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"When we began discussing audio projects to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead back in 2012, we knew we wanted to do something completely unprecedented. We could think of nothing more exciting or ambitious than a career-spanning overview of the band's live legacy focused on what best tells the story: complete concerts. Our first criterion was the very best live music to represent any given year in the band’s history. We wanted to make sure that there were not only the tent-pole shows that fans have been demanding for decades but also ones that are slightly more under the radar, but equally excellent. For those who listen to the entire box straight through, chronologically, the narrative of the Grateful Dead's live legacy will be seen as second to none in the pantheon of music history." - David Lemieux
We are more than pleased to announce the Grateful Dead's most ambitious release ever: 30 TRIPS AROUND THE SUN. Available as both an 80-disc boxed set and a custom lightning-bolt USB drive, the collection includes 30 unreleased live shows, one for each year the band was together from 1966 to 1995, along with one track from their earliest recording sessions in 1965. Packed with over 73 hours of music, both the boxed set and the USB drive will be individually numbered limited editions.
The 80-disc boxed set is individually numbered and limited to 6,500 copies, a nod to the band’s formation in 1965. Along with the CDs, it also includes a gold-colored 7-inch vinyl single which bookends the band’s career. The A-side is “Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)” from the band’s earliest recording session in 1965 with the B-side of the last song the band ever performed together live, “Box Of Rain” recorded during their final encore at Soldier Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995.
The box also comes with a 288-page book that features an extensive, career-spanning essay written by Nick Meriwether, who oversees the Dead archives at the University of California, Santa Cruz, along with special remembrances of the band submitted by fans. Also included is a scroll that offers a visual representation of how the band’s live repertoire has evolved through the years.
The USB drive version* will be shaped like a gold lightning bolt with the Grateful Dead 50th anniversary logo engraved on the side. The drive includes all of the music from the collection in both FLAC (96/24) and MP3 formats and is an individually numbered limited edition of 1,000 copies. Digital version of the book also included on USB.
Shows will NOT be sold individually on CD. This release is sure to sell out quickly so pre-order your copy today and stick around as we will be revealing a mighty fine selection of music, art, and much, much more right here.
(Looking for a smaller 50th Anniversary commemorative keepsake? September 18th will see the release of a four-CD version of the collection titled 30 TRIPS AROUND THE SUN: THE DEFINITIVE LIVE STORY 1965-1995. More on that here.)
ROLLINGSTONE.COM SONG PREMIERE AND EXCLUSIVE DAVID LEMIEUX INTERVIEW
Head on over to Rollingstone.com for the very first listen of "Morning Dew" 9/18/87 Madison Square Garden, David Fricke's exclusive interview with archivist David Lemieux, and the reveal of 30 TRIPS AROUND THE SUN's '69 and '84 shows.
*Helpful hints for using your USB:
Running the 30 Trips Player / Reader program:
On Windows – Navigate to the USB drive and double click the PCStart.exe file to run.
On MacOS – Open the GD 30 Trips drive, and double click the MacStart to run.
Viewing the digital book:
You can either view it within the program that comes on the drive, or by opening the PDF directly.
To view the PDF, open the PDF folder on the drive and the USB_bk_spreads_08-31 file within. Selecting the option within your PDF reading application to view as a “single page” might be preferable to viewing as a continuous document.
Importing music into iTunes and other library programs:
When you import the songs from the USB into your library, the information used to identify the track will likely leave them sorted incorrectly. Please use the song list found here to re-number the songs for each show so that they playback in the correct order.
PDF
Text
Chasing The Magic => The Monster At Barton Hall
Eeeeh, if there's anything I'm second most familiar with after E72, it's Spring '77. I've had everything commercially available for a long time, as well as some soundboards of 5/7, 5/8, and 5/9 that are better sounding than many official releases from other years. I can't find the magic in Cornell, compared to everything else. They all sound f@#king fantastic. Even Morning Dew I put to the test on one of my 80 minute commutes to work, cycling through 5/8, 5/22, and 6/7, and I couldn't find anything to elevate 5/8 above 5/22 and 6/7. They all had blistering crescendos with great soloing from Jerry and lighting fast flourishes from Weir (which I was surprised were him - that's one takeaway from the listening session I'm speaking of). I'm all for talking it up, however, because I would love to see them obtain "the tape" and release it in bulk to distributors all over the country as The Monster At Barton Hall.
