^^ it turns out it was the band was Virtue and the ep title being " We Stand and Fight".

Original "To Dust You Will Decay" CD scans: 1 | 2
I hope it will help you to identify your CD. If the price wasn't like 200-300$ as it should be for original, I guess it's bootleg.

turns out Scorched-Earth - Mars is all above board, i bumped into someone who got a copy directly from the band.

re Pungent Stench ‎– "Club Mondo Bizarre" For Members Only [censored, us version]

can anyone who has this confirm that the spines say NBA 6904-2 but the disc says NB 079-2
GEMA and LC xxxx [rights society and label code] on the disc
matrix says manufactured by KAO Optical Products i'll confirm specifics when i'm not playing the cd...

it has 14 songs [incl the karaoke ones] and a severely crippled booklet, 4 leaves no dodgy monkey pic etc

usa packaging german disc?

My copy has NBA RED 6097-2 on the spine, disc has LC 7027, GEMA P&C 1994, NB 079-2 ... Matrix is : Manufactured by KAO Optical...

ok cool, looks like the same disc but with different packaging, yours has the 4 karaoke songs?

Yes, it has the 4 extra songs

cool, thanks.

anyone got an original Loudness - Hurricane Eyes cd?
WPCL-255

http://www.discogs.com/Loudness-Hurricane-Eyes/release/4114853

Anyone have a first press of Master's Hammer - Jilemnice Occultist? I'd like to compare mine, which I purchased in a second hand store for $5 to an original copy.

throw up some scans dude, disc and rear cover, i'd post the matrix info too and/or a photo of it

any more comments of this intronaut void cd?
the booklet and rear cover look fine, the printed side of the disc also looks fine

For those collectors out there. I have a copy of Viogression's Passage in Tombstone Records/Progressive International from 1992, however my matrix number has an IFPI code: THE PASSAGE X6829T IFPI L531

Didnt the IFPI codes started to be used in 1994? I will appreciate if any one can confirm if this matrix number is the correct one?

that's correct mate, 1994 = ifpi sid codes
the ifpi.org site has that written somewhere but i can never find it, it might be on one of their .pdf forms

.

Do you have this CD? If so, what is the matrix number in yours?

no i don't have it mate i was just confirming the ifpi date question
have you had a look at discogs?

the page is incomplete
http://www.discogs.com/Viogression-Passage/release/2242496

Deströyer 666 ‎– Unchain The Wolves CD
original or reissue from any country
can anyone confirm a distribution code on the rear cover, it'll possibly say IRS xxxxx

I saw the Osmose version of Below the Lights at FYE about two years ago, and this version had a backslip with pictures of the band members on the back, but I didnt buy it that day. Instead, I picked it up at Reckless Records in Chicago IL a month or two later, but I noticed it had a different backslip, with the same artwork from the disc, and it also had a sticker that said it was for promotional use only and not for resale. Does anyone know if there is anything special about the promo version of this album? Was it released in limited quantities, handed out at concerts, released in a specific region, ect?

the matric is te036

TE = The End Records, you possibly have the US promo version, the other promo on discogs is possibly the EU version
is that the entire matrix, verbatim?

That was the label code on the side, sorry. the matrix is 8313 BELOWLIGHT 01

autopsy mental funeral jewelcase version 1991
does not say MASTERED BY NIMBUS, says Ifpi LD02 and ifpi 5J26, VLE 25 N61404 on back Matrixrunout,
VILE 25 CD RT GERMANY 320 0025 2 40 on front disc.
Front disk does not have matrix runout because of printing on whole cd.

UK version?

is this a real pressing I have bought? not to familiar with bootlegs and stuff...

regards
magnus

the front [of the] disc doesn't have a matrix because it's not the matrix area of the disc.
any chance of some photos or scans? it's not an original from 1991.

that catalogue number [if that's what it is] sounds similar to this cassette
http://www.discogs.com/Autopsy-Mental-Funeral/release/2918384
RT could be Rough Trade perhaps?

Can someone pl;ease post the matrix number on Viogression's Passage CD?

i just asked for some info on the discogs page [link above] hopefully someone there will add it, hope that helps man.

Manufactured by Amazon.com discs:
There had been some discussion in the recent purchases thread about these discs and having received one as a gift, several posters asked me to help elaborate so we could figure out the ins and outs of this thing, so I'll attempt to show what I can here. This deals with CDs ordered from Amazon with this caveat: "CD-R Note: This product is manufactured on demand when ordered from Amazon.com. [Learn more]"

Example: http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Root/dp/B004KZQ3KW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356672512&sr=8-1&keywords=root+the+book

Images of the case/layout here:



There was a question over whether or not the files were sourced by mp3s or by uncompressed audio, and some users requested I take screen shots of the waveform. They are below. Amazon.com's claim: "CreateSpace works with many of the leading music labels, television networks, film studios, and other distributors to make these titles available to Amazon.com customers. All products are manufactured from original source materials (e.g., for audio products, uncompressed CD-quality audio)."

audacity > analyze > plot spectrum
also on the left there's little arrow, click it and you get some view options, eg spectrogram
excellent work so far

wav file ripped directly from my shitty arse vengeance rising cd bootleg, whoever made the thing used mp3s or some other such lossy format
notice how the frequencies above 20 k aren't there?





and this dark angel leave scars vinyl rip





farkin heinous!

