Grateful Dead

@HighThyme- hey now! First, I apologize to anyone to whom I came off as preaching. I just think that if they put up 24 bit flacs, they will probably charge more (I think they said $200?). That's a lot of money compared to $160 for the same music, I assure you that i am thinking of NONE of that technical stuff when I am being transported to those magical places music takes us, whether jamming with thousands, or alone with my "deck". In fact, somewhere around half my music collection consists of music recorded before stereo was invented, and I have and enjoy and love a substantial number of recordings I have from before the electrical microphone was invented. The very opposite of hi-fi. I, for one, will ALWAYS opt for a mediocre recording of great music over a great recording of good music. And I would certainly never judge who does and who does not know how to listen to music by what can be gleaned from comments on a message board. I was trying to save people money by explaining what they're not getting with their higher priced 24 bit file. I think I managed to do that without insulting any one, and certainly not aiming insults directly AT a particular person. Was that really necessary? While I may have been over-technical, I wasn't bringing any one down or tearing anyone down. Were you trying to make me feel like shit? Maybe you just had a crappy day. It happens. To your point, though. I don't think you completely understand the issue (no big deal, though). Mp3 (and AAC files) even of 320kbs, are "lossy" formats meaning that a lot (a LOT) of music information is lost from the file in order to compress it down in size (by 70-90%!) from the original file it is created from. Most people will hear a significant difference between the original music file and an mp3, and virtually everyone will hear the loss in sound quality when comparing them on excellent equipment. There's no comparison. But, that has nothing at all to do with fourwinds' or my points. The flacs, and alac files that we are talking about are "lossless" files. This means that no music data from the original file they are created from is lost (they only compress the original by about 50%), and are decoded to the exact original as they play, or you can decode them yourself and then convert to flac again over and over with zero loss in quality each time. When you create an mp3, though, you are throwing out a ton of music data that is gone forever. If you decode it to a wav, the wav is still missing what you threw out. If you compress to mp3 again you will degrade it even further, etc, What we were discussing is the difference between digital recordings that are 16 bit and 44.1 kHz (what a CD uses), and 24 bit 96khz recordings. The bits refers to the number of data bits used to store each "unit" of music information sampled from the incoming analog electronic signal, and the kHz refers to how often "snapshots" of the incoming signal are captured (44,100 times per second vs. 96,000 times per second). Most studies show no one can really distinguish between two music samples where one is 16/44.1 and the other 24/96 when created from the same source. Most people CAN readily distinguish the poorer sound quality of an mp3 and the original 16bit or 24bit it came from. A substantial sacrifice in sound quality has been made to create a MUCH smaller file. I only brought this up because many people have been jumping on the "hi Rez" bandwagon, paying substantially more for 24bit files while I was aware that the university studies done to date indicate that people can't hear the difference between a 16 bit file and a 24 bit file (which has nothing to do with mp3 degraded encoding). Let's say they were offering a gd movie on actual film, one that plays at 72 frames per second and another at 144 frames per second, but they're charging a lot more for the 144. If I've just read that no one who watches both can tell which is which, I'm gonna come on here and suggest that people don't waste their hard earned money. And, to do that I'm going to have to explain the difference between the two and why having all those extra frames doesn't actually matter. Just trying to save some friends some scratch. By all means, when they put up the 16 bit alac file (they already have) which can be converted to 16 bit flac with no loss, and then they put up 24 bit flac and charge $40 more for it, then, because you can hear the difference between an mp3 and a flac (which most everyone can) by all means go ahead and get the 24 bit file if that somehow makes logical sense to you. It's like you're saying, " since I can hear the difference between a crappy mp3 and a perfect lossless 16 bit flac, well then I might as well pay even more for this 24 bit hi res flac!" I could just say "that's fine with me, no skin off my nose", especially after your purposely insulting and condescending comment, but it actually DOES bother me that you, someone who obviously loves music or you wouldn't be here and who I am sure knows how to LISTEN to music just fine, might be convinced to pay more for something without getting anything of any additional real value when that money could be going to more music that you love or other meaningful places. In any case, I honestly do hope you just have great times with the music in whatever form you get it. Long live the omnipotent Grateful Dead.