But yeah, Cornell, great show.
@Gary Farseer
Just curious, is your screen name a nod to the Farseer Trilogy? Wondering as I just picked up the first book of the trilogy and haven't read it yet. Currently reading NeuroTribes, but after that it will be time for some fiction.
WBOTB
here's the relix article.http://www.relix.com/articles/detail/whats_become_of_the_bettys
Here's a list of the 3 auction lots that have been released into circulation.
http://www.taperssection.com/reference/html/NFO_WBOTB/bettywht.htm
The New Yorker article earlier in the thread discusses the 4th lot of storage boxes and the owners million dollar ransom.
This Is All A Dream We Dreamed
I've been reading Blair Jackson and David Gans' just published Oral History of the Grateful Dead the past two days. I'm now up to 1970. It's a very, very enjoyable read.
USB Blues, try THRAK to clear the palette
This is for the guys and gals awaiting the USB version, if you have any cash left over.
Just picked up the King Crimson THRAK box. If you are inclined to that music (or are open to it), this is a great way to clear your head for 30 Trips. Completely different, and definitely great. Like any other ambitious collection, some flaws, and King Crimson purists might not care for the remastering, but for everyone else interested, a fabulous set. Especially interesting (aside from the concerts and versions of the original album), the engineer/artist assembled and created two cd length compositions based on outtakes etc.
Just a suggestion for something to listen to while waiting for GDM to put together perfect sets for us!
This is all a dream
I will have to add this to my list. It sounds like it will go well with Kreutzmann's autobiography, also on my list of soon to be read books.
wjonjd re Cornell and tapes
I became acquanted with a couple of tape traders who'd transfer Reel to Reel to cassette...they would always stop your tape at some point, while the Master rolled, to give you a drop-out in sound, so you couldn't sell (¿wtf???) their recordings. annoying as hell.
@prafter - tape trading culture
Yeah, I will never completely understand the mindset of folks like that. It's not far removed from the mindset of "I can make you a copy of this, but you can't make one for anybody." There were people who would "cut you off" if they found you had made copies for anyone. It was part of a social hierarchy of having the best tapes. Quite a bit has been written about it, and I think one of the Compendiums may discuss this aspect of the tape trading culture. The total opposite of the GD culture I was immersed in.
It may have started because Latvala (and probably others) who had access to the vault sometimes made copies for folks, and requested that they not spread them around, but those reasons had more to do with their feeling at the time that the tapes weren't really theirs to "spread around." This was NOT the motivation behind this behavior by that portion of the "trading elite" that lived by those rules, but I suspect that their attitude may have had its genesis because of this.
In any case, it's great that others with "elite" access didn't feel this way. Also, that after Latvala passed, those who had copies directly from him (these are folks who had much better motives for their behavior) felt that they were now free to pass the tapes on freely. And then there's the Eaton tapes of the Betty's, where they went out of their way to undercut the "social hierarchy" traders specifically, by trying to make sure they were spread far and wide.
tape trading culture
The gap method of marking tapes was usually not for GD tapes and started with Mike Millard who would create drop outs during different songs for every copy he made and kept notes of the "flaws" to tell who allowed his tape into circulation. This was so he could blacklist them from the southern California trading circles.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Millard
The Latvala "tags" were usually an additional cassette gen before the DAT, their lineage would be SBD MR>C1>DAT. Eaton would add a 2nd cassette gen to his seeds before allowing them to slip into circulation, these would be SBD MR> C1>DAT> C, he would seed these on a GD trading group called section 9 on Compuserve. None of the reel transfers done by Eaton have ever slipped into circulation and are in the vault. These are the source of the 1972 Academy of Music shows.
