[Nightfly]

And they all lived happily ever after.......

[petra.blanke]

Originally Posted by Nightfly

Yes Sir, you are right,it's impossible to know whats in the 320 shell untill
it's actually played.You must be able to trust your source.But usually I get
the pre-leased in whatever format(it's cheap enough) just to hear a really
hot release in full,and then later get it, if I truly need it in a better format.But Pastor has made a decision based on that trust that we have in him and his site.

Good call Pastor

I downloaded it yesterday, and it sounds APPALLING....

Sounds worse than a straight 128 bit transfer.

When MP3 eventually uploads a decent transfer, will we be entitled to a replacement copy at all Pastor ?

[henry66]

petra, good question. but i am sure pastor will work out something - at
least for us here. sad though for the others who never heard of our forum.

what i would like to hear from him, out of pure curiousity, is how they
'get' those copies (not where), and if they are not checked at all.
audibly, maybe too time consuming, but in large batches any MP3
can be checked for the actual bitrate inside. which would be one step
to sort out bad apples. pastor, will you let us know a bit?

greetings - henry

[skyforger]

Originally Posted by henry66

but in large batches any MP3
can be checked for the actual bitrate inside.

it seems nearly impossible (at least to me) to check if the song is transcoded in a batch run (and under the environment where it all takes place).

and at least i'm unaware of the software that could do the task, without hearing each tune.

regards,
Max

[henry66]

max, this was discussed some time ago with our danish mod who left
the forum, and i think he or someone else then said it could be done.

but even progs like MP3val will flag this particular BOSS album as bad,
with errors in all tracks at the end, and using a fairly old (but not
neccesarily bad) 3.82 lame encoder. this should then ring a bell to
check further.

but: do you have any idea (but just trusting your sources) that can do it
short of listening to it?

greetings - henry

[skyforger]

Originally Posted by henry66

max, this was discussed some time ago with our danish mod who left
the forum, and i think he or someone else then said it could be done.

but even progs like MP3val will flag this particular BOSS album as bad,
with errors in all tracks at the end, and using a fairly old (but not
neccesarily bad) 3.82 lame encoder. this should then ring a bell to
check further.

but: do you have any idea (but just trusting your sources) that can do it
short of listening to it?

greetings - henry

Henry, i did not mean that such software not exists
as for now, i've not heard of it, at least for the system that we utilize for our servers, etc. of course, it could be implemented (just because every single thing can be implemented if taken care and efforts of) in complicated chain of self-coded software + lame/or-the-like. but as for now - i've not heard of easy-to-use and *nix-compatible shell tool of this kind.

and once again, this does not mean that we (any of shops) should publish transcoded vibes. well, actually we have no right to do this, other than by mistake

p.s. it would be great if someone points me to such thingy ("transcode detector" as discussed above), will definitely check it out.

Max

[henry66]

>> it would be great if someone points me to such thingy

for personal use and limited quantities, see http://www.aom3.org/forum/f10/bitrates-2394.html (Bitrates)

have a look at post #6 there. these plus some 'feeling' for those data usually
finds the odd-one-out quickly.

as i said before MP3val did flag the BOSS recordings as bad, immediately. and
for directories of several thousand files it runs reasonably fast.

for *nix, have been told similar was available, but i dont know it.

greetings - henry -

[pastor39]

Well, it's not a 128kpbs transcode.. It's sounds much better than the 128kbps version available in torrents and other P2P. Not the original quality sound, though..

But I wouldn't expect 100% to get an original copy of the album before the official release date.

[Nightfly]

Originally Posted by henry66

max, this was discussed some time ago with our danish mod who left
the forum, and i think he or someone else then said it could be done.

but even progs like MP3val will flag this particular BOSS album as bad,
with errors in all tracks at the end, and using a fairly old (but not
neccesarily bad) 3.82 lame encoder. this should then ring a bell to
check further.

but: do you have any idea (but just trusting your sources) that can do it
short of listening to it?

greetings - henry

Henry,

I think you are being unreasonable here,you can't expect them to listen to every track they get...Do you?

The best they can do as they do,is offer a new track or your money back.
Emusic one of the largest sites does the same thing..Have you really had that
many problems? I have had 0 this year out of thousands of tracks.

This Boss thing is a fluke,Please all let it go.....

Show some trust,and I think that trust is deserved by the Reps, posted in this thread.

Thanks!

[rolly]

I've read what someone else has said about this topic elsewhere,(transcodes) and I've found it very interesting.
Rather than try to put this into my own words,I'll just quote the topic conversation for anyone who might be interested here.
As a linux user who refuses to use windows apps (even in wine),I have not been able to use Dbpoweramp,which is apparantly a great tool for checking for transcodes.

I have used a number of ways to detect whether a file has been transcoded.

First point of reference, is to check the lowpass filter in a prog like adobe audition

a 320 will have information up to 20 khz, a 128 will usually have the cut off at 16 and 192's and most VBR's cut off around 18.6/ 19

Secondly, VBR - 2 rips are usually scene rips so if its a scene rip you can almost guarantee that it hasn't been transcoded otherwise it would have been nuked.

Thirdly, often transcodes wont have gapless information and sometimes wont have the original box checked in the lame header. Also, if a file has a replaygain value then it is likely not transcoded.

I find Dbpoweramp very helpful in detecting transcodes as when installed it integrates into the windows shell so when you drag your mouse over a file it will display lots of information (codec used, bitrate, header details etc) and you can usually gauge an idea whether a file has been transcoded or not.

All of these things are very well, but the only truly 100% way to know if a file has been transcoded is if you have encoded it yourself from the source

A question to the poster:

how can Dbpoweramp be useful in detecting transcoded files , if something was ripped at 192 k and is transcoded to 224k then it will flag up those files as 224k , this happened with the transcoded 192k rip of Black Ice , both the 224 and 320k transcoded versions of Black Ice that are all over the place flagged up as 224 and 320k respectively viz poweramp .

Reply from poster:

Because it will show that there is no gapless information, that the original tag isnt checked, that their is no lame header etc

I am looking at the same rip with dbpoweramp as I type this and it shows all the information that you would expect a transcode to have.

A screenshot of the trancoded files.



A screenshot of an original rip.



Note that this has nothing to do with the bitrate that was selected when the original source was ripped.
It could be 128kbps or 320kbps,that is not the point.
The comparison of the screenshots are to show that the transcodes are NOT gapless,they are NOT tagged original,etc.,where-as an original rip at even 128kbps WILL be gapless,and WILL have the original tagged checked.
I haven't run across many files yet that do have those credentials in the metadata.

That is all fine and well,but my argument with the above statements would be this.

I never rip directly to .mp3,where-as the crendentials mentioned would be present.
I will rip to .wav,then transcode to lossless Flac.
Then if I did transcode to 320kbps mp3 for whatever reason,the credentials stated above that you would be looking for in Dbpoweramp would not be present.
Because it is NOT the original rip!

But does that make my 320 transcode from a lossless format,that was ripped from the original cd any less in quality than if you ripped directly to 320 .mp3 from the cd?
No.It doesn't.
The transcode from a lossless source is digitally the same as a direct rip.
Lossless is lossless,and that's all there is to that.

The one thing I will agree with completely in the above statements is this.

the only truly 100% way to know if a file has been transcoded is if you have encoded it yourself from the source

If someone is so concerned about the quality of the file,spend the $10-15 and buy the original cd.

I don't want to sound harsh here or anything,but if someone really can't tell if it's a transcode just by listening to it,this is something that one shouldn't even be concerned with.
Looking at some data that says it's an original rip isn't going to make it sound better.
It may look better,but it won't sound better.