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Claude

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Posts posted by Claude

  1. Coming soon: The untouchable compact disc

    in Audio Talk

    Posted · Edited by Claude

    I just read on the german Heise news page that copyprotected CDs will soon be distributed on the US market too.

    BMG announced that the Anthony Hamilton album "Comin' From Where I'm From" (hip hop) will be protected by the "MediaMax CD-3" scheme from SunnComm Technologies.

    This protection is different from the previously known schemes, as it alows the compressed files (WMA format) from the original CD to be burned on maximum 3 audio CDs. So it is still possible to make a limited number of lower quality copies of the CD, for example for the car.

  3. Silly question about Mosaic selects

    in Mosaic and other box sets...

    Posted

    I feel that the sound on some of the 16 and 20 bit transfers in the Conn series suffered a little---to my ears, anyway. So, that the Selects are transferred in 24-bit makes me happy that the sound quality was addressed somewhat

    I only have the Moncur Select, and as I wrote above it is not a good remastering, despite the 24bits. The earlier Connoisseur CDs of "Some other stuff" and "Destination out" sound much better.

    Don't focus on the number of bits, it's irrelevant compared to all the factors that make a successful remastering: availablitity of the original master tapes, accuracy of the transfer from the analog tape machine to the mastering console, decisions by the engineer on tonal balance and correction and stereo spread, use of noise reduction systems, etc

  9. Blue Note documentary

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted

    It was on the bavarian program of the german 3rd channel only. I can't get it either, though I live close to the german border. But I've seen the movie on ARTE some time ago.

    Unfortunately jazz and other cultural minority programs are only broadcasted on the regional german channels, 3Sat (Germany/Swiss/Austrian channel) and ARTE (german/french cultural channel), and always at night. The recent Albert Mangelsdorff special was on the north german channel NDR only.

    This weekend, 3Sat broadcasted two concerts (90 minute programs each) from the Jazzbaltica 2003 festival, Dave Holland Quintet and Pat Metheny Quartet.

  13. What has happened to AAJ?

    in Miscellaneous - Non-Political

    Posted · Edited by Claude

    We message board talkers are an extremely small minority amongst jazz fans anyway. I haven't found a single significant (>10 posts a day) german or french jazz discussion board, although in these countries people do listen to jazz and browse the web.

    And on the Blue Note, Organissimo, AAJ or Jazz Center forums, the same 30-40 regulars seem to be responsible for a large part of the activity, and think they are the center of the jazz world :rolleyes:

    EDIT: I just got a "Mail Error! Could not send the email. Failed at 'mail' command." message when posting. Who has activated email notification for this topic? :angry::g

  15. RIAA offers amnesty to downloaders, but you must

    in Miscellaneous Music

    Posted

    Music piracy suits could bring backlash

    http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/09/1...c.ap/index.html

    LOS ANGELES, California (AP) --The recording industry has taken its piracy fight directly to music fans, suing more than 200 people this week alone. Now comes the hard part: Persuading the very people it has threatened with legal action to revisit music stores or sample legal downloading services.

    That might prove difficult, some observers say, because the industry's lawsuit campaign could spark a consumer backlash spurred by the discontent many music fans already feel over soaring CD prices and the shrinking number of retailers offering varied music titles.

    "The real hope here is that people will return to the record store," said Eric Garland, CEO of BigCampagne LLC, which tracks peer-to-peer Internet trends. "The biggest question is whether singling out a handful of copyright infringers will invigorate business or drive file-sharing further underground, further out of reach."

    Scaring music sharers

    Jason Rich, of Watervliet, New York, said the record companies' campaign prompted him to stop downloading music from file-sharing networks, but he called the issue "disconcerting."

    "I think it's kind of silly to go after individuals," said Rich, 26. "There are so many Web sites out there, people don't know necessarily they're doing anything wrong."

    Some of the music fans caught in the piracy net cast by the recording industry took steps Tuesday toward settling the copyright infringement lawsuits levied against them for sharing song files over the Internet.

    Settling suits

    The industry sued 261 people on Monday and has promised to sue hundreds more in coming weeks as it strives to stamp out music piracy it blames for a three-year slump in CD sales.

    The Recording Industry Association of America settled the first of the suits Tuesday for $2,000 -- with the mother of a 12-year-old defendant, Brianna LaHara of New York. Brianna was accused of downloading more than 1,000 songs using Kazaa.

    RIAA Vice President Matt Oppenheim said he was not surprised to see young and old alike caught in the industry's snare.

    "We know that there are a lot of young people who are using these services and we totally expected that we would end up targeting them," Oppenheim said. "As we have said from the beginning ... there is no free pass to engage in music piracy just because you haven't come of age. We're not surprised and we're not deterred."

    Consumers already think so little of the music companies, that the lawsuits likely won't make much difference, said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research, Inc.

    "The industry has been backed into a corner, and their image is so bad, the lawsuits are not going to be much of a problem," he said.

