Saturday 30 December 2006

A word about sound quality

It's crap.

Anyone expecting music with superior sound quality should go away right now. See, the thing about Indian soundtracks, especially of the vintage kind, is that they often sound very very bad. Up until approx. 1977, all Indian film music was compressed to match the limited frequency range of film celluloid (don't ask me why they never bothered keeping better mixes for the albums; I have no idea). Secondly, vinyl pressings were dodgy in India, in the 70s especially (as they in fact were elsewhere as well). Thirdly, all of these albums have been bought second hand, many from India where they've been exposed to the region's climate; not the most vinyl friendly in the word.

So what you in many cases will get, is ace music with a less than desireable sound (distortion rules a lot of the time). And for that reason, I'm never going to encode these LPs in anything more than 128 192 kbps. Because it won't make much of a difference. OK?

On with the show then...

13 comments:

  1. Just having the opportunity to hear these is awesome. Thanks so much!!

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  2. I'll second that! I can't wait to hear all 150 records.

    DPW

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  3. You're giving these to us for free anyway. Anyone complaining should just think about the fact that you could just decide to not make a public project.

    I didn't know the reputation of the sound quality of Indian film scores weren't widespread enough to prevent people questioning you. At least you've spelled-out exactly why they can be the way they are when previously I wouldn't have known the reasons.

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  4. Hi Friend
    Thanks for the songs from your record collection.Had a great time listening to them.I have a huge collection of records too.May be I should post them to you to make them into a CD.I inherited the records from someone but unfortunately do not have a record player.I should post them to you if your in U.K

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  5. Brilliant stuff! but why move from rapidshare? I just paid for bandwidth from them just for your music shares alone, and now I have to pay again for Easyshare they have slow speeds too? sorry for the grumble. They're fantastic lp's though my man. really enjoying them.

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  6. I stopped using Rapidhare partly because a whole bunch of files I'd uploaded (not on this blog) were deleted without warning or explanation, but mainly because they screwed me a bit the short period I had a paid account with them. Hopefully that won't happen to you though.
    PC x

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  7. 150!! :Sigh: :wub: ... am enjoying them soooo much, I had to thank you once again. Most of the time the sound quality is pretty fantastic and I am glad you've switched to 192. Waiting for some oldies goldies soon - Naushad, Salil, SDB etc etc. Good luck with the move :smile:

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  8. Might be closer to 160-165 actually....
    A couple of SDs are coming up shortly, and more Naushads a bit later on. Don't think I have more Salil Chowdhury though (possibly an EP, but all my singles are boxed up at the moment so I'm not sure).
    PC x

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  9. Yay!! The more the merrier. Thanks, I have the time and patience. I also have the hope you have some more oldies in 'em boxed up singles :)

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  10. I have 35+ rare Bollywood vinyls from the 60s,70s and 80s for sale.Titles include Yaadon ki baaraat,Aradhana,Qurbani,hanste zakhm and Amar,akbar,Anthony.The standards vary but all are in good condition and are fully playable.Mail me for a full list at speshclub7@hotmail.com

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  11. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

    Znkp
    Los Angeles

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  12. Hi PC,

    Just found your site and I'm already enjoying the fruits of your labour. Keep doing what you're doing and that goes for the comments too. An LP you might think of having one decent tune is someone else's treasure, but I wouldn't know what to look out for if someone didn't pipe up to say, "Oh but check out the [whatever] it's the best part of the song" (and so on).

    As for bad sound quality, I'm no audiophile, I like listening to bootlegs and demos of varying quality, but without someone taking the time to upload in the first place, I wouldn't be here right now.

    Thanks!

    AA

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  13. Always happy to welcome newcomers. If you should require alternate opinions on what's worthwhile and what's not, be sure to check the comments to a lot of the posts. And also, since this particular post was written, the bitrate has been upped to 198 kbps :) Enjoy!

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