Grateful Dead

I have every box set ever put out from the GD. Unfortunately, times are tough and I simply cannot afford this, so here's what I came up with.... Along with all the box sets and all of the DP's, Dave Picks, Road series and anything else, I have all of the bonus cd's as well. I am willing to trade a majority of these if someone buys me this set. Any takers?

"In this age of a 7 show 1972 Yes box set going for $75 or Phish 8cd Amsterdam box for $40 some of us can have the opinion that this is perhaps overpriced a bit" 12 Hrs Of Yes for $75 times 6 (to sort of equal 73 hrs of the Dead) would be $450. Add the (probably) much better packaging and it's not that much different. Phish is still touring full time so their releases are just advertisements for the live experience - they make their money off live shows and souvenirs like most bands do these days.

Maybe Mercedes can sell you component parts piece by piece instead of the whole car. Transmission today, chassis next year, etc. Shouldn't they just do that rather than greedily sell you their whole product the way they want to package and sell it in accord with their vision of the car?? Not to mention, you may really not care much for airbags and a radio and even a spare tire in the trunk. Really anything after the first half of the car is of little interest to you, so why should you have to buy that which follows. You should go over to Mercedes-benz.com and post about that on their forums.

Lol! You had me falling out of my chair. Rock on

This old band, soon to meet their maker and hopeful re-meet #1 money maker (Jer!!) is pulling forward YEARS of archival releases, at a discount to their NORMAL GREAT pricing. Be happy for them and the poor 80s/90s fans who suffered through all that AWFUL (kidding!) legendary epochal 60s/70s shit that we love. The bitching is so misguided, distasteful, and points to an ugly sense of entitlement. I cannot abide, nor afford the set.

This old band, soon to meet their maker and hopeful re-meet #1 money maker (Jer!!) is pulling forward YEARS of archival releases, at a discount to their NORMAL GREAT pricing. Be happy for them and the poor 80s/90s fans who suffered through all that AWFUL (kidding!) legendary epochal 60s/70s shit that we love. The bitching is so misguided, distasteful, and points to an ugly sense of entitlement. I cannot abide, nor afford the set.

send you a PM.

@DJMac520 - I like you, man. You're crazy, but I like you :)

850 left.

What's that Johnny cash song about building a Cadillac piece by piece?

donahue.luke-I agree, I don't want any more of the thin sleeves. I haven't had any glue-sticking or scratching on my discs yet, that I know of, but humidity can be a problem for it. The Europe sleeves look really cool when they're all in the steamer trunk thingy, but they're too thin and it's too hard to remove a disc so my drunken friends just ripped practically every sleeve getting a CD out. The '77 box was the coolest aesthetically AND the most practical so far, I think. Great artwork. People would probably be bitchin less if they had allowed some kind of two-part payment on this of $350 each four months apart maybe in sept. and next year. Guess that's impractical. The boxes that are well over $10 a disc are the worse deal-one of the spring '90s was almost $230 with shipping and taxes for an 18 disc set. But I remember paying $45-$50 for a 3 disc Derek and the Dominos in the early '90s in a retail store. I wish I could've held off on this but the gotta have it impulse takes over. I always thought I wasn't a big retrospective of the whole career kind of deadhead, but I've enjoyed So Many Roads a gazillion times over the last 15 years, so I guess I am partial to everything. The europe box remains the best deal in bang for the buck of all of these monster boxes, though. I'm pretty low tech-can someone explain why exactly FLAC USB is higher quality than box CD? Just more bits? I'm amazed they're the same price, since it's gotta cost more to produce the box set materials.

So having made the $700 decision quickly and without sleeping on it ... I am as happy today about that quick decision as I was yesterday. I have all the physical CDs, tapes (yes I still have my tapes & good decks to play them on, as do other family members; when they fail they'll be gone but we sure enjoy them in the meantime!)and Grateful Dead artwork I need. But of course like other DHs just can't get enough of the music so I am thrilled about the USB option and really looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to Santa Clara but have some trepidation. As noisy as some were getting in the 80s and 90s, apparently thinking their chatter & off-beat clapping & what-not was better than the music, I'm thinking it will be much more pronounced now. So I will expect that and if it doesn't come to pass, even better :-) On the cost, my perspective is to think about about many years I'll get to listen to it. If I only have 10 years to live let's say (likely more but who knows) that's $80 per year. Think about the weekly let alone daily cost of that :-) Given that I'm still benefiting from shows I spent a few dollars to see, all those decades ago, I think I've made a good investment in my quality of life :-) For those who thought to check with your spouses, good for you for respecting the family finances! Everyone just needs to do what works best for them, whatever that is.

