lost highway

wait wait, what about.... Sam Cooke doing Jesus Etc. with Booker T and the M.G.s as his backup band.

How about you resurrect Johnny Cash and have him do 'Far, Far, Away'. Too obvious...? What about Deerhoof doing 'Poor Places'?

Thats a good deal....I think. How much have you used it/how much do you think it costs to mail it?

How much do ya want for it?

I agree. Now that is all......

Wait, how do you know that?

Yes, indeed close it. But haven't we learned so much from each other? Don't we all feel like better people?

Oooh we should all go. Make a week of it.

In short: you can encode it at whatever fancy bit rate you want, but if the program/machine doing it is crap it will sound like crap. Some audio holds up better at lower bit rates than others. Probably a solo tweedy performance, or a rockin Bruce Springsteen song sounds better on high bit mp3 than a massive symphony recording.

Well this might help what has become a round table discussion/op ed. From wikipedia: "The transparency threshold of MP3 can be estimated to be at about 128k with good encoders on typical music as evidenced by its strong performance in the above test, however some particularly difficult material can require 192k or higher. As with all lossy formats, some samples can not be encoded perfectly transparent to all users. Thus many users opt for 192k as a good trade off."

We might get moderated here (a bit off topic). I spoke alot of Spanish in Barcelona, but whats more, it is hard to keep up with the Catalan which is experiencing a strong resurgence. The barrio gotic is as full of tourists as one would expect, but its got great history, if you want to hang out with more locals its only a couple metro stops away to a less touristy neighborhood. Western Europe as a whole seems to have plenty of English speakers almost everywhere. I can't speak for Sevilla because I have never been there.

Here's a man with a sense of humor. If you read up on it (here's where my cave dork comes out to party with yours) a high bit rate mp3 is vitually indistinguishable from a wav or other format, to your average sound engineer with the acception of some very moderate phase distortion on the higher frequencies (much more obvious on low quality mp3's). There is no doubt that transmitting, changing, and trading mp3's no matter how high the quality can degrade it into a rather pathetic state. ALL digital audio sources are said to produce higher listener fatigue, but they still haven't invented a r

Barcelona is one of my favorite cities in the world, better even than Paris.

You'll have to excuse some of us who are less accustomed to communicating in smilies. Although your ninja has enriched your statement quite cutely.

More time and money than the actual band, the label that puts it out and the actual studio that has refined the art of recording it? Tapers are intelligent, tech savy and we have already agreed valuable. But lets not forget that they are also hobbysists, and furthermore fans like the rest of us. But oh wait, is that smiley face for sarcasm? If so I agree with you, if not see above. Sorry.

I don't think it holds up. (I'm just being sporting here cause its a slow sunday). I would say the mp3 version is like getting the novel in columns on news print as opposed to a nice bound high resolution print. Same info, lower quality, cheaper, faster, higher accesibility, less clarity. It all strikes me as odd considering Wilco and My Morning Jacket (two highly bootleged/traded bands) have mp3's posted on official myspace sites. Record labels stream mp3's of expensive studio recordings. Why is it the tapers get more worked up than studio engineers, record labels, and rock bands?

I believe it was produced by Wilco and mixed by Jim O'Rourke and probably engineered by that Chris Brickley (????) I think thats his name, who helped with YHF. Mike Jorgensen would have engineered too, but I remember him saying it was too exhausting to work both ends of the process.

Stop toying with our emotions. Has anyone actually heard it?!

I totally agree with everything your saying and respect your argument. Except, I just won't ever be able to get mad at someone for converting, if I ever feel like getting FLAC files I will, but so many people have hooked me up with great material on mp3 and I am thankful to them. As I am thankful for tapers, and bit torrents.

So wait, wait, you guys have REALLY ALREADY HEARD SKY BLUE SKY? how did this happen? What is oink? I don't understand.

Well tapers often put their stuff up in the best format, yes, of course they are trying to preserve their work. They should not be asked to stop, but perhaps our argument finds its synthesis here: Tapers do us all a favor (i mean what a terrible way to half to watch a show, monitoring gear etc.), and the higher quality files do the serious audiophiles a service, maybe these people have folder after folder tracing the many colored sets of the end of the AGIB tour. Why not? But meanwhile, people who convert those things into mp3's and make them available do another type a listener (ones lik

Here I heroically jump into this way late in the game but...... for you audiophile FLAC nazi's can't you usually find an unpolluted non-mp3 version anyways? So if someone 'pollutes' the trading pool with mp3's dont take them. They're easy to use and share and I am really sorry, tapers I love what you do, but a couple of fancy condensor microphones in the crowd doesn't really physically put me there. I've heard some pretty okay taper recordings, but they don't lose a whole lot of charm in the mp3 format, we're not dealing with Sear Sound recordings here.

Yeah I don't know about safety. They disrupted alt-country precedent with a sprawling eclectic tribute to all things classic in rock, then they threw open the gate to studio magic and chamber pop, then they deconstructed themselves with noise disruptions, then they forced themselves into an almost jazz-like liveness in the studio with much more organic, almost impressionist songs, now they try to make something classic, concise. A return to form seems rather unsafe from the misgivings of this board...... hell, even Radiohead is interested in guitars again.

My dad listens to Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. If you're older, your dad could have been all about Bo Diddly and Chuck Berry. I learned alot about rock from my dad and I turned him on to Wilco. In my world Sky Blue Sky might end up being Dad rock in the coolest way.

The really good news is the fact that they're mastering it means that there will be finalized, final, definitely done tracks. We might see them up on the roadcase on wilcoworld or some corporate slob from the mail room at the label will sneak them on the internet. Then we can continue to argue about an album that has not been released only our arguments will be well informed.