New '66 tape on Dime

[lurid]

It was me who shared this on Dime - there is nothing there which hasn't already been shared on this forum.

I simply took the original files in .wav format and split them up in what I considered to be a sensible way/running order. Very happy if someone has a better suggestion but this is what I ended up with:

01: tape test 0.26
02: interview with John Cale 16.00
03: film soundtrack 5.07
04: I'll Be Your Mirror (cut) 0.53
05: I'm Not A Young Man Anymore (cut) 3.26
06: Little Sister (cut)/All Tomorrow's Parties 8.21
07: Venus In Furs 5.33
08: Black Angel's Death Song 3.55
09: Heroin 6.01
10: interview with Sterling Morrison 2.48
11: film soundtrack 1.39
12: film soundtrack 19.07
13: intro 1.21
14: I'll Be Your Mirror 2.15
15: unknown 0.33
16: I'm Not A Young Man Anymore 3.00
17: unknown 1.30
18: Little Sister 2.14

For Dime, I removed all the obvious film soundtrack segments (even if they were just in the background to the interviews) because they have arguably been "officially released" and I didn't want to fall foul of Dime's rules (again). They are very very strict, which is probably why they are still around.

If anyone wants the whole thing, split up as above in .flac format, here's a link to my Dropbox account:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/dtcuzuzb ... 6ocfv&dl=0

Let me know if you have any problems with the link.....

Re the comments about .mp3 format - this material is such poor quality that it hardly matters, but Dime will not allow uploads of any material which has .mp3 in the chain. I checked the files using EAC and it said no .mp3.

[hallucalation]

Your source is obviously different to the lossy one which was circulated before. So thank you!

[Mark]

If it's true lossless then yeah, it should be a significant upgrade over Mp3.

I get that if we are talking about a well recorded and well mastered track then yeah, clearly a lossless copy would sound significantly better than MP3. But these tracks are really rough, distorted recordings, some of them barely listenable (which I love regardless). My point is, does lossless really represent a "huge" or "significant" upgrade in this case? It's not going to make them any less distorted, is it?

Maybe it's just my old ears but I think we're in danger of kidding ourselves that things automatically sound better just because they are FLAC.

Does preserving something as FLAC rather than MP3 magically turn a degraded recording into a pristine one? No.

Is the difference always easily detectable to casual ears? Also, no.

Is this recording now somehow worthy of being pressed onto lathe cut audiophile vinyl now we have it in its full lossless glory? f*** no.

Does it still matter? Yes.

If anything, I'd argue that it's more important to preserve bad (but historically irreplaceable) recordings as accurately and as fully as we possibly can. The bits of sound quality that are left in these recordings are often to be found in the granular details, and as soon as you start compressing the files you're taking bits of that away. You can't ever really bring that back once it's gone. So it matters from a listening point of view, but it matters even more from an ongoing archiving point of view. The original tape won't last forever and will degrade (is probably degrading already). Having it preserved digitally in the best possible quality means, amongst other things, that if technology one day advances far enough to restore a recording like this into something listenable (and I think that's possible considering how far things have come in the past few years), we've got a much stronger starting point than an MP3 would be. So I think there are some real, practical reasons why this is worthwhile.

Thank you Lurid!

[lurid]

I hadn't realised that the files circulated here before were "lossy".

I got the raw material as 4 files in .wav format, confusingly labeled as follows:

AAA_seckdoro_1999_m.wav
AAA_seckdoro_2000_m.wav
AAA_seckdoro_2001_m.wav
AAA_seckdoro_2002_m.wav

Strangely, EAC did not recognise these as standard .wav files. I opened them in a wav editor, chopped them up into individual tracks, saved the resulting files in standard .wav format and was then able to convert them to .flac without any difficulty.

Your source is obviously different to the lossy one which was circulated before. So thank you!

[lurid]

I agree with what Mark says. The raw material is in .wav format and .flac is a way of compressing it without loss of information (the clue is in the name: Free Lossless Audio Codec). On my hard drive, I have all my audio material in .wav format but I use flac to store in on Dropbox simply to save on storage space.

A couple of years ago I lost a mass of my Lou Reed live material in when my home hard drive had a stroke - I managed to recover almost all of it because I had archived it on Dropbox. (Lesson learned - do NOT buy apparently cheap no-name external hard drives from Amazon! The guy who attempted to recover my data recommended a 2TB Toshiba drive and I have used that ever since.)

I get that if we are talking about a well recorded and well mastered track then yeah, clearly a lossless copy would sound significantly better than MP3. But these tracks are really rough, distorted recordings, some of them barely listenable (which I love regardless). My point is, does lossless really represent a "huge" or "significant" upgrade in this case? It's not going to make them any less distorted, is it?

Maybe it's just my old ears but I think we're in danger of kidding ourselves that things automatically sound better just because they are FLAC.

Does preserving something as FLAC rather than MP3 magically turn a degraded recording into a pristine one? No.

Is the difference always easily detectable to casual ears? Also, no.

Is this recording now somehow worthy of being pressed onto lathe cut audiophile vinyl now we have it in its full lossless glory? f*** no.

Does it still matter? Yes.

If anything, I'd argue that it's more important to preserve bad (but historically irreplaceable) recordings as accurately and as fully as we possibly can. The bits of sound quality that are left in these recordings are often to be found in the granular details, and as soon as you start compressing the files you're taking bits of that away. You can't ever really bring that back once it's gone. So it matters from a listening point of view, but it matters even more from an ongoing archiving point of view. The original tape won't last forever and will degrade (is probably degrading already). Having it preserved digitally in the best possible quality means, amongst other things, that if technology one day advances far enough to restore a recording like this into something listenable (and I think that's possible considering how far things have come in the past few years), we've got a much stronger starting point than an MP3 would be. So I think there are some real, practical reasons why this is worthwhile.

Thank you Lurid!

[urchinn]

Thanks for putting this tape on Dime, Lurid! I don't think it that bad, quality-wise...but VU fans can filter out the crap!

[TJeffriesUK]

Many thanks for sharing that!

I did wonder how I missed that on Dime... but you posted it when I was away.

[Kill Mick]

Thanks for the share Lurid and I do agree these sound noticeably better than the versions originally posted. Happy to stand corrected on this one!

[iaredatsun]

I've really enjoyed these, this time around. Thanks for the flac copies, Lurid.

[taxine]

Huge thanks thanks for sharing Lurid.