Grateful Dead

I agree Stuman. Vista sucks. Lets hope Windows 7 will be better now that we have all paid to debug Vista for them. It may be worth avoiding the built in burner and instead use a separate (and free) burning programme such as Burn4Free

First thing , no offence to vist users but umm vista sucks . thats just my opinion of course. From time to time discs burned with vista are not compatible with xp systmes . so here is what my wife has to do everytime she burns a disc for me . " First go to my computer - click on open it will say "burn a disc" disc title she has to leave blank - just leave the date there or it will not burn correctly - there is a "show formating options" with an arrow button , click on it then click -mastered- then drag and drop - then click burn to disc. " Now i dunno if all vista systmes are like this but thats how my wife has to do it . I hope this helps .. Take care and I hope everyone has a super nice day !! Stu ..

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."Albert Einstein

As of August 21, the viner known as Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) has changed his name officially to Exploratory Data Analysis Dead (EDAD). We are sorry for any incovenience this may cause.

Like many here I remember the days of analog and the introduction to digital. I will say after being immersed in digital since the mid 80's and up until about a year ago, I've made the swtich back to analog format. What I mean is I prefer analog for many reasons. Of course, I don't have all these shows on cassette , reels and LP anymore; I have my share of CD's, DATs, DVDs and HD's, but I now employ a complete analog system. I use a Dynaco ST-70 tube amp and a Dynaco PAS-2 tube preamp. I also use my Revox A-77 reel to reel, Thorens TD-125 mk II turntable with the Shure SME 3009 R2 tone arm, and I've got a Yamaha KX-630 tape deck. I've also got a Sony DAT ZA5ES. I'm using a assortment of speakers from Bose 301 series II mid 80's, Altec late 70's bookshelfs, and finally getting some Klipsch La Scalla's from mid 80's. I use a regular commericial Sony CD player but use a "cheap" but effective digital to analog converter that uses a Burr Brown PCM-1716 chip. I use the digital out from the CD player into the DA converter...so there is only one conversion to analog. What I'm saying is this: old debate of digital is compressed anyway in comparison to a nice master reel, well pressed LP. Of course, digital get's better when the sample rate is higher and the resolution increases. However, I still will contend after years of using digital professionally as a studio engineer and as a musician has it's advantages greatly, but I still rather fancy the sound of analog better. As for the archive , it's simply that a resource library of digital material. One thing for sure is that digital is THE way for mass producing and distributing music. However, just last year the greatest increase in sales was in vinyl records that are being pressed by re-issues of older recordings or new releases by artists who relish analog formats. by the way, you can still get the digital SBD stuff via stream if you really want to work at it you get a digital s/pdif output from your computer via the USB - take that feed and go digital into a either another HD or DAT - then you can input that into some editing software splice the gaps, it won't be bit for bit, but it will be marginal digital quality... Ursa Minor http://www.myspace.com/donnieloeffler "the warm wet world of analog audio"

For GD shows you can only do this for Audience recordings. Soundboards may only be streamed. Go for example to http://www.archive.org/details/gd1975-06-17.aud.unknown.87560.flac16 Scroll down the page to the heading Individual Files. You will see a whole table of files and formats. The first column is headed FLAC. Click on each file to DL it. Tedious but it works. If you DL the Down'em all plug in for Firefox you can DL all the FLACs in one go and save a lot of bother. Other Artists let you DL FLACs of Soundboards, including David Gans http://www.archive.org/details/DG20030420.flac16

Hey we have to have somthing to talk about , lol .. And I agree with the rest of what you said CB. You said we can download flac from the archives site ? that one is still a mystery to me . maybe I`m doing something wrong there . And yes we should purchase some offical releases when we can , and I do that when my credit card allows me to do so ..

Perhaps it is better not to think of The Archive as a trading site, but as a permanent online library. It is like a massive stored music collection that belongs to everyone. So downloading a file as an MP3 from the Archive is like making an MP3 from your own losslessly stored music collection. So long as the FLAC/SHN files remain permanently on the Archive in unaltered state, then anyone can always go back there and guarantee to get the best possible version. It is a matter of honesty and trust that people do not upload files to the Archive that have a misrepresented lineage. And there are people out there who will soon detect an MP3 generation in a file by looking at the frequency range. By withdrawing permission for making Soundboards downloadable from the Archive the Dead helped create all this muddle over formats etc. If we all knew that the best quality shows were permanently stored and available 24/7 on our behalf in the best available (ideally lossless) format, then many of these discussions would not be taking place and the trading and torrenting sites we use might not exist in their current forms. But what then would we all have to talk about? Of course the Dead had reasons for doing what they did. There is the issue of intellectual property of their works (important to any artist) and, naturally, money (Blair Jackson has reported here that the Archive virtually killed off sales of the later Dicks Picks releases). So now it is a bit harder and more confusing to get all the shows we want as easily as we want, but it is not really that much hassle. And we should not forget just what an act of tolerance and generosity it is that this site tolerates open trading of shows that are not officially released. One way of saying thanks is to try to buy at least some of the official releases. It would be interesting to know how the sales of the these are holding up, given that fact that, despite the Archive restrictions, most of the shows are still quite easy to obtain.

I recentley been listening to a show in flac format via Foobar 2K. I then converted that show to WAV so i could burn it to disc , well it sounds way different to me ..the high`s and lows are cut down and it dos`nt have that punch you in the face feel to it anymore . I`m glad i save everything in flac mode .. Now I have been working in the mechanical services industry all my life ie, cars, trucks, small engines ,motor cycles, so I have a pretty good ear for sound . I can hear a bolt rattling loose on my Harley when i`m going down the road at 80 mph. plus I did own a small electronics repair shop for a little bit ( that was more just a hobby actually ) so I`m familliar with osciloscopes and how sound waves look and sound like .I built speach prossesors for cb radios that compressed the highs to make cb raidios sound like they had more power then they actually did , by increasing the sound modulation.. I`m suprised I can hear like that at my age , lol .. So with the help of CB and Rick I discovered the foobar programand nothing sounds as good as shn/flac , not wav not mp3 not any of the popular formats.. Now getting back to the LL web site , if it is not permited to seed from a mp3 converted to flac then why is there a link to the archives site for a some of those shows ? I mean anyone can create a flac file . I have a tape to pc converting program so i can archive my personal tapes to my pc then burn to disc. now with that progran and that tape deck I can record any streaming audio then send it back through my antique EQ then back into my pc make needed changes , create the text document , use traders little helper to create the md5 checksum and then create the flac files . And the end product is somthing that sounds better then the original audio .. I know there was somthing else i wanted to say but i can`t remember it now .. Anyway , I hope everyone has a most excelent day !!

But they are not compressed. And you can copy an mp3 from one folder to another and not lose any information, It's just in editing software. Of course when the mp3 was originaly made it lost the info on the high and low end of the song to make it smaller. But you can copy an mp3 to another computer or disc as an mp3 and it remains the same file. If you want to see some generation loss try this. Convert some mp3's to wav and burn cd with them. Then take that cd and convert the wav files back to mp3 and compare to the original mp3s.