Calling the few people that express an opinion "whiners" is insulting. Perhaps it time to stop whining for a certain shortstop to be entered into the hall of fame? Actually it's a democratic society, therefore whine away. I have no issue with all the recent postings. Let's just avoid making the discussion contentious. One thing we can agree on is that we all are wildly passionate about GD music.

The flac-hd files are master sound quality. Basically, when a record company sends music to a vinyl plant for records to be pressed, they send files in this quality. Most of the JGB albums on Livedownloads.com are sold in this quality. CDs are limited to 16bit/44khz quality - the only way to get higher quality is through a DVD-A or Blu ray cd. There is an extremely amount of data in each song. If you were to listen to these files on say a Pono Player or Fii0 X1, X3, or X5 - you would hear the difference immediately. Put it this way, when you listen to Victim Or The Crime from 1990.03.21 on the Spring Too set in 24bit/192khz you can hear every chime and midi effect running through your head as if you were sitting on stage with the band. That is why the USB chip is the same price. Just check out the Wake Up To Find Out show on either HDtracks or Acoustic Sounds. That album alone is 50 bucks. Believe it or not - the USB chip is the better deal. IMHO.

I posted a (minor) bitch earlier today...but I just bought the box. How can I not? Really, there is time to save and WTF? Now I'm one in 6500. Does that make me a 6500 percenter?

....never heard the Salt Lake '95 shows. This Althea really ain't half bad....Jerry could still find the magic if he could find his way through the fog....

Is this going to be a Natty Lite/Mid grade summer now? What did I do!!!!!! ;-)

OK, thanks! Problem is I would only hear difference on my headphones with my stuff, which I usually only use late at night. May buy "Wake up to find out" to test difference.

Regarding the box, and being a shrewd investor, I guess I take that as a compliment... but mayormarionberry is a jerk, and I get most of what I get from estate sales, but there are some others who, along with me on a few things, do buy a few. That being said, I'm on the fence about one for myself, and will get no more "others". Whether I end up with one in the future, time will tell... There are more important things in life.

Please read this if you are one of the folks who got stuck in the "authorizing" phase of ordering this yesterday, and then opened a new window to create an order once it was working. I have noticed that some people's "phantom" orders, where they never got a confirmation email, have posted that dead.net has told them that the system actually assigned order numbers and the orders went through (with no conf email), but others have found that that their phantom orders did not go through - which is probably what they were hoping - and that the preauthorizations for those will come off their cards in a few days. Since this set is beginning to sell out, it would be better to call dead.net and find out which camp you fall in, so you can cancel any phantom orders that actually went through (were assigned order numbers by the system.) You can probably cancel unwanted orders at a later date, but that could be a major inconvenience for some people who may not even know about this set yet if is already sold out when they do find out about it. I called a little bit ago, and found out that my two phantom orders (my third, which I placed after the kind folks here started posting that the site was working properly again) DID go through and were actual orders with order numbers in their system. I never got confirmation emails for those two, only for the third one. The customer service rep was excellent. She knew exactly what had happened and exactly how to fix it. She also placed a note on that third order specifically stating "customer wants to KEEP this order!" just to make sure it isn't accidentally cancelled/removed. She assured me that those two orders should be back in the available "pool" pretty quickly.

yours if you want them

COIN JAR !! Ordered yesterday, but had this brainwave today. $330 of coins later, I hope maybe the idea can help some fence sitters and penny pinchers out there if it didn't occur to you already: COIN JAR !!!!!