When Dick died GDM went after the people that had copies of Dick's SBD MR>C1>DATs and threatened legal action if the tapes made it into circulation. I know one person that John Cutler, who he didn't know, called and demanded the return of the DATs he had gotten from Dick, who used to send out copies to friends on future potential Dick's Picks. These recordings are known as the Dick Leaks and considered "hush tapes" not to be traded publicly.
The Betty tapes in circulation come from the "Unindicted Conspirators" who shared the PCMs made from the reels on DAT in the late 1980's and became the WBOTB project in the late 1990's.
They have a lineage of SDB MR>PCM>DAT
Eaton finally started sharing his DATs, not the Betty's reels he transferred though, via Charlie Miller in the last 10 years.
In the 1990's there was a more GD related type of hoarding that involved allowing shows circulating in DAT to be shared on cassettes, which was degrading the quality of the recordings in circulation by letting cassette generations into the lineage. These people were the "gene pool" crowd and would only trade with people who had the expensive DAT equipment and shut off people that made cassettes for friends and tainted the gene pool. It was these elitists that also fought against allowing the DATs to be transferred to CDs, using the same excuse of tainting the gene pool.
More Tape Trading!
Thanks for the clarification KayakGuy.
I got Eaton's role mixed up with Ken Genetti's. I love this quote about what Ken Genetti said when he saw the stash of Betty's that the co-conspirators had (from the relix article):
"Genetti shared the couple’s intention to spread the musical wealth, although initially he advocated for an aggressive, populist twist. “I told them: ‘You know what? It would be really great if you look in Relix and Golden Road, where there are these ads for people saying, ‘Just starting my collection; please help.’’ I was thinking: If only we could send out these to those people. Then, all of a sudden, those people, the newbies, would have all these tapes that nobody had. It would flip the whole scales upside down because I was so sick of these hoarders who had a whole closet of stuff that nobody could find and they would never show you what it was.”
Tapes..
I always thought I had a killer tape collection back in the day. History can be harsh.. looking back with clear reflection it was laughable.
I did have the best collection of anyone I knew.. but most of my friends weren't heads. I would trade w/ anyone that had an interest though..
I also remember the day I got Cornell (among others) and who I got it from (thanks Mike). It was in the '80's, likely not too long after it started circulating widely. That batch of tapes moved to the top of the list.. just in time for the summer me and my and gf hopped in my Toyota and drove cross country seeing as many shows and climbing as many cliffs as we possibly could.
..and look at us now, what a wealth of great music at our fingertips.
Its good to be the king.
About to place an order....
...and noticed that there's free shipping on orders over $75 for the month of November.
Tapes cont'd
Thanks for the interesting insights into the tape trading community. Perhaps there is still some effort to prevent some music from circulating. It's been years since the Archive allowed soundboards to be downloaded. And there's the recent example of the previously missing soundboard copy to 3/26/72, which then appeared on the Archive just a few days after 3/26/72 was officially released as DP14. Though these days, with torrent sites, and the ease with which digital media is shared and spread, any attempts to prevent the spread of music seems largely symbolic. Then again, I really don't know much about these things.
Big Box Blues
Did I mention I hate Apple?
I literally just finished ripping all the CD's from Boxzilla. Low and behold.. my last ITunes 'update' changed my settings to lossy from lossless (ALAC).
Fortunately.. its just the Box and Dave's 16 that are affected.. Unfortunately.. I had a good bit of time into this.
Did I mention I hate Apple? Sorry.. but besides overpriced products they have become sucky the last couple years...
Time to reburn and set up some Physical Therapy for the carpal tunnel I will surely develop after importing all this stuff and getting it 'exactly perfect.'
Did I mention Apple sucks?
The Cornell Tape...and Does this Make Me a Bad Person?
