# Hey, go buy a record... - Site: Analog Industries - Author: Chris Randall - Date: 2006-09-30 - URL: https://analogindustries.com/2006/09/hey-go-buy-a-record/ ![Hey, go buy a record...](https://analogindustries.com/images/blog/moto005_lg.jpg) Since Diamond Dave is planning to have my Creative Commons license revoked (!?!) I better release everything now! In that light, my latest as Micronaut is now available at [shopPOSI.](http://shop.positronrecords.com/products/product.php?pid=moto005) Pick up a copy, and you'll be enabling my snobby gear habit. Digital only release, $6.00 a throw. Note that if you want an audio demonstration of Audio Damage products, there's no better way than to pick this album up. Other than the Eclipse and the usual Waves limiting products, every effect on this album came out of our shop. ## Comments (34) **bleen** (2006-09-30): sweet! just bought it. **straechav** (2006-09-30): Would pick it up, but I think I'll wait until there's a real CD, if you don't mind Chris. Personally, I'm too snobbish to be satisfied with just digital files, I want to expand my CD collection. It hardly impresses any chick if I pull out my HD from pocket, and say; "Here's my album collection, over 1500 albums, babe." As opposed to showing a wall full of CD's and LP's - like now. **joe** (2006-09-30): I think you might be waiting a while. It doesn't seem like it will be available in a tangible media unless you do the footwork yourself. **Chris Randall** (2006-09-30): Well, if you want to wait for a real CD, you're gonna be waiting a long time. This one is digital only. I vastly prefer CDs myself, but I rip 'em as soon as I get 'em, and then the CD sits in a box for what reason I can't name. As a label owner, I'll actually be quite bad when we don't have to devote a whole wing of our house to holding boxes of stock. I figure the days of the CD as a viable medium for delivery are quite numbered. In 5 years (sooner, hopefully) you won't be able to buy one at all. For what it's worth, all our shit is encoded in LAME alt preset standard, and sounds (to my ears, on my monitors) basically indistinguishable from what's coming directly out of Nuendo. Take that as you will. -CR **straechav** (2006-09-30): Tsk, well, deal breaker for me. Although with the current exchange rates that's not big of a price. Will think about it. **straechav** (2006-09-30): Er, just something that I thought about and I am actually rather curious. Does that comment that it sounds same as in Nuendo mean you work in 44100/16bit projects? Personally I always work in 24bit and 48000 and I always notice rather clear difference whenever I downsample to 16bit and 44100, no matter the dithering algorithm. **Chris Randall** (2006-09-30): I work in 44.1/24, because the highest quality delivery mechanism my music ever appears on is 44.1/16. I don't have enough free time in the day to sweat the fact that 99.999999% of the people in the world think that 96K MP3s played on a stock car stereo are the pinnacle of audio achievement. -CR **frugalpole** (2006-09-30): i enjoy the copy protection you have on your plugs. curious how you protect your files, or if you dont? i'm in the process of considering releasing a little thingee myself, and fear ye olde --> karma. as i, back a while, used to engage in music sharing. and i don't mean mix tapes... so, any thoughts on this? particularly as you see the feature become discless? **Chris Randall** (2006-09-30): We don't have any copy protection at all on our music releases. Most of the albums are released under a Creative Commons Sampling + license, and it goes against the terms of the license to have any DRM on them. Your karma is your own business, of course. -CR **Aahzekiel** (2006-09-30): Uh... did someone just say they were gonna wait for a CD because it wasn't just digital files? C'mon. **RexRhino** (2006-10-01): Do people buy mp3s outside of itunes? Is it a viable buisness? As for CD vs. MP3, I used to like the CD on demand thing that mp3.com used to have back in the day... I wish they hadn't gone out of buisness. They would have the mp3s (and you could purchase them), or if you wanted a CD, mp3.com would handle printing a CD on demand, packaging, shipping, billing, etc. They would take something like $5 (or around there, this is off the top of my head), and the artist could set the price up to $30 and keep the difference. I think there is a lot of room for a store that sells mp3s, or CDs printed on demand (so I don't have to worry about waiting 3 weeks for the online store to order one from the distributor, etc... and I don't have to worry about the album being to obscure for them to do a printing). Unfortunatly, the #1 digital music seller is Apple, and they don't want to sell on CD because they