The best way I've heard it described is to think of a photo in the newspaper. It's all made up of dots (or used to be anyway). Looking at it from arm's length it looks pretty good. Look closer and closer and you can see the dots that make up the picture. With mp3, you can 'hear the dots' much more easily than you can with flac. There are many different types of files, some lossy and some not. Starting at the bottom and working upward, each has more information than the last. That's about it. There's just less information included which is why mp3s are so much smaller than flac. I don't get the mp3 thing, unless it's something that can't be procured any other way...and they're a huge liability for traders. I'd rather burn up GBs at a faster rate than get ANYTHING in mp3. They are the bane of all existence, although still not approaching the level of George Fucking Bush.

Single shows from my box (1976-1995) will be available at $50 a piece($50 for the 50th anniversary box shows a la cart). Just PM me if you want them... here are the years that are NOT spoken for: 1980 1981 1982 1983 1985 1986 1988 1989 1990 1992*back in the mix 1993*back in the mix This is probably the best deal you're going to see for after market single shows unless they're released as downloads. Even so, the physical copies are nice to have. Cheers -Cactus Jack

Damn right.

It's hard to generalize about mp3s. They are not created equal. I would challenge anyone to hear the difference between a well converted 320kbs mp3 and a CD quality FLAC. These listening tests have been done over and over and it appears that a vanishingly small number of people can tell the difference with any statistical significance. Of course, that assumes a playback system that can represent the resolution. In a car, iPod, boom box, etc., all bets are off. I listen to 320kbs mp3s (or AACs) most of the time through my Grace Design/McIntosh/Avalon system and it sounds amazing. Lower than 256kbs and it sounds like dog doo. Even 256kbs mp3s are a bit dodgy. As far as the analogy goes, it's not a good one. Nyquist proved that decades ago. You only need two samples per frequency interval to perfectly reproduce the waveform. Not adequately, but perfectly. Higher resolution buys you nothing and if you go up too high, you can end up with intermodulation distortion in the audio band. 60khz is about perfect, but of course, we have a jump from 48khz to 88.2. As an audio engineer, I'm usually doing 88.2 these days. But 44.1khz honestly sounds really good with the right converters. Of course, I would never condone reconstituted FLACs, WAVs, etc., from mp3s being passed along by traders as full resolution.

We've all heard about various bands that were true originals and 'opened the door' for others to walk through...NYDolls, Pistols, GD and others. The Dead held the door open for decades and no one walked through. A couple stumbled through but fell on their faces. Nothing else like them to this date. All the other bands that claim to have been inspired or influenced are, really, just crap (for lack of a better word). My opinion, if you haven't guessed, is that it's all contrived quasi-hippie bullshit.