So for the longest time I’ve sat on this story, and when I think back on it, I of course realize that it goes against essentially every grain of goodness within the GD’s community, but on the flip side, I was pretty young, uninformed (obviously) and totally naive. But, since this topic has now miraculously surfaced on this awesome board, I will now relay the story of how I acquired the Cornell show on Maxell XLII, many many years ago.
I was 14 years old, and hitch hiking, for the first time ever, with my older brother on Martha’s Vineyard during summer time, just looking for someone nice to pick us up and bring us somewhere, anywhere there may be action. We weren’t at all familiar with the island, but for those who may be, there is this little community of homes that look like gingerbread houses – that’s the only way I can describe it – very ornate outsides, with lots of colors, steep roofs, etc. Well, our ride dropped us in the vicinity of this little community so we began wandering around. Wouldn’t you know, one house was having a party, and some guys, older than us, invited us up and handed us beers. And, you guessed it, GD was playing. At the time, I was still totally naive to anything beyond a few albums like Live Dead and Europe 72 as well as of course their studio stuff. But what I heard coming from their boombox was pristine GD, and clearly in a live setting as they were going nutty and just jamming like mad. I recall looking at the small pile of tapes on the floor, and the one that was playing was indeed Cornell ’77. I was awestruck. As the night went on, and I consumed more beers, I feel like I must have gotten a little more confident. Because I clearly recall that on our way out of that house party, I stopped and took the Cornell Tape – the 2nd Set – and secretly reveled in the amazing find I just acquired, albeit via an essentially & completely immoral path. Nonetheless, I came back home and immediately shared it with my couple of buddies who also happened to like the Dead. We were all just blown away by this recording – not only what was being played, but of course the quality was like listening to a CD. From the moment I acquired this tape, despite the questionable method, I have never looked back and have been on the quest to get as much of this stuff as I could.
Looking back on it, I am not at all proud of the fact I ‘permanently borrowed’ someone’s killer copy, maybe their only copy back then, of this fabled show. But what I also realize is that it was a personal turning point for me in the history and lore of the wake that this band created, and for that I am incredibly thankful. And, furthermore, now that I am older, I make it a point to share share share and turn people on to this thing I was so lucky to have stumbled upon even when I didn’t understand the significance of the stumble.
I hope I can be forgiven by this wonderful community, as this has been something I have always wanted to get off my chest and hope I can now move past it....so I ask, does this make me a bad person?
Sixtus, shamefully
Re: sixtus
Dammit sixtus - I knew it was you, I knew it was you all along! I want my tape back you rat bastard!
I leant a box of tapes to a friend back in high school.. it had several of my choice possessions, one being a crisp '76 Chicago Auditorium tape with a wonderful Mission in the Rain. The bastard never returned the box. (you know who you are, Mark L.).
I didn't listen to a Mission in the Rain that good until I discovered LMA a little more than a decade ago. That was in the pre-car, pre-job lawn cutting days, so a box of tapes actually took some scratch to save up for. I knew the guy.. much like a coke-head who owes you money.. he simply started avoiding me.
I guess we can laugh at it now.
Tapes cont'd
Yeah, if the worst offense is swiping a bootleg tape from someone, you're probably ahead of most of us. Awhile ago, a friend lent me a dozen or so tapes- He was by far my greatest connection to high quality recordings. On my way to the car with the tapes, while it was raining, I dropped the box in the parking lot. The tapes sprawled out on the ground in the rain. To this day, he keeps my pinky finger in a jar by his bedside table, as a warning and reminder to fellow travelers. I was always like, who needs the pinky finger anyways. Actually, the tapes mostly survived the incident, unfortunate though it was.
Tape Karma
..at least it was only your pinky finger. Must have been some high gen. aud's.
Brother Sixtus
Play 6 St. Stephens and 4 Estimated Prophets, this shall be your penance...
...and I Shall Repent
...and thus I shall find salvation. St. Stephen queued up, Estimated Prophets to follow!
Thanks for the compassionate understanding of my festering morality question. Man it feels good to come clean after all these years. I suppose if that is indeed my biggest offense things will prolly turn out alright.
