Just putting this out there... basing the quality of a recording on the # of people who download it is specious at best. You could take the same recording captured in 24bit and create torrents of a non resample/dithered version and a version using compressed .mp3 and the heavily manipulated version will get more downloads every time. People on download sites have proven time and time again that quality is not the most important characteristic they take into consideration when choosing what they will download.
other than the artist, it's the only characteristic I consider.
why have a hard drive full of dissonant, hissy noise?
will I occasionally snag a sub-par recording for either nostalgia or rarity?
sure.
but because it's 24 bit? (the DAT/Betamax of bitcount)
not a chance.
well furby's criteria for sound quality are number of dime downloads and size of flac files (see John Fogerty thread from the past) which are dependent upon flac level used (I always use 8 for highest lossless compression) and neither have remotely ANYTHING to do with sound quality. As long as he believes his sounds best based on his criteria more power to him. No one else seems to think agree so we must all be clueless and need our ears adjusted. yeah right.
Again, number of Dime downloads means nothing. An unlistenable first show of a tour recorded with an iphone will always get more downloads on a site like dime than the best recording posted a few days later. Proves NOTHING.
dynamic range and oversaturated peaks are a great place to start when comparing sound quality.
my EYES are telling me what I'm telling you...and then my ears; not the other way around
I can film the motherfucking EQ for 30 seconds with both sources playing, youtube the vids, and use a toothpick to *show* you what I am saying.
this isn't "my ear is better than your ear".
I'm using 2 senses vs. 1. (we'll leave your overall musical taste out of the discussion)
when you throw in that it was basically shoulder-on-shoulder where I was taping from, and it's amazing it came out at all, much less as good as it did.
or, I wasn't even really *trying*, other than the "getting close to stack" part....and still nailed a damn good recording.
re: trying.....I could have backed up 10 ft against the fence (or not paid and sat behind it) and probably made an even better capture. (always seem to find a group of talkers somehow, but a fence would have mitigated that, my Primus '13 and Janes Addiction '15 at the Loon came out like soundboards taped from behind the fence...NO crowd noise, and the Tascam 4ft. up in a tree)...