From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V9 #219 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk 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 **************************