RIAA kills youtube-mp3.org

[tedmich]

Well if I'm going to enjoy a a jaunty Beaujolais and listen to some Coltrane on the veranda I definitely use only gold SACD, Blu-spec CD2 or HRx 176kH/24-Bit DVD-R, but good luck finding this in any format other than youtube lossy audio (or vinyl)!

luckily fidelity often doesn't matter as much as access

[bob p]

I only learn songs on my PONO.

...while driving in my white Cadillac...

[Steve A.]

i think it's ironic that people here will fuss over tube amps, refusing to play SS gear, and then listen to music on mp3.

Bob, MP3's today are like the songs we recorded off the radio onto reel-to-reel or cassette tapes when we were growing up... not exactly high fidelity but we could listen to the songs and decide whether to buy them on vinyl. Or play them repeatedly as we were learning them which was definitely better than playing the records over and over again (even with a good cuing mechanism I think it can create small clicks.)

Practically every song that a cover band might need to play these days is available on YouTube so rather than go to an illegal site to download songs we need to learn (in lossless format when available, of course) we can just play the video on YouTube as many times as needed — or download the video in .FLV format, converted to an .MP3 for portability.

I just got a Nyne Bass Sport bluetooth speaker*** which weighs over 6 lbs, puts out 15 *real* watts and has an active subwoofer so I can play my guitar while learning songs on my tablet running YouTube. With the tablet right next to me I can hit the Replay icon as needed (something that I couldn't do running YouTube on my PC through my Bose Companion 2 speakers.) No need for me to download and/or convert music videos as long as I have wifi for my tablet...

Steve A.

*** Original retail $150 but now discontinued... Fry's picked up a sh*tload of them and is selling them on promo code specials for $59.99, with free shipping since the order is over $45 ($49?).

Read reviews of Bass Sport speakers at Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/NYNE-Multimed.../dp/B014JFMLS0

Link to sign up for daily promo codes from Fry's:
http://www.frys.com/workflow/AcctMai...mocom/subc.jsp

Alternatives to youtube-mp3 site:
https://www.techworm.net/2017/09/you...ernatives.html

EDIT: I have found the UltimateGuitar site to be indispensable for getting chords and lyrics for songs you want to learn. In Google search bar type <name of song> <opt. artist> and "chords"... usually Ultimate is at the top of the list. (Do NOT type in "lyrics" as there are some very sketchy lyric sites out there.)

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com

BTW some of my best friends are SS guitar amps and most of my FX pedals are 100% solid state...

[The Dude]

Well, thanks for the tip, Steve! I've been hedging on getting a blue tooth speaker anyway. It just keeps getting put on the back burner. I just ordered one off FleeBay for $49/free shipping. If it sux, I'm blaming you.

[bob p]

Bob, MP3's today are like the songs we recorded off the radio onto reel-to-reel or cassette tapes when we were growing up... not exactly high fidelity but we could listen to the songs and decide whether to buy them on vinyl.

Wait a second Steve -- are you saying that open-reel and cassette tape are low fidelity? Or was it the AM radio that you were using as a source?

I know that you're old enough to have real world experience with HiFi equipment, so I'm guessing that you're referring to the radio source, and to the equipment, rather than the format itself.

WARNING: Tape Rant to Follow:

I see a lot of misinformation being propagated on the web about how crappy open-reel tape and cassette tapes were as high-fidelity recording formats.

For all the millennials who are too young to have first-hand knowledge: spit out the Kool-Aid.

For some reason everyone likes to talk about how crappy tape recorded audio used to be. I don't agree with that. I grew up in a house that had open-reel tape machines in the 60s. Those machines were capable of higher fidelity than any source medium we had to record from. And in the 70s I had cassette machines that were capable of such high-fidelity that when CD came along I used them to bootleg CDs. Why? Because a C-120 cassette would fit in your shirt pocket and a CD would not.

Whether or not anyone could get HiFi sound out of a tape machine was largely a function of equipment choice and user technique and not the medium itself. If someone used a boom-box loaded with Type I ferric-oxide tape and recorded off of the radio they were guaranteed to get crappy results. But if someone used a high quality tape machine, CrO2 or metal tape at 15 ips and a good vinyl source, they could get HiFi recordings where the frequency response of the phono cartridge was the limiting factor.

Just for reference, here's a page with specs for a 1/4" open reel machine that was highy regarded for home use, the Revox B77:

Revox B77 tape recorder

Looking at it's specs, there's not really much reason to abandon a format like this one in favor of CD. If anything, one might complain about tape hiss and 69dB S/N, but that's about it.

Even cassettes in the 70s were legitimate HiFi machines if you spend the money and bought the right one. TEAC mass-produced affordable cassette decks that had decent frequency response and noise characteristcs. It was not uncommon for an inexpensive cassette deck to have frequency response that went up to 16kHz, which was beyond the capabilities of many turntables, tube power amps and speakers (not to mention ears). If you were willing to spend the money, Nakamichi made tape machines that went from 20Hz-22kHz and had a respectiable 72dB S/N.

https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_li...i/dragon.shtml

It's interesting to note that the frequency response of both the cassette and open-reel format were capable of matching the 22kHz limit of the CD format!

One of the greatest features of the cassette format was that you could put two albums on a tape that would fit into your shirt pocket. CD were never that portable, and they always seemed like a stupid format to me. The only reason that people accepted them was because we were tolerant of the very inconvenient 5.25" floppy disc that was still in use at the time.