want to sell ipods. Myspace has kind of replaced mp3.com as the place artists post music, but it is nowhere near as good as the old mp3.com used to be. **space_monkey** (2006-10-01): I just checked out the demos of a couple of the tracks. I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but, just to clarify, if I buy the album, the download files will not be mp3s, right? I can't stand the highs warbling on mp3s. Also, if it's not too much trouble, I'm curious about how you did the bass on it. **synchromesh** (2006-10-01): Hey, I bought it. Six bucks, you can't go too far wrong. And if I can't trust this man to produce a high quality representation of his own band's music, then why do I bother reading his blog? **straechav** (2006-10-01): Heh, yeah, Chris I get you completely. Personally I work on 48k because it's a slightly better and since none of my music appears on CD's I don't have to worry about downsampling it. Also because I'm lazy (Samplitude defaults to 48k/24b). People who work in 96k need to have their head checked, though. Why waste all that space and processor power for very little gain? And to clarify, I don't like CD's because they sound better (as if), but because they tend to have artwork, and somehow I just find it more satisfying to have something physical - and not just pile of digital files. And Space_Monkey, they will be MP3's, sorry. Hey, Chris, ever thought about having .APE or such files as possible choice for download just to satisfy snobbish audiophiles? (which is admittedly a small marginal) Of course, it'll kill when it comes to bandwith though. But if the server has enough to spare... **Chris Randall** (2006-10-01): They're MP3s, but not like the samples. The samples are encoded at 96K, which is the best comprimise between load times and quality. (On a broadband connection, they should play instantly.) The actual albums are encoded at LAME's alt-preset -standard setting, which is generally accepted by businesses that sell MP3s to be the best quality while still having a reasonable size. This is a VBR method (you can google that if you're not familiar) and really quite good. You don't get any of the aliasing you're talking about that is normal in a 128K straight-encoded MP3. They're much better than the AAC files that iTunes sells. We modelled our encoding process after Bleep, which is Warp's online store. Also note that when you buy a hard copy CD in the Positron store, you also get the MP3s put in your locker, so you can download them right then. The CD will show up in a couple days (usually less than a week, no matter what country you live in, as we ship daily) but you'll get the album as soon as you purchase regardless. As for MP3.com's old DAM CD system, I'm sorry, but they were truly awful quality. We made thousands of dollars selling DAM CDs when MP3.com first came out, but I was never happy with it. They just took the 128K MP3s you uploaded (that was all MP3.com allowed) and whacked 'em on an Audio CD. It's nothing you couldn't do yourself. -CR **go** (2006-10-01): I just had a missive but deleted it because no one really cares about what I would have to say. But to summarize, mp3 = suck, CD = good, Vinyl = better. I don't think it good business practice to offer download ONLY, but, it's not my business so I'll go pound sand. It sucks that you're making the decision to exclude people that don't accept non-physical media, but I guess if it was really that big of a deal we could download/convert/burn/deal-with-the-quality. Hope it works out. **Chris Randall** (2006-10-01): Well, no doubt about that. But there's two things to consider: 1) We can't afford to press CDs every time I get a wild hare (hair?) up my ass to release something. Selling CDs is generally a losing proposition, unless you're BMG. Out of the thousand-odd indie labels, I'd wager you can count the ones that actually turn a profit on one hand. Warp is one, and their MP3 factory Bleep is a large reason for that. 2) MP3s suck more than vinyl, sure. But you can't play a record in your car. Most people listen to music in their car, and they'll take a a quality hit for the convenience. -CR **leigh** (2006-10-01): Having recently re-acquired a turntable for vinyl, I have been enjoying again that old platter-spinning ritual. That said, I had forgotten how shitty the last song on a side gets on vinyl. What other recording medium offers continuously declining audio quality as the album progresses? **Wade Alin** (2006-10-01): hey chris, are these tracks recorded on 2" or did you use that fucking lame digital?? i'm not buying it if it was recorded digitally. did you use really old tape cuz' ever since ampex became quantegy, everything sucks. did you play everything or use one of those midi's to do it for