Random 35 tracks tape in FLAC?

Basefree · Post by **Basefree** » Sun Aug 04, 2013 2:49 am

I'd bet my money there's no real flac of this tape circulating. It's more likely whoever ripped it only made a lossy copy. And given that any info about the tape refuses to come to daylight..

re-phaelam-ed · Post by **re-phaelam-ed** » Sun Aug 04, 2013 5:34 am

Basefree wrote:I'd bet my money there's no real flac of this tape circulating. It's more likely whoever ripped it only made a lossy copy. And given that any info about the tape refuses to come to daylight..

thing is...its not gonna sound any better than any tape would sound. it was recorded to tape, most likely a 4 track or 8 track cassette recorder was used. FLAC or no....its not gonna sound any better than it sounds coming off that tape.

but who the fuck cares...the tape is freakin awesome.

FernieCanto · Post by **FernieCanto** » Sun Aug 04, 2013 2:41 pm

If anyone is interested, I made some editing on the FLAC files to remove the gaps between tracks. It's far from perfect (for some reason, some MP3 encoders completely botch up the two ends of the track), and I had to use some very liberal use of editing to make them sound decent. I could upload the files if anyone wishes to check it out.

FernieCanto · Post by **FernieCanto** » Sat Aug 10, 2013 2:53 am

Okay, so no one answered, but here goes nothing anyway.

Random 35 Tracks Tape - Gapless Edition
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/296 ... less_A.rar - Side A
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/296 ... less_B.rar - Side B

What I've done here was take the FLAC files in this thread and try to remove the annoying little gaps between tracks. Those gaps exist because, for some reason, MP3 is terrible at handling tracks with segues, and introduces little bits of silence atthe beginning and at the end. Not only that, but it screws up the audio at the very ends of the track (consequences of shoddy compression, perhaps), so that merely trying to erase the silence will produce little "pops" or "hiccups". As a result, I've had to do some editing and chopping to make the segues as seamless as humanly possible. I tried to maintain as much audio from the original files, though, so there would be no missing beats of whatever.

Honestly, I don't know if I've done the best job, and I don't know if it will make much of a difference to most listeners. But it does make a difference to me, so I feel like sharing. Enjoy

EDIT: in the link I posted here previously, the music was mistakenly mixed down to mono, therefore it sounded different from the original FLAC files. This has been corrected now.

jlgui · Post by **jlgui** » Mon Aug 12, 2013 9:22 am

Thank you very much FernieCanto !

Basefree · Post by **Basefree** » Mon Aug 12, 2013 1:57 pm

jlgui wrote:Thank you very much FernieCanto !

+1. Thank you Fernie!

jlgui · Post by **jlgui** » Mon Aug 12, 2013 5:48 pm

FernieCanto wrote:Okay, so no one answered, but here goes nothing anyway.

Random 35 Tracks Tape - Gapless Edition

(I hope I've done the Dropbox sharing thing right)

What I've done here was take the FLAC files in this thread and try to remove the annoying little gaps between tracks. Those gaps exist because, for some reason, MP3 is terrible at handling tracks with segues, and introduces little bits of silence atthe beginning and at the end. Not only that, but it screws up the audio at the very ends of the track (consequences of shoddy compression, perhaps), so that merely trying to erase the silence will produce little "pops" or "hiccups". As a result, I've had to do some editing and chopping to make the segues as seamless as humanly possible. I tried to maintain as much audio from the original files, though, so there would be no missing beats of whatever.

Honestly, I don't know if I've done the best job, and I don't know if it will make much of a difference to most listeners. But it does make a difference to me, so I feel like sharing. Enjoy [/url]

The sound is very different between the two version... For example, She is P sounds more bassy on your version. What are you doing exactly ?

FernieCanto · Post by **FernieCanto** » Mon Aug 12, 2013 6:57 pm

Are you positive on that? I avoided any tampering with the sound quality exactly to preserve the original work, and because I have no experience with improving sound quality overall. I really have no idea what may have happened, and I'm quite sure Audition wouldn't do something on its own. I'll check it out when I can.

jlgui · Post by **jlgui** » Mon Aug 12, 2013 7:20 pm

FernieCanto wrote:Are you positive on that? I avoided any tampering with the sound quality exactly to preserve the original work, and because I have no experience with improving sound quality overall. I really have no idea what may have happened, and I'm quite sure Audition wouldn't do something on its own. I'll check it out when I can.

Which version do you use for your gapless version?
The FLAC version on this thread or the 320kb/s one?

FernieCanto · Post by **FernieCanto** » Mon Aug 12, 2013 7:34 pm

I used the FLAC version you posted at the start of the thread.

Basefree · Post by **Basefree** » Mon Aug 12, 2013 9:25 pm

I also looked at She Is P and it does sound different indeed. Compare at the 1-minute mark for example.

Another thing I noticed - the bitrate is only about half of the original 'flac' master. Why's that? I know the files weren't lossless to begin with, but it seems some data has been lost in the process. File size is noticeably smaller too, did you use FLAC -8?

You have done good work with the gaps though, I really like the result. So take this post as constructive advice. If you preserved the quality with these fixed gaps, I think we'd be holding a diamond in our hands.

FernieCanto · Post by **FernieCanto** » Tue Aug 13, 2013 2:05 am

I'll definitely check that out. I'll compare the files to see if they're digitally identical, and if they turn out not to be, I'll certainly do the tinkering all over again. I mean, if by mistake I messed something up in Audition's settings when saving those files, I definitely want to know. I'm by no means offended or upset by you bringing this up, in fact I'm thankful. I'll post here as soon as I find anything out.

EDIT: Okay, honestly, I want to stick my head in the toilet right now. I saved those files as mono!! No wonder it sounds odd. Audition must have saved those settings back when I was doing some crazy experiments with it and I was too careless to recheck them. Well, what I can say is that if you're oldskool you might dig those mono mixes.

But I'll fix it up and put up the proper results as soon as they're done, hopefully tomorrow. Really sorry for the goof.

Basefree · Post by **Basefree** » Tue Aug 13, 2013 3:16 am

FernieCanto wrote:EDIT: Okay, honestly, I want to stick my head in the toilet right now. I saved those files as mono!! No wonder it sounds odd. Audition must have saved those settings back when I was doing some crazy experiments with it and I was too careless to recheck them. Well, what I can say is that if you're oldskool you might dig those mono mixes. But I'll fix it up and put up the proper results as soon as they're done, hopefully tomorrow. Really sorry for the goof.

I must take half of the blame for not noticing that right away haha.

It's not that I had an in-depth look, just a quick one, but still. Anyway, glad to hear that you found out what's wrong. I'll stay tuned for the corrected version.

jlgui · Post by **jlgui** » Tue Aug 13, 2013 6:16 am

Very anxious to hear the results !

FernieCanto · Post by **FernieCanto** » Tue Aug 13, 2013 11:55 am

Right, a sleepless night motivated me to fix my blunder sooner than I thought.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/296 ... less_A.rar
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/296 ... less_B.rar

I even did some audio cancellation tests to guarantee the audio hasn't been changed, so there you go now. I'll edit the link at the original posts so nobody will be confused. Enjoy!

jlgui · Post by **jlgui** » Tue Aug 13, 2013 12:04 pm

Super! Thanks

Basefree · Post by **Basefree** » Tue Aug 13, 2013 3:06 pm

Thank you kindly.