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"Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Engineer's Demos" Analysis?


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This just occurred to me.....Analogman, you might have the answer. There is no alternate version (in either of the demo collections) to the wonderful "Jesus, etc." What's up with that? There's also no "Radio Cure" on either one. Anyone know of another version of "Jesus?"

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I don't know the answer to that one.

 

 

Here's another one for you: What do you know about "Burned"? I love that track and I downloaded a copy (from somewhere?) a while back. They've never performed it live which is odd. It's part of the YHF recordings if I'm not mistaken....any other details?

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Here's another one for you: What do you know about "Burned"? I love that track and I downloaded a copy (from somewhere?) a while back. They've never performed it live which is odd. It's part of the YHF recordings if I'm not mistaken....any other details?

 

It's a Neil Young song that they recorded for the 'I Shot Andy Warhol' soundtrack.

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When converting FLAC files, which output format do you most suggest? I've got a bunch of options: .wav, .mp3, .au, .aiff, .gsm, .vox, .raw, .ogg, .aac. Is wav better than mp3?

 

.wav

 

WAV files store music in exactly the same format as on a CD. They're the highest quality sound files, but by far the largest. People have created other formats that try to retain sound quality while decreasing file size. Those file formats can be broadly divided into lossy (some information is thrown away) and lossless (all information retained). The rest of this section talks about those other formats.

 

 

.aif .aiff

 

Audio CD's are generally read by Windows systems as having .wav files on them. When an audio CD is read by Mac OSX it interprets those files as .aiff or .aif. These files are the same as .wav, they are lossless, uncompressed audio files.

 

 

.mp3

 

MPEG Audio Layer 3. This is by far the most common music file type on our site. Like other lossy files, MP3 files are much smaller than the recordings they're made from. That's because some less-audible information is discarded when the file is made. The encoding bit rate, measured in kilobits per second (kbps), is important to the quality of the sound. In general, the higher the bitrate the better the sound quality. In our opinion, any sound file constructed at less than a 192 kbps data rate will sound noticeably degraded. That's why the minimum acceptable bitrate for music files here is 192 kbps. Please note that it's not possible to re-encode an existing MP3 file to a higher bitrate. The resulting file sounds worse than the original as there's no way to get back information that was left out when the MP3 was made.

 

Any program capable of playing sound files can handle MP3s. The files may also be recorded on CD-R or CD-RW media for playback in compatible DVD players, audio CD players, and CD-ROM drives.

 

 

.ape

 

Monkey's Audio files. These are open-source compressed lossless files. You can download their encoder/decoder program as well as plugins for popular players from their web site.

 

 

.flac

 

Free Lossless Audio Codec files are compressed lossless files. FLAC has always been open-source and some hardware MP3 players now support that format. FLAC utilities and plugins are available on their web site or you can download a Winamp plugin.

 

 

.m4a .aac

 

MPEG-4 Audio (Advanced Audio Coding) proprietary format that comes in both lossy and lossless versions. AAC is the audio file format used by Apple in their popular iTunes Music Store. According to some listening tests, AAC files encoded at lower bitrates (like 96 Kbps) sound as good or better than MP3s encoded at higher bitrates (like 128 Kbps) despite their notably smaller size. Please note that the minimum allowed bitrate is always 192kbps regardless of format.

 

 

.ofr

 

OptimFROG is a lossless audio compression program. OptimFROG obtains asymptotically the best lossless audio compression ratios, but it has relatively slow decoding time, which results in high CPU load during playback. You can download the encoders/decoders, Winamp 2/3 plugins and Foobar2000 input plugins here.

 

 

.ogg

 

Ogg Vorbis is an open-source lossy file format. It's generally considered to be equivalent or better in quality compared to MP3 files encoded at similar bitrates. You can find out more about them and download applications here.

 

 

.shn

 

Shorten is an older lossless audio compression format. It has worse compression ratios than WavPack, FLAC and Monkey's Audio. More mature lossless audio codecs such as FLAC, Monkey's Audio (APE) and WavPack have become popular recently, although Shorten remains a popular format due to the large number of legally tradable concert recordings in circulation that are encoded as Shorten files. You can download the necessary decoders here.

 

 

.wma

 

Windows Media Audio is a proprietary format developed by Microsoft. It can be either lossy or lossless. Though not as popular as MP3, some say that lossy WMA tends to outperform MP3 in the area of sound quality, particularly with files encoded at lower bitrates like 64 or 96 Kbps. This performance advantage makes it handy for applications like portable digital audio players, where total play time is limited by a finite amount of internal memory. The Windows Media Audio format features built-in copy protection abilities, unlike MP3.

 

 

.wv

 

WavPack is a free, open source lossless audio compression format, similar to FLAC. WavPack has a better compression ratio than FLAC with almost as fast decoding. Many software players like WinAmp (plugin available at http://www.wavpack.com/downloads.html) and Foobar2000 support WavPack. WavPack can also be played back in hardware players that can use the Rockbox firmware. You can download the WavPack encoders and decoders from the WavPack web site.

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It's a Neil Young song that they recorded for the 'I Shot Andy Warhol' soundtrack.

 

 

That's right...I remember learning that from looking at the the lyrics on bemydemon.org. I should have looked before I posted, oh well. Anyone heard the Buffalo Springfield version?

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That's right...I remember learning that from looking at the the lyrics on bemydemon.org. I should have looked before I posted, oh well. Anyone heard the Buffalo Springfield version?

 

yeah, there are a couple versions actually (demos, etc)

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For what it is worth......

 

Go to dbetree .org...

 

See Wilco ....date:01-02-01...title "Pieholden Suite"

 

This was my creation......an amaglam of the two sets of YHF demos with no duplication between them.

 

Highlight: includes full band version of "Cars Can't Escape".

 

only flaw is the "Venus" cut-off mentioned here previously......

 

It distresses me that there are so many flawed copies out there....... :no

 

 

-Robert.

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This just occurred to me.....Analogman, you might have the answer. There is no alternate version (in either of the demo collections) to the wonderful "Jesus, etc." What's up with that? There's also no "Radio Cure" on either one. Anyone know of another version of "Jesus?"

 

Jesus, etc. was written by Jay and Jeff right at the end of the Foxtrot sessions and there's a good possiblity there was never an alternate version mixed. I've never heard of a demo of Radio Cure either, it was likely finished towards the end as well. Don't know for sure though, maybe a third disc of these sessions will eventually surface, they certainly have the material for it.

 

--Mike

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