you? i'm absolutely kidding, of course. i guess i just want to point out that every technological advance in the last 20 years has garnered the same complaints. and really, if you just hate mp3s, good luck finding music 6-8 years from now. i'm still a big fan of the CD, the visual aesthetics can really set up the tracks. that said, there's a lot to be said for dumping the new micronaut right to my ipod, hopping in my car, and getting a ticket or 2 for reckless endangerment. **Angstrom** (2006-10-01): completely unrelated.. Chris, has your RSS feed gone strange? it doesn't read correctly anymore and looks odd too. http://www.analogindustries.com/blog/rss.jsp **StudioPortamnto** (2006-10-01): I like eclipse especially. It has a nice kinda basic channel flavor. **RexRhino** (2006-10-01): Chris: What I couldn't do myself (not for the 10 or 20 CDs I had sold on MP3.com), was to run my own web store, set up a credit card ordering system, and print and label the CD and handle shipping in a highly efficent way. Sure, mp3.com's old DAM CD system wasn't all that... but for people who aren't making a living on music who want to make it easy for someone to buy a CD, it was very useful. But as for digital downloads, there are stores, such as detroitdigitalvinyl.com, that offer full CD quality uncompressed wave file downloads (they also offer 320kbs and 190kbs for slightly less, respectively). If most online music stores would consider full CD quality files (with no DRM), I would probably purchase a lot more music online. **Diamond Dave McAnally 103** (2006-10-01): the tradeoff for quality vs. convenience for an MP3 verse just about any other medium is undeniable. I was vehemently opposed to owning an ipod for the first couple years they were out. But once I bought one, I hardly ever buy a CD anymore. Of course my lifestyle has changed dramatically since then (I spend a lot more time on a bike or jogging somewhere, and an ipod beats a discman anyday for that). I can still tell the difference in MP3 vs. CD quality, but its not like cassettes vs. CD's or anything **Wade Alin** (2006-10-01): Dave, I have to tell you - I just had a fit of laughter over your recent username change ; ) W **Chris Randall** (2006-10-01): Dave didn't do that himself. It was an inside job. He just woke up one day to find he had a new username. I didn't do it; I'm fairly certain it was Mr. Beeson, but I haven't asked him about it. -CR **Diamond Dave McAnally 103** (2006-10-02): Doesn't matter which cyberbully it was. You are risking losing your Creative Commons License for this blatant disgracing of the entire nation of Belize .....city. Lovely...wonder if enough of the SMG peeps are in on the joke...or if they think I'm some secret huge early Van Halen fan haha **Wade Alin** (2006-10-02): >>Dave didn't do that himself fuck, that makes it even better! W **Diamond Dave McAnally 103** (2006-10-02): I figured I'd add 103 on the back. Never know...might inspire some new comedy cos you know, IT'S TRADEMARKED DUDE!! **Downpressor** (2006-10-02): "But you can't play a record in your car." you used to be able to do that http://ookworld.com/hiwayhifi.html And here I am thinking of building a trailer of speakers and a turntable for my bicycle... **space_monkey** (2006-10-02): personally, I like apple lossless a lot. My ipod plays it, so it's not incomvenient if I don't insist on having my entire cd collection with me all the time. I also have no trouble ripping all my cd's onto a harddisk in lossless. Yes, I know it's bigger than mp3's. If itunes would sell lossless files instread of mp3's I might actually buy music from them. Anyway, maybe I'll get the album and see how it sounds. **shamann** (2006-10-02): As an aside, Chris, do you know what the settings are for the alt standard preset? I'm a command-line guy, so never really knew where to begin with the presets. I've been using"lame -m s -h --vbr-new -V 2" with near-perfect results, wonder if the preset is doing something better? **Chris Randall** (2006-10-02): I don't know about your settings; we do it like this: --alt-preset-standard That gives you a VBR encoding centered at 192. This is the recommended setting by the LAME designers for the best possible ratio of size to quality. It's also what they use over at BLEEP, and if it can make an Autechre MP3 sound good, it's gonna be fine for almost any application. -CR **D' MacKinnon** (2006-10-03): You can use lame command line with --alt-preset-standard too, I recently did a mass encoding of about 100 audio files on my FreeBSD server using "lame -h --alt-preset standard". Syntax may be different on Windows. **shamann** (2006-10-03): Actually doing a quick search around, the standard preset is essentially the same as the above set of switches I use.