Sixtus
JimInMD and a bad Apple
Thanks for this tip Jimbo, and although it is palpable pain for you, I am glad to know this because my iTunes also just updated itself seemingly on it's own the other day (right around the time my ipod maxed out). I will be sure to check the setting before I start to import new stuff into iTunes noting that it likely would have changed this off of the ALAC setting as well. Not something I would consciously check each and every time to be honest.
Now, if you can back away from the computer with that sledge hammer in hour hand...take a hit of this....
Swiper No Swiping!
Sixtus that's classic. I will say this - the bastard deserved it, as he did not spring for the XLIIS, Maxell's top of the line high bias tape (I probably spent 90% of my disposable income on these in the 80s - what a treat when 100 minute tapes became available).
I boycotted Apple after my 3rd iPod broke. What a scam! They'll never get me off of my Samsung Galaxy Note with Poweramp app now. I have 160GB capacity, which allows all the Dead to fit, and the UI and EQ blows iPod out of the water. Screw 'em
the other side of the swipe
I had a copy of Cornell 77 I got in the early 90s that sounded great (at the time) and it was labeled as a "SBD", which made it sound all the better. :0) I was so Grateful for that and a decent sized box of other Maxell tapes I got from a Deadhead here in Atlanta. I ran into this guy via business where we'd work together one day every couple weeks or so and always have to take a company funded lunch. During those we'd started to talk music and I made some comment about a few Dead tapes I had (aud) that I got from a random guy in the parking lot at Fiddlers in Denver back in the 80s. I fashioned myself a "deadhead" until this guy heard my reference and started talking about it. Holy smokes! We ended up rushing through the rest of our work and talking music for a few more hours that afternoon at which point he said hey, bring some Maxells in here next time and I'll start copying for you. So for months I'd bring in the bricks of tapes and the next time he'd trade me a box of gold for the blanks. He didn't have to do any of that and never asked for anything. I tried to pay him back in various ways but he always resisted. Just wanted to spread the music. Over the next few years everything transitioned to CDs and then internet downloads. The first DP came out and I found out from him as well. I've bought everything released since then but I'll always be grateful for his kindness. I got 100s of hours of listening to those glorious tapes he chose to share. More than a few of them vanished over the years thanks to "friends" who I also gave beer and hospitality to only to be stabbed in the back. Since I came by them for free I just wrote it off to irresistible tunes and the cosmic need for more people to hear it. I'm really glad we can buy the kind of quality now that we were searching for back then..and even though I'm kind of pissed about the USB situation, I'm still going to buy it all.
Repent, Brother Sixtus
..then all is good with the world again.
Be thankful, my friend.. that its St. Peter (and not St. Stephen) taking to task at the pearly gates..
If it was St. Stephen at the gates of heaven.. looking over your sins and deciding if you can Go To Heaven or go directly to jail..being that St. Stephen is most definitely into the good ole grateful dead.. he might look at this offense as a mortal sin, worthy of a few thousand years in Captain and Tennille purgatory. "mmmaaannn that guy can play the piano" (said in your best Jamaican accent, ...inside joke).
FWIW.. I think John the Baptist must have been a deadhead too.
tapes
This is just amazing about the tapes. I've read a little here and there over the years, and you realize the amazing under current of stuff going on in the world of dead music/tapes. I remember hearing about JACE and was always curious to the labels on all our tapes......SBD,(1st Gen, 2nd Gen) Betty, Matrix etc etc. It was always so fascinating to the non taper/ deadhead, and maybe more so even today looking back on it all. Peace
PS Ive always been a sucker for the Matrix
Thanks Dr. Shake
I hadn't been watching the news. yikes.
So much trouble in the world.
I light of current world events....
....I advise us all to play some Paris shows. Ain't no time to hate indeed. Wake up call to the civilized world....
Current Events
One month and two days after what would have been John Lennon's 75th birthday.
..this darkness, got to give.
..also, give peace a chance.
