soulseek

You mean distinguishing remaster from original - that kind of thing?

the basic fear is that the FLAC you downloaded is actually just transcoded from an mp3, or if it's mp3s you download, that it was ripped from a scratched up disc without error correction, which maybe led to it having artifacts etc. that you don't even know about until you compare it to a pristine, original copy. if you download a vinyl rip, are you really downloading the vinyl rip or is it a youtube-dl rip somebody did of somebody else's vinyl rip? itunes era gets even worse with itunes exclusive content - if you're downloading an album in FLAC that has the itunes exclusive content, it's probably been transcoded as for a certain time itunes songs were only available in 256kbps AAC. ever notice when soulseeking that every user's version of a track or album will be a different filesize? probably 95% of the time it's from different metadata, but maybe there is something different about how they sound?

sort of reminds me of how pirate groups used to include an actual photo of the CD they used for the release, maybe along with the encoder settings (LAME or die), to show it was a good rip.

even if you have a pristine source, there are certain albums that won't sound right when ripped unless the right settings are applied - see this discussion about CDs with pre-emphasis flags https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Pre-emphasis i believe there was discussion in the CDs thread about this too. or maybe it's a gapless CD but the gapless nature wasn't encoded right.

look, it all gets a bit neurotic and you sound like you're already pretty neurotic about the metadata, so sorry for introducing something else to get neurotic about, speaking as one neurotic to another. if it helps you can try to become a member of a group like redacted or something, where somebody else has done all the obsessing about the quality of the files before they make their way onto the platform.

(and yes, that's not even getting into the original vs. remaster, and whether the person who ripped it bothered to even doublecheck the musicbrainz or w/e ID3 tags their software automatically appended to the rip. but maybe if you're only into obscure indie releases for which there was only ever One Good Version then that doesn't matter as much.)

i search for flacs with logs/cues (although i rarely keep them in that format because lame v0 sounds perfectly fine to me and i'm running out of space). check the flacs with audiochecker; if for some reason it hates the flacs i'll check the log settings. but honestly if someone knows how to create and save an eac or xld log, they probably know what they're doing in general

also i grew up taping shit off the radio. i mean i'll try to get the best quality but i'm not too bothered if the stuff i'm stealing wasn't ripped with the correct drive offset

yeah i always download from users with logs/cues too

I can’t be bothered at all wrt providence, quality assurance, unless it turns out to be something that I get obsessed with and seriously can’t find any way else

ok actually I am more scrutinizing when it comes to finding rips of ultra specific cd pressings of albums I definitely definitely already own

“unless it turns out to be something that I get obsessed with and seriously can’t find any way else”

by “seriously can’t find any way else” I mean in a physical not-terribly-mastered/pressed format

yeah, see, I just can’t understand this way of thinking or caring about digital music files. seems like a massive time investment for what, to me, is pretty minimal scale of difference.

you should bump all the other threads involving things you don’t care about too, just so we know

Guess you wouldn’t stand for my rare Audiogalaxy 64kb transcoded rips then.

you should bump all the other threads involving things you don’t care about too, just so we know

you should bump all the other threads involving things you don’t care about too, just so we know

loool downloaded something that had an *enormous* selection of proust in the lyrics tag <3