You should really check out these two links. The first is a youtube video put by xiph audio engineers, the second is a long article that you should check out in its entirety when you have the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html Also, I should preface my remarks by pointing out that this has nothing to do with mp3 or any other lossy file format. It is referring to lossless, whether compressed lossless(like flac) or uncompressed lossless (like wav). mp3's are clearly inferior - the question being addressed is whether standard 16/44.1 is inferior to 24/96 or 24/192. If you think the answer is yes, you should really check out both links. Although within the video this is mentioned, it is not emphasized, even though I think it is the most important point. What he shows on the video is that, as long as only frequencies below 22,050hz are being sampled (band limited at 22,050hz), then an audio wave of any complexity sampled at 44,100 times per second yields a series of discrete samples where ONE AND ONLY ONE curve (the sound wave) passes through each point. You can draw a different curve through all the points, but it can proven that ANY deviation from the original would mathematically compel the original to include frequencies ABOVE 22,050hz. Since we know that we excluded all those frequencies, only the original (source) curve is correct. The job of the analog to digital converter is to recreate this original curve. Unless you are an infant or a bat, you don't, and will never, be able to hear or detect frequencies of 22,050hz or higher anyway. The video does a good job of explaining what 16-bits means. Most people don't know. The different - the ONLY difference between audio sampled at 16, 24, or even 1, bit(s) is the level of noise (exactly equivalent to tape hiss) that is produced by the digitizing process. In other words, it affects the dynamic range of softest to loudest sounds that can be encoded. 16-bits (especially dithered) has a wider dynamic range than exists on any of your music recordings. I have seen people wishing for higher than 16-bit files of recordings made prior to the early '80s. Well, reel-to-reel has a MAXIMUM dynamic range that is equivalent to about 13 bits. Casettes have a maximum of about 7, but were usually in the range of 4-6 bit equivalent in dynamic range. You can never get what was never in the recording to begin with. Even the most perfect reel-to-reel of, say, Dark Side Of The Moon, can NEVER be improved by adding more than 16-bits, because the ORIGINAL RECORDING never had more than 13-bits of dynamic range. Modern digital recordings, even though they are professionally created with 24 or even 32 bits, still don't utilize more than 16-bits of dynamic range. One key thing to keep in mind is that the audio situation is NOTHING like the video situation - using terms like high-def or high-res to compare what is happening with audio with what is happening with video is a complete misunderstanding - they shouldn't be using the same terminology and here is why. In video, high def gives more information to your eye. The more pixels, the higher the resolution, the better the image - the better the OUTPUT of the system sending information to your eyes. That is NOT true in audio, but it's a little complicated why. In hi-def AUDIO, there ARE more samples (creating larger files), HOWEVER, your EAR is never given any additional information because the digital to analog converter recreates the EXACT sound wave that was used to create it. In effect, 16/44.1 is LOSSLESS. This is only true if the sampling rate is at least twice the highest sound frequency being digitized. But, that's not a problem, since you CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING at above 20khz. So, the OUTPUT that the digital to analog converter creates, the SOUND WAVE that is created is EXACTLY THE SAME as if the converter was given 92khz sampled file. The only difference between a 44.1kz file and a 92khz file is the the 92khz file can properly encode all frequence in the range from 0 to 48khz, and the 44.1khz file can only properly (losslessly) encode frequencies from 0 to 22khz. Who cares? The range from 22khz to 48khz is INAUDIBLE TO YOU AND ALWAYS WILL BE - COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY IN EVERY WAY UNDETECTABLE BY YOU. If you think otherwise, you should contact a university science department immediately as they may want look into using you as a secret weapon or somehow or other. In any case, check out both links. Or don't, because it is perfectly fine enjoying what you think you are hearing also (that's not sarcastic, seriously.)

No, it makes you a 9.2857143 e-07'er! given that there's more than 7 billion people, most of whom won't get it.

Ah well, that's the way I understood it anyway. If I'm wrong about something I don't mind finding out about it.

can't wait to get this box and listen to it in chronological order, choosing era-appropriate drugs for each show - lots of psychedelics for the 60s, maybe some grass and ludes for the early to mid-70s, followed by some blow for the late 70s stuff, graduating to crack for the 80s, and finishing up with ecstasy and other synthetics for the 90s. bring it on!

Bush bad - Obama much much worse. Now keep your filthy unwelcome politics to yourself, we come here to escape the reality that a bunch of incompetent voters traded away our right to maintain our own health care system.

Can anyone tell me why DVD-A is not the preferred format? One disc, one complete show, smaller space needed to store boxed sets, all you have to do is run your dvd player into a receiver and that's it.

Just gotta say, I love you man! - Your post on the Spring Too forum, while it fried my brain, really sent a ripple effect through my listening experience. I think the sound is a bit fuller on the 24/192. But, i'm sure that if I did a blind test of the 24/96 vs. 24/192 - I wouldn't be able to tell the different. But, for some reason, with my Sennheiser 598HD headphones, I was able to tell the different between a 16/44 and a 24/96 version of heart of gold. On the higher one, I felt a tingle in the bottom of my left ear. Maybe its a placebo effect, but I did it on a blind test, and that's what I came up with. I am so excited to hear these shows in 24 bit quality!!!!!!

Thats another 2 returned to the pool. FYI to all the others that have similar fun time yesterday afternoon. Just called and found out my first two tries which got stuck in confirmation mode actually did go through. Funny though when I called, they wound up canceling the one which I actually did get a confirmation email. I did ask them for them to send me the order number that wasn't canceled which they did. Just check on the order status site and that one is in typical backordered status, the others are canceled. Yea! My guess is that number of available boxes left is actually higher, as duplicate, triplicate etc orders are being canceled.

You can't yell at someone for doing something that you then proceed to do yourself - and still be taken seriously.