...and Dire Wolf
I beg you please Don't murder me.terrible events in Paris last night, at the venue Le Bataclan where I saw John Mahavishnu Orchestra an The soft machine more than 40 years ago and in Charonne wher I attended an awsome Rich Thompson Show 4 years ago.
Charlie still cries...
Sixtus and Jimi MD and Bad Apple
Sorry and I hope you don't mind but can you dumb down to me what you mean by iTunes updating and ALAC settings? I downloaded the Boxset. What happens with this update? I never follow the settings stuff. What does it do? Will I lose these downloads or just make them sound compressed? Thanks in advance and prayers for Paris. This world is getting darker....
Re: Diggey
What I noticed after burning Dave's 16 was the folder the m4a files are stored in was only 441 mbytes. Uncompressed .wav's would be just north of 2 gigs and lossless ALAC or Flac should be somewhere between 1.2 gigs and 1.4 gigs, so I knew something was wrong and it was not a lossless copy, some compression had occurred.
I went into my import settings and sure enough.. it had been switched from ALAC (lossless) to 128kb AAC.
When I got this PC (its about a year old) the first thing I did was change the import settings to Lossless and used ALAC, as that is what I had been using before. There is no way I changed the settings back. The phantom did it almost certainly when the software was auto updated. 128kb AAC sounds bad, it definitely sounds compressed and I am miffed as to why or how this happened.
I don't want anything in my collection to be lossy, in 2015 there is really no reason to sacrifice sound quality to save disc space.
Hope that helps answer your question.
Diggey - iTunes
You need to configure your import settings in the iTunes preferences window.44.1 kHz, 16 bit if you want to burn it later to a CD-R. AIFF for Mac, WAV for PC. This is uncompressed. You can store it like this on a hard drive for backup and use the files to make copies in a compressed format.
If you just want to load the music into iTunes then use the preferences to pick the format you want.
The preferences can also be used to pick where the files are stored. For 30 Trips I set the storage location as an external HD and copied the discs as 44.1/16 AIFF. The files are now backed up lossless on a HD but they are not stored in my iTunes music collection because I changed the storage location.
You can then use those uncompressed files to import compressed files into your iTunes music collection: change the storage location back to where your iTunes music collection is stored and set import format - ALAC, AAC, FLAC, etc. Then import from the HD where you stored the CD backups.
I edit the 44.1/16 files with Toast to make seamless transitions between discs and reorder tracks if necessary. Then export as a disc image (Sd2f) and then use the Sd2f file to make AIFF, AAC, FLAC files.
Diggey and Jim
The settings might reset with each iTunes software update.
Charlie3
About the name Gary Farseer. No I have not heard of the Farseer Trilogy until you posted here. It does appear to be an interesting book series. Interesting that one of the female characters last name is Birdsong. I was just making a play on Jerry's name and sort of how I view things in life. That is, information I process and books/ideas I enjoy reading about. Will definitely be looking into the trilogy more to see if I can squeeze in some read time.
Re: Kayak Guy
Kayaker.. I, too, convert Flac to Wav then just use the raw wav files in ITunes, I don't go through the extra step of converting to ALAC, wav works.
Another reason to be pissed at Apple. They wont support Flac because they are favoring their proprietary ALAC format. Those rat bastards...
Let there be (flac) songs to fill the air.
FLAC for Itunes people.
I'm a little slow on this but trying to avoid the news coverage and this topic will work for me.
I'll set up a hypothetical and maybe I can get the info so I can understand it. I'll admit I am anti Apple and their proprietary ecosystem, otherwise known as spyware, and will not be downloading anything from them. Just the format names show you the obvious difference in the 2 formats one being Free Lossless Audio Compression vs, Apple Lossless Audio Compression
Let's say I have a bunch of Miller SBDs in FLAC, how would I share these with people who are stuck in the apple ecosystem, so they can enjoy these crispy lossless SBDs, with minimum difficulty on their part on their Itunes players?
Would they have to be in WAV format and then the Itunes user imports them into Itunes?
Would they have to be on a CD so they can be ripped into the system?
