vocals were modulated up to what sounded like a baby's voice.

P has used something similar to this voiceing in a few songs over the years but very sparingly. (Camille?)

In this jam the entire final third of the song used this voice. It seemed completely out of place with the rest of the arrangement and was also very annoying to the ears.

So my suspicion is that if you actually purchase the song you don't get the baby voice and that P has figured out a way to put his songs online but make them unattractive to "steal.'

Am I thkinking correctly here or is the baby voice on the downloadable track as well?

DakutiusMaximus said:

I'm no techie or audiophile so I can't weigh in on all this fascinating discussion about clipping etc. I guess I would have to hear the WAV and the MP3 verisons back to back to see if I could even tell the difference.

My hearing is not that great to begin with so maybe that would be a blessing to not be able to perceive what the humbug is all about. (Hats off to English Gent btw for rendering the controversy visible).

I do however have a question about the Breakfast Can Wait track and would like to get a confirmation or correction on something about it.

I found a version of BCW online to listen to without having to purchase. About 2/3rds of the way through the song (2:50) the vocals were modulated up to what sounded like a baby's voice.

P has used something similar to this voiceing in a few songs over the years but very sparingly. (Camille?)

In this jam the entire final third of the song used this voice. It seemed completely out of place with the rest of the arrangement and was also very annoying to the ears.

So my suspicion is that if you actually purchase the song you don't get the baby voice and that P has figured out a way to put his songs online but make them unattractive to "steal.'

Am I thkinking correctly here or is the baby voice on the downloadable track as well?

baby voice is in the released version.

actually, I wish the whole song was sung like this

WEll you know what I did?

At some chain stores, like CVS and Dollar General and several others, they actually sell PayPal gift cards so I got $21 (total $24.95) and I figure I'll use that to buy tracks from Mr. P.

If his site screws me as it apparently has for some customers, well no biggie. At least I won't see a charge on my CC bill next month and feel like a dummy.

KeithyT said:

Ooh Prince that little baby voiced trickster! Nah, it's on the purchased version too

Well then maybe I just created a good idea for him so he can allow his music to be online in a deliberately altered fashion that no one would want to try to steal.

Lord knows he has enough money to have the Web Sheriff send the links to someone who could do the altering and repost the tracks.

It would be the best of all worlds for P.

People deliberately searching for his tunes (and random web surfers stumbling upon them too) could actually find them (albeit in an altered fashion) and that scenario would result in more sales of the unaltered versions.

But that said, does anybody agree with me that BCW is a good song for the first two thirds but is ruined by the final third?

so only on that site and paying with paypal?

damn i can't use paypal atm....

no Itunes?

i've heard the Screwdriver extended mix or i don't know what it's called. and damnnnn way better than the single version.

Breakfast can wait is pretty cool song too.

errant said:

Graycap23 said:

It takes no more effort 2 put an AIFF or wave file out there than it does a Mp3.

that's true, but it does take more bandwidth to download it and effort to tag it (in the case of a WAV anyway).

For crying out loud, it's 2013. Bandwidth and storage ARE NOT COSTS. Anyone who tells you they are is bullshitting. Look at the prices for Amazon's cloud service: pennies for gigabytes.

BartVanHemelen said:

errant said:

that's true, but it does take more bandwidth to download it and effort to tag it (in the case of a WAV anyway).

For crying out loud, it's 2013. Bandwidth and storage ARE NOT COSTS. Anyone who tells you they are is bullshitting. Look at the prices for Amazon's cloud service: pennies for gigabytes.

Don't yell at errant!

BartVanHemelen said:

rdhull said:

BartVanHemelen said:

For crying out loud, it's 2013. Bandwidth and storage ARE NOT COSTS. Anyone who tells you they are is bullshitting. Look at the prices for Amazon's cloud service: pennies for gigabytes.

Don't yell at errant!

... said rdhull using an exclamation mark...

BartVanHemelen said:

errant said:

that's true, but it does take more bandwidth to download it and effort to tag it (in the case of a WAV anyway).

For crying out loud, it's 2013. Bandwidth and storage ARE NOT COSTS. Anyone who tells you they are is bullshitting. Look at the prices for Amazon's cloud service: pennies for gigabytes.

They aren't significant costs for the end user but for the music service holding all the stuff and allowing access there are significant costs.