So why do we have the CD in the first place? Why was it foisted upon us when ORT and Cassette were so good? I think it's a bottom-line sort of thing. It's cheaper to manufacture and ship small plastic discs than large vinyl discs and tapes. I think the push for CD was all about profitability, although it was marketed in a HiFi wrapper.

[bob p]

The problem that I have with MP3 is that in addition to being Lo-Fi, it's a proprietary codec. You have to pay to use it. To Windows users that payment is concealed by bundling it into the acquisition cost of your operating system, so you may not even be aware of it. To Linux users that isn't the case. If you want to add MP3 support to a linux system then you have to jump through hoops to add the codec to your system.

I could never reconcile having to jump through hoops to obtain a lossy codec when higher quality lossless codecs were free.

[bob p]

BTW some of my best friends are SS guitar amps and most of my FX pedals are 100% solid state...

Since you're a stompbox guy maybe you could answer a question that's always nagged at me:

Why is it that people buy into the idea of SS stompboxes producing "Plexi" tone when they don't come anywhere near close to the same sound?

[Enzo]

You are assuming people are thinking analytically. Like the kid who writes, "How can I get the tone from Green Day?" Or the kid who wants to know how to get "more gain" out of his freaking 5150. he means a different sounding distortion, but he says "more gain."

[bob p]

It's not my imagination, Enzo. There are purveyors of stompboxes that are actively marketing their wares using "Plexi" in the name, and advertising that they get vintage plexi tone. Of course, we all know what a load of crap that is, but that's the marketing that seems popular today.

The 4 Best Plexi Pedals ? Reviews 2017

For the $250 that it costs to buy a Wampler Plexi-Drive, I think I'd rather buy a transformer set for a plexi build.

fwiw I own a boatload of stompboxes but I haven't used an overdrive or a distortion box since the 1990s.

[Enzo]

Oh I quite believe you that they are out there.

You asked why people buy the term plexi when the pedal sounds nothing like one. And my response was the people who do that are not thinking analytically.

[dstrat]

not that many know what an original jtm45 sounds like anyway. Btw youtube is not a very good way to find out either.

oh yeah back on topic, linux users can use youtube-dl if you can stand command line programs.

[bob p]

Oh I quite believe you that they are out there.

You asked why people buy the term plexi when the pedal sounds nothing like one. And my response was the people who do that are not thinking analytically.

Maybe I should duck for cover as I say this, but why do people who get their distorted tone out of solid-state stompboxes even bother playing with tube amps?

I'd wager to say that most of the overdrive tones that I hear out in the wild (professionals, that is) are coming from solid-state stompboxes, and these guitars don't even sound remotely close to a tube amp. To my vintage ears these tones all sound like ass. And it seems that 100% of the people who are using these stompboxes are blissfully ignorant when it comes to how non-tube-like their tone is.

I understand that there was a point in time -- before the advent of cascaded tube gain stages -- when the only way to get a lot of distortion was out of a transistorized pedal. But ever since the invention of cascaded gain stages and channel switching that's no longer the case. Nonetheless, gear hounds gladly plunk down $250 for boutique pedals that don't even get them close to the tone they're paying for.

[Justin Thomas]

Hey Bob,

I guess for me it comes down to, I use my tube amp to warm up my pedals... I generally don't use a Master Volume amp, and I pick the wattage for the room. I use my distortions with the "gain" as low as I can get away with and play the amp as loud as possible for the venue. I have no illusions that my pedals sound anything like my cranked amps, either. I also use discrete pedals, preferably old incarnations, and nothing "programmable." I don't often pay more than $20 for them, either!

What I <DO> like about pedals is the variety of blends I can get. It may not sound like a TUBE amp standing alone, but it is still something "different" and/or "useful." I also am not usually the "only" electric guitar player, and I usually end up being an extension of or replacement for the keyboards. But I think that the "infidelity" inherent in a grungy old tube power amp definitely helps warm up the final sound right before that speaker - even if it IS a Super Twin.

My pedals all sounded better to a friend and I through my Concert or Bassman than through his Line 6 set to "clean Twin Reverb" with no added effects.

Now, if you think turning the gain on your pedals past 12:00 with your amp gain, Bass, and Middle on 10 with the master on "1" sounds great, well... never mind.

Edit: who put out the pedals a few years ago that were "amps-in-a-box?" One was a '59 Bassman; one was a Fender Tube Reverb. I don't recall if there were others...

Justin

[bob p]

I'm resisting the temptation to go over to the Dark Side. This happens to me every few years and I have to fight it off. It's my own version of the Stompbox Pon Farr. More than anything else, I think this stompbox temptation comes along when I buy a new amp that I'm not really happy with... so I start thinking about stompboxes rather than just getting rid of the new amp.

So while I was surfing around last night, I saw a post by Greg Wampler on one of the guitar sites. I think it was TGP but I can't find the post now. People were bickering about whether an OCD was better than all of the OCD clones, and of course the gear hounds were bashing anyone who would consider buying a chinese copy of a Fulltone pedal. (They made all sorts of arguments about the "insignificant" incremental cost to buy the real thing, which actually revealed how bad they were at math -- apparently some of the posters had no understanding of ratios.) Greg Wampler chimed in to say that the topology of every one of these pedals is basically the same, with only a few minor parts substitutions here and there. I really wish that I could find the post, because if you read between the lines it was sort of an admission of guilt, that there really wasn't much going on in terms of creativity among all of the high end stompbox sellers. I've been searching for the thread but I can't find the thread now. Damn.

[rjb]

WARNING: Tape Rant to Follow:..........
So why do we have the CD in the first place? .....

Zero wow and flutter, man.