@jrf68- they put the 2nd set of that show up with the two listening parties. The exact same giggling thing happened to me. It WAS redonckulus!!!!!! Also, after that whole Clint Eastwood DVD thing, I just got notification that my box should get here by end of day today. YAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@deadheadbrewer- aren't those grado's something? The warmth of sound, the 3 dimensionalilty, the clarity, and the feeling of space is like nothing I've ever heard in any other phones. I saw they have come out with ear buds. When I do finally take the plunge I think I will have to go with one of the full size phones, but I'd like to find out if their buds sound similar. They have 3 types of buds, but their lowest price one is the only thing they sell that isn't handmade in Brooklyn. The other two, though are $300 and $400. Can't do that and the regular headphones also.

@fourwinds- thanks, you too. I remember when most music junkies would get the best equipment they could afford. Huge floor standing speakers with the latest in tweeter and woofer technology, cool receivers, amps and pre-amps, turntables with the coolest new types of needle cartridges, and we were so careful to make sure it was spinning at 33 1/3 after we used those velvet things to gently remove the dust from the precious vinyl as it spun........

I'm 44 years old and I was just GIGGLING listening to the Branford show. It's redonckulus....just silly how awesome this is....:) Re:listening to the listening party....picking up the set first thing @ the P.O.!

I've made some attempts to hear a difference between a 16-bit and a 24-bit version of the same source material, and I'll be darned if I can hear any. I use decent equipment, and second the opinion to get some nice Grado headphones. I went to a site that supposedly tested my hearing abilities, and it seems that I don't have the capacity to hear much difference in anything, and I've somewhat babied my ears over my 44 years. I had my wife randomly play me a Joshua Redman track that was in lossless FLAC and in 256 mp3. I guessed correctly five times out of ten. Others swear by hi-rez, and I'm certainly no expert, but I would ignore the format and use the savings for more recordings you don't already have, plus some good ($100-300) headphones. One additional problem with the hi-rez version of older recordings is that they rarely state which source and process was used, so you're probably getting nothing more than you've already owned all these years. That, and you don't even get liner notes for your $20/disc! AND, they usually don't include the bonus tracks that were included on your remastered CD version! And then your hard drive crashes . . .

Your comments about higher res formats sound right on. At one time, I had a 320Kbps MP3 of a show which I had enjoyed thoroughly, but found the recording lifeless, unengaging, frustrating, unpleasant and quite difficult to listen to all the way through. After repeatedly being unable to enjoy it for nearly a year, I finally purchased the FLACs, taken from the exact same source recording, and now enjoy listening to and being surrounded by all or even just portions of it to no end. There's no comparison. You will never convince people who don't get it, because while you're listening to the music, they are analyzing data as they listen to it. Their opinion on how the music sounds is utterly pointless because they don't know how to LISTEN to music in the first place. Kinda makes you wonder why they even bother in the first place sometimes.

The person who scans the cover art on at this link is usually pretty quick about putting up the updated cover art, including the bonus discs... https://plus.google.com/photos/106465427611350658328/albums/59784616720… ...but seems to only be updated through Dave's Picks Volume 10.

...less than 24 hours of receiving an email letting me know it had shipped!! I got lucky on this "other one." I'm always blown away by the attention to detail on these sets. Even the box it's shipped in is cool,

My box arrived today here in Birmingham, AL. I'm looking forward to having time to listen to all of it soon... Jessica Dessner's artwork is great - heck, all the GD artwork in the past few years has been impressive, but the artwork on the individual show digipaks and elsewhere in this set really brought a smile to my face. And the box's design really complements the artwork well. The smaller book was a nifty idea. Great job all 'round, folks.