I work for a digital publishing company servicing millions of customers every month and our server and bandwidth costs are not insignificant! Not that P is gonna need much for these 4 tracks at the moment but for something like the iTunes store, there are large overheads.

Cerebus said:

But I give him mad, huge, GIGANTIC props for circumventing iTunes. Coolest thing he's done in years, imo.

This is such childish nonsense.

djThunderfunk said:

BartVanHemelen said:

Pur-lease. There's nothing here that he hasn't done int he past 15 years. It's once again variations on things he's done before. There's nothing here that's worth listening to more than a couple of times max.

Are you saying you bought them?!? If so, you really do hate yourself. If not, how do you know the 2 previously unreleased tracks aren't worth listening to?

So, lemme see: I cannot have an opinion if I haven't bought them (because you assume these tracks weren't circulating anywhere), and I cannot buy them because I might not like them and say so in public.

.

[Edited 2/6/13 15:11pm]

NuPwrSoul said:

Anyone else getting a "Database Error" when trying to visit the site?

"Error establishing a database connection"

Uh-oh.

EDIT: was for a second... now it's back.

[Edited 2/5/13 21:33pm]

That's because it is a cheap-ass website that's run on WordPress, software that -- even though it has been under constant development for years and years -- craps out if more than a dozen people visit the site. Especially if it is hosted on the cheap.

ENOUGH! Will you two get a room?

Jeez why are we wasting bandwith on talking about audiophile technical stuff that 95% of people don't give a flip about really? Take it to another thread.

I mean we should be encouraged that Prince has started a website and lets encourage him to continue selling tracks for 88 cents.

Will we be getting some albums for $8.88? (C'mon Mr. P, do it!)

leadline said:

Most sites like Amazon and iTunes give MP3 downloads between 128-256kbps. 320kbps for these! I'll take it!

Thank you Prince, 4 more a day till the end of time please......

[Edited 2/5/13 14:37pm]

And if you were to venture out in the wide world beyond those two big stores, you'd find that plenty of online music shops offer -- brace yourself -- LOSSLESS encodes. Or a wide variety of encodes (not just MP3, but also AAC etc). Even iTunes occasionally has lossless downloads (in their own encrypted AAC format however, so recoding it to a WAV or AAIF is hard or impossible).

Moreover, some artists really know what they're doing -- like Trent Reznor -- and thus their MP3s and FLACs etc often included plenty of metadata, includign artwork, lyrics, credits etc.

But in 2013 the best we can expect from Prince are two amateurish websites with impossible URLs.

errant said:

BartVanHemelen said:

For crying out loud, it's 2013. Bandwidth and storage ARE NOT COSTS. Anyone who tells you they are is bullshitting. Look at the prices for Amazon's cloud service: pennies for gigabytes.

Tell that to the people who pay $100 for 2GB of data per month.

I'm no talkign about your connection at home, I'm talking about HOSTING COSTS. For fuck's sake, I even mentioned Amazon's cloud services but you can't even be bothered to read what I wrote. Nope, you have your utterly uninformed opinion and no amount of evidence will get you to admit you're wrong. Congrats of being a typical Prince fam.

FYI, some ten years ago people were already starting to upload boots in FLAC. These days you can easily find DVD images (each 4+ GB) of all kinds of video boots (and that's also something that has been happening for at least half a decade).

RRA said:

ENOUGH! Will you two get a room?

Jeez why are we wasting bandwith on talking about audiophile technical stuff that 95% of people don't give a flip about really? Take it to another thread.

I mean we should be encouraged that Prince has started a website and lets encourage him to continue selling tracks for 88 cents.

Will we be getting some albums for $8.88? (C'mon Mr. P, do it!)

This is exactly the same BS famz were whining about back at the start of the NPGMC: "please don't upset poor old Princey and be happy that you're getting shitty MP3s @ 128k". Funnily enough all the bitching HELPED and the NPGMC was shamed into improving the quality of their MP3s (even though they continued to use a bad encoder while LAME was already kicking ass all over the place).

I seriously cannot understand why some fans insist on fighting those who strive for QUALITY. You should back them up instead of fearing Prince's wrath for daring to demand VALUE FOR MONEY.