Plot Spectrum:


Spectrograph:


It would be interesting if you had an original copy with this same track for comparison.

That would certainly make things clearer to everyone who isn't able to read all this raw data. The curve does seem to take a nose dive after the 20Khz mark though.

Don't know the album but this may be normal (maybe the production is on the dark side), also there's not an abrupt drop on the frequency so it doesn't seem anything out of the ordinary there.


Not a fair comparison, the CD format only has frequencies up to 22 kHz while vinyl can go up to 45 kHz. Both are good as freqs > 22 kHz aren't heard unless you're, for instance, a dog, or a cat (well, even vinyl is lacking for cats as they can
cat detect sound all the way up to 64 kHz, and they are pretty damn cute on top of that).

re plot spectrum you have two different results because the 'sample size' used was different for each one, 512 and 128
the smaller the sample size the more accurate it'll be [and it'll take longer] i found using a part of the song with a lot of sound eg not the intro gave a better result, i'm not sure why they have it limited to that length, i had a few different limits presented to me about 1 to 2 minutes roughly [their wiki/faq etc likely has the answer]

my first question is: did you rip the cd to wav or mp3?
if you ripped to wav then i think amazon have some *explaining to do, as above there's nothing over 20k?
my vengeance rising cd up there is a bootleg so the jammy fucker probably just used mp3s to burn the disc

"CreateSpace works with many of the leading music labels, television networks, film studios, and other distributors to make these titles available to Amazon.com customers. All products are manufactured from original source materials (e.g., for audio products, *uncompressed CD-quality audio)."

japc sent me this link yesterday, i had a lot of fun playing with this!
i'm far from an expert but this is how i'm reading the info
http://www.walterdevos.be/how-to-check-quality-of-mp3-file

another cool thing i did just for a laugh was rip the first song from an original somewhere in time and the same song from the remastered one and compared them.

addendum, oh look, japc replied at the same time
i agree, cats are cute, but those baby goat videos take some beating

also i chose the vinyl rip to show the very different results, i'm keen to try a new record with more modern production
and maybe some drum n bass vinyl too, something 100% electronic, just for the fun of it.

Actually, CD audio has a sampling rate of 16bit/44Khz, what vinyl has better is a wider dynamic range. Also there's another factor that is the actual bit rate of the MP3 to CD audio conversion, since MP3 has a sampling rate identical to an audio CD. What happens, and is partially explained in that linked article, is that at lower bit rates the codec that compresses the file cuts all frequencies above a certain threshold to save physical space. MP3 at 320Kbps is capable of reproducing the audio perfectly, although the fact that it's a lossy format will make some things be lost as well, although those are the ones which can only be "felt" or heard with really high-end gear, i.e. nothing that would really make that much of a difference. But I don't even want to go down that road because this would rapidly turn into a lossy vs lossless debate.

What's important to realize is that if a CD is recorded from a low bit rate MP3 source it will wave a waveform with the higher frequencies completely cut out.

That's the sampling rate, the Nyquist frequency is half that: 22 kHz.


For me everything over 192 I can't distinguish from the CD, it was too many years using lowsy chinese shop headphones (soft version of sticking a driller in the ear drum). Which is pretty cool as I can fit more music on the portable player, or rather "would be", because I tend to encode everything with -V0 (320/vbr) anyway with fear of missing something.

According to http://thesession.org/discussions/19642 those damned headphones eroded 2 kHz.

Grabbed my copy of http://www.discogs.com/Immortal-At-The- ... ase/394588, converted Solarfall to WAV and plotted the spectrum in Audacity. The graphic layered over your image with some transparency and slightly shifted, they seem to match flawlessly:

hmm i was convinced i understood the data i was looking at but i may be a shade foggy still...
i ripped some crappy bootleg cd-r and a couple of legit cd-rs and some mastered [silvered] discs and the results are all the same: 20k as above
the only results that looked a lot different were the vinyl rips

the good news is that the amazon discs are at least cd audio quality.

I tried reading the Wiki article about the Nyquist frequency but it's like reading Chinese!

So in real life all actual audio is only reproduced within the borders of the Nyquist frequency, i.e. half of the original sampling rate? And is that why the graph only shows a curve up until the upper 20Khz?


Reading the last linked article that actually makes sense and comes in line with what I've said before, only low bit rate MP3 sources give out crappy CD-R copies.

I still find it weird that a company would have copyright access to (supposedly) lossless source files of the albums sold by a label. It's a brave new world we're living in!

Yes, too much info

Trimmed versions:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NyquistFrequency.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_rate
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Analog_and ... pling_Rate
http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/Multimedia/node149.html


Yes.

I did not rip it at all, I loaded it in Audacity directly from the CD. It was listed as AIFF.

Thank you for the image, japc. I'm pretty convinced that these are sourced they way they claim, regardless of the fact that the disc has no collectible or aesthetic value.

i found a couple of threads at discogs if you guys are interested in having a look [of course you are]

http://www.discogs.com/help/forums/topic/339993
http://www.discogs.com/help/forums/topic/235503

amazon cd-r 'faq' page, which i've bookmarked for later.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200326640