    The industry opted to target individuals earlier this year, figuring music fans who prefer to get their music online now are beginning to have viable options to do so legally through for-pay music download services like Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store and Buy.com's BuyMusic.com.

    But while iTunes has sold more than 10 million song downloads since its April launch, no service has emerged for the large majority of computer users on the Window platform.

    Less file-sharing

    There are signs some people have stopped file-sharing since June, when the RIAA announced its lawsuit campaign, and also have moved to other file-swapping networks perceived to be safer than the market leader, Kazaa.

    Traffic on the FastTrack network, the conduit for Kazaa and Grokster users, declined over the summer and climbed again last month, as has the number of people using less popular file-sharing software like eDonkey, Garland said.

    At the same time, a decline in CD sales worsened. Between June 15 and August 3, the decline in CD sales accelerated 54 percent. And as of August 3, CD sales were down 9.4 percent over the same period in 2002, according to the Yankee Group.

  16. Coming soon: The untouchable compact disc

    in Audio Talk

    Posted · Edited by Claude

    Macrovision's technology, called CDS-300, hides the original audio tracks but makes pre-compressed music files available for limited downloads to PCs.

    Macrovision CDS200 (previously known as "Cactus Data Shield") is the technology used on the latest european Blue Note releases.

    CDS300 has some new features:

    - Enables playability on PCs through the Microsoft® Windows Media® Player

    - Users may copy files to Windows Media Library for play without original CD

    - Music files will not play if distributed over the Internet or e-mailed.

    With CDS-300, consumers can make a back-up copy of the original disc to any PC through the Windows Media® Player and listen to their music without the CD present. Any further duplication or Internet sharing is inhibited.

    http://www.macrovision.com/solutions/audio/

    I have two portable MP3 players in different sizes and capacities that I use when traveling or jogging. Being unable to transform my own CDs into MP3 files by "ripping" the CDs would really be very inconvenient. The industry should find a solution for this. The WMA files on the Macrovision CDs are unplayable on most hardware players. If I download MP3s of the same music (through illegal filesharing) or try to crack the copyprotection, just to be able to listen to it on my portable devices, I'm considered a music pirate. :wacko:

  17. Uptown. . .

    in New Releases

    Posted

    Duke Ellington Uptown was released shortly after Ellington adopted the 12-inch long player philosophy and began recording concert versions of some of his greatest pieces. Before the present release, this recording was issued on three different occasions, each released including slightly different material. The original release (Columbia ML 4639) contained the opening five tracks: "Skin Deep," "The Mooche," "Take The 'A' Train," "A Tone Parallel To Harlem," and "Perdido." The second release, entitled HiFi Ellington Uptown (CL 830) replaced "A Tone Parallel to Harlem" with "The Controversial Suite." The third version (CL 848) traded "Perdido" for "The Liberian Suite."

    Finally, the current Ellington Uptown unites all of these versions on a single disc with digital remastering. The result is a voluminous big band sound coupled with exceptional composition and orchestration, even on the lesser-known pieces. A young and brash Louis Bellson provides the opening piece, "Skin Deep," where he capable demonstrates his all encompassing ability to drive a band. "The Mooche" and "Take the 'A' Train" bristle with vitality and invention in their extended version, the latter given a be bop flavor by vocalist Betty Roche. The centerpiece is "A Tone Parallel to Harlem," a piece that justifies all of Wynton Marsalis? extended jazz composition catalog. Harry Carney demonstrates his importance to the Ellington Orchestra with his bass clarinet. The center of this piece is country brass band playing a civil war tune before hitting NYC again for the coda. The two suites included are prime Ellington musings. Perhaps not the best known, but essential nevertheless. This is an important and complete release of Ellington material.

    Ellington Uptown article from AAJ (Google cache link, AAJ is currently down)

    Hifi Ellington Uptown has been reissued on SACD in Japan:

    1001.jpg

    http://www.sacdinfo.com/showtitle.php?title=1001

  22. September 2nd RVGs

    in Re-issues

    Posted

    I received the Sep. 2 RVG batch - except the Bud Powell disc - today from CD Universe ($8.39 promo) and compared them to the old 80's Blue Note CDs.

    The sound is greatly improved (especially the drums), and is very well balanced. Not overly bright, and no reduction of the stereo spread as some previous RVGs (Go, Unity). "Mode for Joe" has the same distortion on ensemble passages as the tracks that are in the Henderson 4CD box. It's probably on the master tape.

  25. Zweitausendeins noch einmal

    in Mosaic and other box sets...

    Posted · Edited by Claude

    Do not buy the Fantasy LPs (made by Mikulsky/ZYX), even at the very low price (5 Euro).

    I bought a dozen albums and only a few of them sound OK. They are all made from the 80´s digital masters used for CD production and mostly sound thin and bright. Some are worse than the 128kbs MP3s from the same albums I downloaded from emusic.com

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