TheEnglishGent said:

BartVanHemelen said:

For crying out loud, it's 2013. Bandwidth and storage ARE NOT COSTS. Anyone who tells you they are is bullshitting. Look at the prices for Amazon's cloud service: pennies for gigabytes.

They aren't significant costs for the end user but for the music service holding all the stuff and allowing access there are significant costs.

I work for a digital publishing company servicing millions of customers every month and our server and bandwidth costs are not insignificant! Not that P is gonna need much for these 4 tracks at the moment but for something like the iTunes store, there are large overheads.

Absolute nonsens. Is your server bill quite huge? I don't doubt so. But as you say, you've got MILLIONS OF CUSTOMERS. Divide those server bills into millions and guess what you end up with? PENNIES.

Look at my post, the one you quote: I mention Amazon's cloud services. Feel free to look up their prices for hosting and bandwidth. Or Microsoft's Azure. Or other cloud services. Bandwidth and storage costs PENNIES.

BartVanHemelen said:

TheEnglishGent said:

They aren't significant costs for the end user but for the music service holding all the stuff and allowing access there are significant costs.

I work for a digital publishing company servicing millions of customers every month and our server and bandwidth costs are not insignificant! Not that P is gonna need much for these 4 tracks at the moment but for something like the iTunes store, there are large overheads.

Absolute nonsens. Is your server bill quite huge? I don't doubt so. But as you say, you've got MILLIONS OF CUSTOMERS. Divide those server bills into millions and guess what you end up with? PENNIES.

Look at my post, the one you quote: I mention Amazon's cloud services. Feel free to look up their prices for hosting and bandwidth. Or Microsoft's Azure. Or other cloud services. Bandwidth and storage costs PENNIES.

Yes, because all of our revenue goes to the servers. Nothing pays the staff, nothing pays for the buildings.

BartVanHemelen said:

TheEnglishGent said:

They aren't significant costs for the end user but for the music service holding all the stuff and allowing access there are significant costs.

I work for a digital publishing company servicing millions of customers every month and our server and bandwidth costs are not insignificant! Not that P is gonna need much for these 4 tracks at the moment but for something like the iTunes store, there are large overheads.

Absolute nonsens. Is your server bill quite huge? I don't doubt so. But as you say, you've got MILLIONS OF CUSTOMERS. Divide those server bills into millions and guess what you end up with? PENNIES.

Look at my post, the one you quote: I mention Amazon's cloud services. Feel free to look up their prices for hosting and bandwidth. Or Microsoft's Azure. Or other cloud services. Bandwidth and storage costs PENNIES.

And you imagine that Amazon's cloud service would still cost "pennies" if the music they offered was in FLAC or WAV?

It's only pennies because barely anyone uses it and Amazon is an enorormous business behind it to support it as a loss leader to dabble with the next step of their business model.

[Edited 2/6/13 15:20pm]

I experienced no technical problems and am happy with the sound. He gave us 4 new, excellent songs for about 50p each for f's sake.

I thought the Lotusflow3r site was a mess, but this 3rdeye girl site was straightforward and transparent.

I hope Prince continues to use it and it's a success. Also, that those who are happy with it speak up or vote with their wallets.

OperatingThetan said:

I experienced no technical problems and am happy with the sound. He gave us 4 new, excellent songs for about 50p each for f's sake.

I thought the Lotusflow3r site was a mess, but this 3rdeye girl site was straightforward and transparent.

I hope Prince continues to use it and it's a success. Also, that those who are happy with it speak up or vote with their wallets.

Yes, I do wonder what kind of brain damage people who couldn't make this work suffer from. Or why on earth they would try to download them on a phone that isn't made for downloading files off of websites. But there you go...

RRA said:

ENOUGH! Will you two get a room?

Jeez why are we wasting bandwith on talking about audiophile technical stuff that 95% of people don't give a flip about really? Take it to another thread.

I mean we should be encouraged that Prince has started a website and lets encourage him to continue selling tracks for 88 cents.

Will we be getting some albums for $8.88? (C'mon Mr. P, do it!)

Oooooh, you shouted enough! Did you stamp your foot too?

Do 95% really not care about the quality of their downloads? Are you really saying you don't want Prince's music to sound as good as it can or should? Interesting.

And we are very encouraged that we have a web site with nicely priced tracks. Has anyone said they aren't happy with it? Bart aside...