Wow this box is going to be cool. The night before the announcement I was grousing up a storm about the underwhelming 50th and now it's overwhelming. Funny stuff this thing called life. Somewhere between SMR book, Billy's book and the Newsweek issue, not, I'm going to have to pull out the compendiums, etc, and do a little research on some of these shows. Peace. I really hope they have the forethought to print up extra individual discs and sets for this show. There's bound to be some issues with the product and at this magnitude the screaming could get very loud. Peace again.

I am inerested in your offer pm me

Tried to read a lot of the posts ... couldn't do them all.A couple things I did read: ~ some heads might spend half that much, but not $700.00. ~ some heads not interested in certain years. ~ One guy just wanted the box and book (no music). What if three of you dedicated dudes got together and went in thirds on a box? One guy who just wants the book and box kicks in $100.00, and the other two kick in $300.00 a piece and each get 15 shows (or 40 discs each). That comes to $7.50 a disc (even better than the all ready reasonably priced $8.75 per disc). And then you can fight over the 7" single. ;0) Just sayin'

Just got the following email from CS. If you haven't heard from them you should probably give them a call. They were very helpful when I called this morning. "Thank you for your recent Grateful Dead "30 Trips Around The Sun" order. The Grateful Dead community’s overwhelming response to this release resulted in some technical issues you may have encountered yesterday. We apologize for any inconvenience and confusion this may have caused. Now, to the good news: we are pleased to inform you that your order was successfully processed. You will receive your confirmation email in the next 24 hours with your order details. Remember to please check your junk or spam folders if you have not received it within that time frame."

wjonjd nailed it. The second link lays out everything you'd ever need to know about high res masters. I will be bookmarking it and sending to anyone who tries to BS me about high res delivery. I would also urge interested people to read Bob Katz's book Mastering Audio (he's a foremost mastering engineer and describes resolution, dither, etc., extremely well.). Also, this might be of interest: http://www.lavryengineering.com/pdfs/lavry-white-paper-the_optimal_samp… Eventually I will buy the complete GD studio albums in high res (88.2), but that's only because the mastering job was stellar (I got to hear Terrapin Station being played into the Plangent system from the master reels. Amazing!), not because the resolution of the files are going to be inherently different from a CD. My noise floor is shot with tinnitus, anyway. 24 bits of dynamic range that I can hear is excruciatingly painful, as to get above the tinnitus, the quietest sounds would have to be around 40db, which puts 24 bit peaks louder than a jet taking off next to me.

Who has a guess on when this shows up on Ebay, and how much? I'm betting Friday at $1400.

OK-thanks for all the info. Feel much better now having ordered the CD box after all wjonjd's info, since I always want all the goodies like booklets and liner notes, etc., anyway, and especially if they're the same price. For the record, i've certainly noticed the difference between 16 bit CD and crappy mp3s before but appreciate all the other higher end information.

I'm going to Bliss' listening party!

I agree with your first sentence. Wholeheartedly. Didn't what I wrote seem to communicate even the TINIEST bit of sarcasm? Or was it the word 'fucking' that offended you? Not that I really care, just wondering. Your political affiliations are showing... I'd apologize but my apologies would not, in fact, be genuine. Cool boxed set, and completely apolitical too! Almost anyway. Still want to get 2-9-73 Maples and hear JG stepping all over Wavy Gravy's 'not political' announcement at the start of the second set.

Wow, I just tried watching David's video. I usually enjoy those and find his enthusiasm infectious. The first thing he says is how he can't control the wind and some folks don't like it in the videos. Well, I watched two minutes and it was so annoying, I decided it wasn't worth it. I am sure he had interesting comments to make, but it was like listening to a phone conversation that keeps cutting out. I am sure that he is right in that the area he likes to shoot these is inherently windy and he can't stop the wind. But perhaps it might make sense to shoot it somewhere slightly less scenic but a lot quieter. Oh well. I've just been skimming some of these posts. Seems like the usual reaction to a big box. I haven't noticed any comments about the video. Have people watched it? Does the wind/sound issue get less annoying? Hey, this is coming off negatively and other than being disappointed about the video, I think this is a cool release. For all those folks who wanted better representation in the latter years, here's your chance to put your money where your mouth is. For all those who wanted some really early stuff, you should be happy too. For all those who like the late '60s - '77 era, there's more of that! For all those who think music should be free, man, well you're out of luck. lol

