From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest)
To: ecto-digest@smoe.org
Subject: ecto-digest V9 #219
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ecto-digest Sunday, August 3 2003 Volume 09 : Number 219
Today's Subjects:
-----------------
another concert report - aimee mann [Damon
]
**Rachael Sage NY/MA CD Release Gigs & Other News!** [SpiritWe@aol.com]
Idle Curiosity: How Many .mp3s Fit On A CD? [Daniel ]
Re: Idle Curiosity: How Many .mp3s Fit On A CD? ["Brian Bloom"
Subject: another concert report - aimee mann
[ectoguide pre-approved if desired]
so thursday it was aimee mann at the commodore here in vancouver, with
art and jan. this is a *lot* of concerts for me lately considering
the last two i went to before the folk fest (two weeks ago) were patty
larkin in april and before that veda in may last year (and before
*that* susan werner in oct 2001 - man, this is making me depressed,
good thing i'm finally correcting this trend!)
aimee was absolutely wonderful live. art & jan got there just a
minute after me but got in first since i had to pick up my ticket. we
were there about five minutes after the doors opened but still could
only find very lousy seats; the best we could do was right behind one
of the sound stations so we could only really see torsos and heads
without standing up, and the sound guys were in the way a lot - though
in the end, once the dance floor filled up with people standing, i
think we probably did better than most. the commodore is a great
space but in the final reckoning it's not that great a venue for live
music i think.
anyway, there was a *long* wait after the doors, followed by a really
annoying/boring opener from pete droge - i keep forgetting his name
even though he made sure to tell us after just about every song. :P
art, jan and i had fun basically MST3King him. then another very long
wait and i was starting to wonder if i should have payed all those
ticketmaster charges...
but then aimee came on stage with a vengeance, and she and her band
(keyboardist, drummer, and two guitar/bass/other players - one of whom
started the first song with a ukelele) played for almost two hours,
from just after 10.30 until just before 12.30.
her stage presence was almost exactly what i would have imagined it;
somewhat `traditional big rock concert'-ish but with her own special
style and twist to it, definitely. she started off fairly
businesslike, going from song to song with minimal talking between,
but once she loosened up a bit i found her between-song banter to be
very funny and biting, like a lot of her lyrics. she certainly seems
to *be* the person you feel she must be listening to her cds. but it
was obvious she was also having a lot of fun.
and no wonder - the audience response was incredible. i didn't
realise there were so many aimee fans, i've always had this impression
of her being quite obscure, i guess mostly because the majority of my
friends don't know or don't like her. myself, i discovered at that
concert that i must be more of an aimee mann freak than i'd formerly
consciously realised; i knew every song pretty much from the opening
chorus. keri confirmed this when i mentioned it to her; i guess i
listen to aimee more than i realised! and i notice i've acquired all
her albums pretty quickly as they've come out over the years, even
when they've been a bit awkward to find.
i didn't note down the set list, but it seemed to me there was a good
mix of songs from all the albums, with an emphasis on the newest one
of course (_lost in space_, which i absolutely adore, artwork, music
and all) and also quite a few from the _magnolia_ soundtrack, which
seemed to get the most recognition from the crowd - maybe that's how
she gained so many fans. the response she got from the crowd was
quite inspiring, and like i said you could see its effect on her.
part of the two hour set consisted of two encores (first time i've
seen that in a while now), consisting of i think six (maybe seven?)
songs! she must have been dead tired at the end of it. or maybe the
perfect drugs and superheroes worked for her after all. ;) two of the
encore songs were covers, one of a coldplay song (i know nothing about
them) and one of lynrd skynrd's "sweet home alabama" which was really
fun. (i missed the lynrd skynrd era but even i knew that tune a bit.)
a wonderful evening and i encourage anyone who likes her music to
catch her live if she makes a stop near you. great stuff!
by the way, art, jan and i would like to submit our description of
aimee for consideration:
intelligent, melancholic rock.
it was the best we could do. :)
- -damon
- --
dl+ecto@usrbin.ca: protecting my real address since 2002 (too late!)
> EWS starts here! <
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2003 02:14:03 EDT
From: SpiritWe@aol.com
Subject: **Rachael Sage NY/MA CD Release Gigs & Other News!**
Hey y'all -
...SO FOLKS THIS IS IT!!! RACHAEL'S *BRAND NEW* CD "PUBLIC RECORD" -
Produced by Rachael & Andy Zulla - HITS STORES THIS WEEK AND WE ARE SO FREAKIN'
EXCITED, WE THINK YOU'LL ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT & WANT YOU TO COME HELP US CELEBRATE.
OK we'll calm down now...