After the importing is there a ALAC version of the WAV somewhere on the system that can be saved?
Once you import the wav into Itunes can you save it to ALAC, if you have set your preferences properly and haven't had a recent update that changes your setting to lossy MP4?
Why don't people that use ALAC files share them with other ALAC users?
Mac FLAC
I'm a Mac user but have never used ALAC.
I listen to CDs. Have all releases plus around 1500 CD-R's that started with the shn vines and now shn/FLAC torrents. Currently am working on filling the holes in my collection and getting Miller upgrades. The torrent files are expanded and made into an Sd2f file which I convert into AIFF, WAV, AAC, FLAC files, burned to DVD+R data discs and stored on multiple HD's.
The AAC files are 256 kb and used on a 60 GB iPod which doesn't get used a lot. I will buy a portable FLAC player in the future, either FiiO or Sony, but not until they are USB 3 and play at least 256 GB SDXC cards. I'm also hoping that my next car has an in dash FLAC player. Preferably I want a 'carputer' in my dash with a 1 TB or greater HD. There are directions online for building a carputer but I want someone to do it for me.
In the meantime I have 600 CDs in my car trunk and rotate about 150 through the cockpit.
I make all the different formats because I'm planning for the future. I don't use ALAC because I don't expect Apple to be part of my future music listening experience due to their failure to comprehend music storage and listening outside of their own corporate tunnel vision. But I'm totally convinced that processing music files is best done on a Mac.
@KayakGuy
There's definitely nothing wrong with sharing the files as WAV, but that does take up almost twice as much space (or if sending over the internet, takes twice as long).
Personally, I share FLACs with Apple friends by converting to ALAC first. They can convert them to WAV or AIFF if they wish, with no loss in quality (lossless), or more likely they will just use them as ALACs.
There are a lot of free tools available to convert your FLACs, but I find dbPowerAmp the fastest and easiest. It costs around $38 and comes in versions for both Windows and Mac.
Gary Farseer
Interesting statement about the information processing, resonates with me. Seems like much of life comes down to information processing, pattern recognition. I haven't read the first Farseer book yet, but I dig the fantasy/ sci-fi genre, mixed with whatever non-fiction happens to catch my eye. Gave up waiting on George RR Martin to ever finish the game of thrones books so I had to find different fix for my jones.
My Apple FLAC pathway
D/L FLACs in ZIP or RAR.Reconstitute file folder with UnRraX or the Apple-built-in ZIP expander program.
Drag FLACs (or SHNs) into xACT. Convert them to AIFFs (AIFFs are the Apple version of WAVs) - xACT will drop the AIFFs into the file of FLACs. Delete the FLACs.
After I burn CDRs for my music shelves, I drag the AIFFs I want to add to Li'l Poddy (I'm all Apple, except for my watch...) into iTunes. In iTunes I convert them to 320k MP3s and delete the AIFFs.
UnRarX and xACT are freeware, I believe. A Google search will churn up the sites to D/L these programs from.
(I only D/L noncommercial releases, almost always concert recordings. I recut the AIFFs and do whatever sound processing I feel is appropriate in a defunct program called Sound Studio.)
on program settings:
I don't think of myself as particularly computer proficient. Exploring program settings may sound intimidating but anyone who hasn't actually tried it should try it! I really think you will find most of it easy to do! Programs are much better at pleasing you if you configure them to your wishes! It's worth trying!
on auto updates:
And Auto Update is the first setting everyone should change!
On a Mac you get plenty of notifications about updates being available, so you can keep everything up to date if you want, but you can do it WHEN YOU want!
I assume the same is true on those dirty virus boxes (Windows computers).
Paris,Friday night, I was
Paris,
Friday night, I was not far from the room Bataclan (which took place one of the attacks). I had dinner in a local restaurant then, still in the same neighborhood, I attend a theater piece. Then return by metro and bus, got home around midnight, and it was not until the next morning (yesterday) I learned the horror.
Thank you to those who have sent me a message of solidarity.
product sku
081227955892