Lossy or not?

[chilton]

Hi all -
I just got a cd-r with a 1977 show by a band I've been looking for forever.
It sounds like a rather muddy sbd, I'm guessing there are a few cassette generations. But hopefully no mp3, since I want to share it.

I ran a track through Traders Little Helper, with the result that it's CDDA with 53 percent probability.

I also opened the WAV in Adobe Audition and took this screenshot. What do you think?

[corsair]

Looks lossy to me...

Can u shorten the spectral view to about 2-3 seconds?

[chilton]

Originally Posted by corsair

Looks lossy to me...
Can u shorten the spectral view to about 2-3 seconds?

Sigh...
Well, it's better to get the bad news now than to have a torrent banned.
I'll post a more detailed spectral jpeg later- Then there's another show by the same band I'll have to take a closer look at....

Thanks!

[chilton]

OK, here's a more detailed (hopefully) spectral of another track on the same disc.
Trader's Little Helper says there's a 43 % probability of this one being CDDA.

[Five]

these are both MD recordings, which are lossy (ATRAC) but considered tradeable when its an AUD master. Sometimes 60s and 70s stuff turns up thats been transferred to MD, this is not considered tradeable.

some examples of MD SA over here.

what are the dates of these shows, and what lineage information (if any) did you recieve?

[chilton]

Originally Posted by Five

what are the dates of these shows, and what lineage information (if any) did you recieve?

1977 and 1978 - but the tracks form the 1978 show got a 99 percent CDDA probability rating by Traders' Little Helper, so I guess that's OK, right?

Both shows sound like they've been taped straight from the sbd, the vocals and keyboards are in your face and you can hear the audience somewhere far away.
I'll try to check the lineage with the trader, but I'm not sure he'll know or care.
At the moment, I can only guess it's been transferred from an unknown gen cassette to MD and then CDR.
Thanks for taking the time to help.

[corsair]

Little helper is not really a good tool imo...

Looking at the spectrals already speaks volumes about it...Like Five said,
somebody prob transfer them from cassette to MD first.... like some stuff I used to get 5-6 yrs ago.

[Five]

TLH's lossy detection feature is not reliable enough, it can spot really obvious mp3 sources but also gives a pass to many lossy shows. Don't even bother with that, use your ears and SA/FA only.

there's some ppl who have really nice expensive home MD decks that they figure are as good as DAT, and mistakenly use them for archiving shows which were lossless up until then. good news is, it is most likely that you will be able to find the pure sources out there somewhere. In the meantime I would not trade the versions used for the screenshots above.

[chilton]

OK, just to be on the safe side then, here's a spectral shot of a wave file from the other sbd show I got in the same trade. As I said, this one passed the TLH test, but now I know better than to trust that.
So what's the verdict?

[Five]

that one is lossless for sure. if the color goes all the way to the top & no blocks visible when zoomed to 2seconds like this one, 99.9% it is lossless. AC3 is the hardest to spot, but that's another story...

[chilton]

Originally Posted by Five

that one is lossless for sure. .

Great!
These recordings are so rare that I'm satisfied with one out of two.

[the Flea]

Any clues as to what's the band ?

[chilton]

Originally Posted by the Flea

Any clues as to what's the band ?

OK, here's a clue - the guitarist co-wrote the greatest pop single of the new millennium.

But his own band doesn't mean anything to anybody on TTD, I'm afraid.
It's just the UK second division glam pop band Mud, going through the motions a couple of years after their run of bubblegum hits ended. At least it's a real kick for me and about three other sad collectors, the ones who can't get over the fact that Bowie killed off Ziggy.
I'll probably seed the lossless one on Dime, along with a request for more glam rock. It was never big in the States so I've never seen bands like Mud, Hello or Bay City Rollers on the trader sites.
When I finally found a trader with a huge list of glam and extra cheesy 70s pop, he only wanted 4 items from my 3000+ list. I thought long and hard before choosing these two shows, plus a so-bad-it's-good 1975 UK movie featuring Mud, and a dvd with home movie footage from the funeral for Sweet vocalist Brian Connolly.

[the Flea]

Ah yes Kylie Minogue and I can't get you out of my noggin I believe.

[chilton]

Here's another tricky one, for me anyway.
This Adobe Audition screenshot contains 2 seconds from an extremely poor audience recording of a 1978 show.
Lossless or not?

Perhaps I edited out too much from the shot: The red/yellow line at the bottom peaks around the 5000 Hz mark