===
Below are the full details for the Official East Coast *CD Release Shows* and
just beneath that are a bunch more tourdates for August, so if we are coming
to your neck of the woods we would be soooo happy to see your beautiful faces
and hang out & swap dicoupage-tips after the shows. For those of you who we
won't be seeing until later in the season, look for "PUBLIC RECORD" in your
local music store (or online) starting August 5th (catalog # MP9090-2 if they
need to order it!) and if they don't have it, just send us an email & we'll fix
that right away or we're not MPress Records...! In the meantime here we go
with those very important dates:
=====================================
CD RELEASE SHOWS for "PUBLIC RECORD":
**This Monday, August 4, 2003**
NYC CD RELEASE PARTY W/ SPECIAL GUESTS!!
Joe's Pub - 9pm
w/ Andy Stochansky
for tix call 212-539-8770
425 Lafayette St.
New York, NY
Tuesday, August 5, 2003
Union Square Virgin Megastore - 6pm
CD RELEASE instore
(CD signing after performance)
52 E 14th St.
New York, NY
Thursday, August 12, 2003
The Larkin
for more info call (518) 463-5225
199 Lark Street
Albany, NY
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Virgin Megastore - 6pm
CD RELEASE instore
(CD signing after performance)
360 Newbury Street
Boston, MA
Friday, August 22, 2003
Coffee and Tea Room - 8pm
for more info call 570-326-1760
1225 West 4th Street
Williamsport, PA
Friday, August 28, 2003
Boston CD Release Party!
Kendall Cafe - 11pm
for more info call 617-661-0993
233 Cardinal Medeiros Avenue
Cambridge, MA
(More dates constantly being added so check WWW.RACHAELSAGE.COM FOR UPDATES!)
===
**OTHER GROOVY NEWS**
1) CHECK OUT REVIEWS OF "PUBLIC RECORD" at www.indie-music.com and
www.hear-say.cc.
2) CHECK OUT THESE RECENT FEATURE ARTICLES on Rachael & her new album in the
Asheville Citizen Times, Out.com, Penn Live, Rikks Reviews and The Express.
Exact Links:
http://cgi.citizen-times.com/cgi-bin/story/entertainment/38922
http://www.out.com/musicreviews2.asp?id=3392
http://www.pennlive.com/entertainment/patriotnews/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/htm
l_standard.xsl?/base/entertainment/105913983653440.xml
http://www.RikksRevues.com
http://www.expressgaynews.com/beta/article.asp?articleNumber=14595
3) LOOK FOR A FEATURE ON RACHAEL IN "KEYBOARD MAGAZINE" NEXT MONTH!
xoxox & secret-sharing,
The Folks at MPress
* * *
www.rachaelsage.com
www.1.877.878.sage
* * *
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2003 14:56:06 -0700
From: Daniel
Subject: Idle Curiosity: How Many .mp3s Fit On A CD?
You all seem to know so many useful and interesting things, I hope you
can help me:
I'm trying to figure out how to get all my Weird Al onto one playable
CD. I got some excellent freeware (CDex) and ripped .mp3s of all 127
tracks, less than 250Mb all told. Nero (which came with my current
machine) will let me put all on a CD as files ... but as music it only
allows 99!
So it looks like 99 is a built-in limit. True? If so, is there a way
around it? I suppose I could get some .mp3 editing software and make
each album (or several songs at a time) one track but what if I want to
play my CD in random mode? Am I stuck with random album/group?
Is it even a good idea to cram a CD full of .mp3s and play it? My player
holds six CDs so I could conceivably load it with enough music to play
continuously without repeating for over a week! Not that I'd try to keep
up with it these days ... Twenty years ago perhaps :)
Thanks,
Daniel
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2003 00:38:17 +0200
From: Sander
Subject: Re: Idle Curiosity: How Many .mp3s Fit On A CD?
Daniel wrote:
> I'm trying to figure out how to get all my Weird Al onto one playable
> CD. I got some excellent freeware (CDex) and ripped .mp3s of all 127
> tracks, less than 250Mb all told. Nero (which came with my current
> machine) will let me put all on a CD as files ... but as music it only
> allows 99!
>
> So it looks like 99 is a built-in limit. True? If so, is there a way
> around it?
The Red Book Standard (which gives the technical details of what CDs
are) specifies that a cd can hold a maximum of 99 tracks. Even if
there'd be a way around this (if there is, Nero would be _the_ program
to include it), you run the risk of cd-players not recognizing it as a
cd and thus no longer being able to play it. (I have never experimented
in this direction, and so have no real idea about the actual effects of
putting more than 99 tracks on a "cd".)
However...
> Is it even a good idea to cram a CD full of .mp3s and play it? My player
> holds six CDs so I could conceivably load it with enough music to play
> continuously without repeating for over a week!
Is your player even capable of playing mp3 files? Regular cd players
aren't. So burning these songs "as files" would probably not be very useful.
