Grateful Dead

i was informed by PM from someone who got info directly from an email from the powers that be that the mixing and mastering was done at 24/192. So that would be one modification to my description below. I don't think that would have much impact on the time involved. The rest of the description would still hold. Everything analog would have been digitized to 24/192. Everything digital would have been uponverted to 24/192, mixing and mastering processes performed on the files. Then for the CD's, a set of files would be converted to 16/44.1 with noise shaped dithering and hdcd encoded, and another set of files would be downconverted to 24/96. I think the likeliest reason for the delay (i have no idea but it would be nice to actually find out) might be that it was contracted for overseas manufacture, what they got was incorrect somehow (poor quality, missing files, mislabeled files, who knows) and that the lenghth of time to have them redone and shipped stateside again was high. That's my guess. I wonder if we will ever really know. I very much hope you guys get your music before the Christmas holidays :):)

but the one i really dig is....87 ! though it`s not the " epic " with " the usual suspects " - no DS , no Other one , no Scarlet - but the vibe , the feeling , the singing , the playing , you can almost see the audience dance and cheer....so that 87 is truly epic !

I believe wjonjd is correct, I left out the FLAC conversion. The exercise in math, however, did take my mind off this incredibly bad situation....

Feel like I won the lottery....Talk about an embarrassment of riches....just scored 2 bottles of 12 year old Pappy Van Winkle Special Reserve "Lot B" & 1 bottle of 10 year old, Old Rip Van Winkle. Pairs very well with 30 Trips.... This Thanksgiving I give thanks to being a very lucky man....in more ways than one. :) Happy Thanksgiving everybody. P.S.-I work for a small liquor store so I actually got it for what it is supposed to sell for,not the bullsheet prices most see it for.Now that I think about it,it resembles secondary market prices like DEAD stuff.Crazy P.S.S.-It's also officially ski season here.Whaaahoo!

An Internet Interlude for those of you with a sense of humor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKo8eW9HDSE WARNING: Offensive photo accompanies this 1 minute slice of weirdness

I get this isn't an Altamont type debacle, but for those who dropped the bucks for a product that apparently hasn't been made yet, this isn't feeling like a Woodstock-type love-in either. I was thinking of buying a bolt. I'm a non-CD guy who loves streaming GD music. Kinda the ideal customer for this, but I'm thinking no way now. Am glad refunds are being given to those tired of waiting. On the upside, this did free up some cash to purchase an unopened'73 Winterland Box Set from Amazon at original pricing. So I got that going for me. Let me know when you're ready to download 30 Trips or somehow get this figured out down the road. For now, the 4 CD set is sounding fine to me. Till we meet again 30 Trips. No bolt for me for now. Always loved Rhino, so I'm surprised. Used to shop for years at the (now closed) Westwood Boulevard Rhino shop. Always a little sad when driving by still. Oh well.

....and with Cornell '81, I have completed my thirtieth trip around the sun. It's like having a buffet of sonic selections with which to sate your appetite. Mmmm....mmmm.... ....all sound spectacular except Manor Downs '82 and Zenith '90. Texas has too much high end, and France sounds a little muddy. Other than that. Impeccable....I maybe would have added a small light on the underside of the lid that came one when the box is opened. That would be cool.... And to those who ordered the bolt. I would hang tight, and wait. Easy for me to say, that that little piece of tech may be a hot commodity in the future.

... I used to say, "I put The Residents on when I wanted people to go home". OK, my wife would leave too :-)

I saw the posts by batzye and sfrank115 and wanted to respond as well as I could. I did some actual conversions on GD files ripped from CD and then did some math to determine approximately what the size of the files would be that were coming on the USB. I'll explain how I came up with my numbers, but first wanted to point out that although batzye's numbers are approximately accurate, he is assuming that the 24/96 files they will put on the USBs are WAV's. I think that is highly unlikely. I believe they will use FLAC's as they are musically identical and because that is the format that dead.net/rhino have always used to provide hi-res files in the past as downloads. His numbers are also slightly high because I believe that there is between 73 and 74 hours of music, not the 77 he used. I could be mistaken about that, but it wouldn't matter as I didn't use time to do the calculations, just the number of bytes. I took one disc of live GD music in 24/96 WAV format and called it "A-W24" which was 2.53GB. This converted as FLAC (using highest compression level) was 1.46GB "A-F24", and as 320kbs mp3 was 184MB "A-MP3". I used these ratios in combination with the actual size of 30Trips (including the 45rpm tracks) to determine what the sizes would be for 30Trips. I used the actual number of bytes rather than the rounded Gigabyte figures to get as accurate a number as possible. 30Trips-W24 = 141.9GB (24-bit WAV) 30Trips-F24 = 81.9GB (24-bit FLAC) 30Trips-MP3 = 10.1GB (320kbs MP3) So, if they used the FLACS and MP3s it would be approximately 92GB. Even if I'm off by quite a bit due to variations - like let's say I happened to pick a disc of music that happens to FLAC compress much more than most for some reason, it would still easily fit on a 128GB USB stick. As far as the mastering processes that sfrank115 refers, I don't have any inside knowledge, but I do know that almost all digital mastering is done in either 24-bit fixed, or 32-bit floating specs, and at either 96khz or 192khz. Since the files are being provided in 24/96, my guess is that these are the specs they used during the mastering process. All of the shows that came from analog tape would have been digitized to 24/96 for mixing (if multitrack) and mastering. Shows that were recorded to digital in anything below 24/96 would likely have been upconverted to 24/96 so that the hundreds or even thousands of digital manipulations that can take place during mastering don't add noticeable quantization noise, which happens much more readily at 16-bits than 24-bits. The initial upconversion is a simple and quick process, and wouldn't add any noticeable timeframe to USB stick delivery. I don't believe that the music for Boxzilla was mastered at 16-bits - that would be highly unusual because even though the quantization noise level of digital music at 16-bits is still basically inaudible, the quantization noise added each time you do one of the hundreds or thousands of digital manipulations typical during mastering of the files can create noise that IS audible. This is one of several reasons why 24-bits is critical for mastering, even though I and many believe that when you convert the final product down to 16-bits, the final 24-bit files and the 16-bit files will sound the same to human ears. In any case, I believe that all the mastering and mixing was already done in order to complete the production of Boxzilla. I do not believe any further mastering of any kind would be required as they would already have the exact 24/96 files that they will be providing on the USB sticks. Therefore, I do not believe that any mastering or mixing issues, or anything having to do with any further work on the files beyond what they already did for the physical box, would have any bearing on the reasons for the delay in the USB stick. In fact, I think that AFTER they finished creating the exact files that will be used for USB stick, they needed to do a little extra work to create the CD files for Boxzilla including converting the files to 16/44.1. Disclaimer - I could be wrong about anything and everything above. I don't think so, though. :) Edit: I just noticed that they do actually state above that the files that will be provided on the USB stick will be in FLAC format, not WAV, at 24/96, so the 128GB size of the USB sticks is not a problem. Edit2: Once the USB sticks arrive, could someone post the actual total size of the combined FLAC files and combined MP3 files please?

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