I've watched a lot of talk about mp3/flac/cd/hd cd/vinyl. What I see as a few points. I have a top notch stereo (Conrad Johnson tube preamp, threshold statis amp with Magneplanner MG3 speakers), it does sound great. When I bought it the salesman had several words of advice, first you audio collection had to be worth 4 times your system or you pissed money away. Two if all you listened to was FM radio, don't buy this system. Third you will ONLY hear this quality if you sit quiet in the right spot. If your doing the dishes, cleaning the house working in the yard you will NEVER hear what the system is reproducing. I don't sit in front of my stereo much anymore, in fact its been stored for quite awhile since the speakers need a fair amount of room to work right. Most of my listening is in the car, on my computer speakers or some wireless shit I have in the garage and backyard. They all sound fine and you will NEVER hear the difference in source material in this listening environment. I have some nice computer speakers (Bose Companion 5), they attach via a usb port and sound incredible for 400 bucks. The junk in garage and backyard sound great while working on cars or floating in pool or weeding backyard. The car system is the "best" stock Toyota Avalon system, sounds good enough. I also have cheap computer speakers scatter around the house and have a cheap laptop I use as a jukebox to stream the music off my hard drive of my desktop. So on Saturday night when me and the wife are getting ready to go to dinner, I hook laptop to bathroom computer speakers and let fly. Echo in bathroom, think you'll hear the difference in flac/mp3? I don't. Certainly you can hear difference in mp3 levels, most of my music is 320 levels, audiobooks are 128. I have found with audiobooks if people rip at a 64 rate there is a ringing sound. Music I will not even take for free if its under 128. 128 sounds fine on cheap wireless speakers in pool while hanging with friends. Size considerations,,, mp3 320 is a lot smaller that wav or flac. May not matter to some, (some commented about eating up GB's), well I have 500,000 songs, by over 6,000 artist and almost fill a 5 TERRA BYTE drive. So even if flac sounded better while cutting the grass :-) I can't fit a half a million songs on a reasonable amount of space. And don't forget, you need TWICE the space so you can backup collection. I have a 5TB drive for backups that I only attach to machine while backing up, then it's unplugged to protect it. Plus I have copies stored outside the house. It has taken 15 years to get to this point so I am WELL backed up. Also too I'm gonna be 60 in January and even though I swear I got great hearing (still the only person who can hear a toilet running in the house!!:-) I still gotta believe I have some high end loss. So you really need to ask yourself how and where do I listen to music. And really what do I listen to. I don't think Andy Williams needs a 30,000 dollar system to listen to on, nice though his voice is! The Dead definitely can utilize a great sound system, full range and large sound stage. MP3's are very convenient, I know Neil Young is going around complaining about them, but you also know that man gotta be half deaf from standing in front of crazy horse and sonic youth :-) So I'll stick with my 320 level mp3 and be able to carry 50,000 songs on vacation in a player the size of bic lighter or hell, your cell phone. PS - there are differences in mp3 players, the iPhone doesn't sound as good as the Samsung, for a player I use a Cowan Iaudio, have the same one for years now. My buddy uses his Samsung galaxy phone and blue tooths it into his car, sounded fine that last time I was out with him.

The number of available boxes are going up! Maybe they found more?

The cost is a bummer...... a bummer that while 7 CDs more than Europe '72 it is way more pricey....... a true bummer....... had to really think about it instead of it being an immediate purchase. Though in the end, bit the bullet. took some happy hour drinks to make me do it though. I am bummed it was so pricey and there is a bit of gouging going on. but the music is special to me and takes me places. Do I think that was taken advantage of? yes I do. Do I think I will get my money worth out if it? I guess....... but a bummer they took advantage of our love of the music. Peace Roger PS re-tape the video. Its terrible. Unwatchable. WITF! would any company worth its weight in SPAM post that crappy video. Nope. Its not complicated, if it is too windy tape it indoors. Does this really need spelled out? Apparently

"but the music is special to me and takes me places." Ditto WH5150. Let's drink to that!