When you burn mp3s "as music" (which you talked about above), the files
are converted back from mp3 to the format used for storage on cd (think
.wav, even though it isn't exactly), and will once more take up a lot
more space. 250MB of mp3 files would be (assuming a default compression
of 128kb/sec) roughly equivalent to 2500MB of cd-equivalent music, and
thus take 4 cds. (And you loose some music quality in the process as
well, because mp3 compression does not retain all information, and this
thus can't be retrieved when converting back to the format used on cds.)
Dragging the 127 mp3 files to Nero when trying to burn a music cd, look
at the colored bar at the bottom of the window - it'll probably be far
in the red to the right, indicating that you wouldn't be able to burn
the cd anyway.
Unless you have a player capable of playing dics with mp3 _files_ (these
players are still quite rare, and I don't know about any carousel setups
for them), this will be the greater limitation, and for what you want
you'll have to be satisfied with 4 cds with roughly 30 tracks per cd.
If you do have such a player, just burn everything "as files" and don't
worry about the 99 track limitation for music cd's.
Hope that cleared up some things.
Sander
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2003 16:03:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Brian Bloom"
Subject: Re: Idle Curiosity: How Many .mp3s Fit On A CD?
Not that I've ever done this, but I've heard that..
Sorry, couldn't resist... :)
Anyway, there are two things that you can do with MP3s when it comes to
cds. You can leave them in "data" format or you can let Nero make a
"music" disc out of them. And those two choices are very different:
"data" format:
- Will store on average 160 songs with 128 kbps to 160 kbps sampling
rates. (Higher sampling rates produce bigger files, hence fewer fit on
discs). If you got 127 songs into 250MB, then they are either shockingly
short songs, or you sampled at 96 to 128 kbits... but I digress.
- Holds about 10 hours of music at the above rates, less at better
sampling rates.
- Will not play on typical cd players.. Requires either a computer or a
cd player specifically able to handle MP3s (many walkmans, most dvd
players, about half of the latest car players, and some boomboxes now
support this).
"audio" format:
For this, Nero (or EasyCD Creator as well) will convert, on the fly, your
MP3 into a standard CD audio track.
- - No longer compressed, so you only get the same capacity as normal cds,
70-80 minutes.
- - *should* have no limit to the number of files, because I have some sound
effect cds that have like 120+ tracks each on them. But again, you're
limited by that 70-80 minute ceiling.
- - Playable everywhere (except for a few grumpy old players that don't like
CD-Rs. To improve your chances with these guys [if you have one], try
doing disc-at-once and "close the session" when finished. This might be
enough..)
So I'm pretty sure that 127 of Weird Al's songs will be longer than 70-80
minutes, so there's little chance of getting them all on a disc in audio
format. But at 250 Mb, they should easily fit in data format (which will
hold 650-700 Mb on typical burners).
So all of the above can be summarized easily:
MP3s (at 128 kbps) are compressed about 10 to 1. So if you could have fit
a dozen songs of a given size in audio format, you can fit approx 120 of
them in MP3 format.
*But* MP3 data discs can only be played on players or computers that are
designed for MP3s...
Hope this helps and feel free to ask any additional questions directly
and, uh, I'll see if I can find someone who knows the answer
;)
moo.
> You all seem to know so many useful and interesting things, I hope you
> can help me:
>
> I'm trying to figure out how to get all my Weird Al onto one playable
> CD. I got some excellent freeware (CDex) and ripped .mp3s of all 127
> tracks, less than 250Mb all told. Nero (which came with my current
> machine) will let me put all on a CD as files ... but as music it only
> allows 99!
>
> So it looks like 99 is a built-in limit. True? If so, is there a way
> around it? I suppose I could get some .mp3 editing software and make
> each album (or several songs at a time) one track but what if I want to
> play my CD in random mode? Am I stuck with random album/group?
>
> Is it even a good idea to cram a CD full of .mp3s and play it? My player
> holds six CDs so I could conceivably load it with enough music to play
> continuously without repeating for over a week! Not that I'd try to keep
> up with it these days ... Twenty years ago perhaps :)
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2003 16:10:40 -0700
From: Daniel
Subject: Re: Idle Curiosity: How Many .mp3s Fit On A CD?
Sander wrote:
> Is your player even capable of playing mp3 files? Regular cd players
> aren't. So burning these songs "as files" would probably not be very useful.
> When you burn mp3s "as music" (which you talked about above), the files
> are converted back from mp3 to the format used for storage on cd (think
> .wav, even though it isn't exactly), and will once more take up a lot
> more space.
OIC.
I did not know this. Lucky for me that my curiosity is idle :) Still, I suppose
it's worth a CD to find out ...
Thanks,
Daniel
------------------------------
End of ecto-digest V9 #219
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