kevingamin Posted August 19, 2010 Share Posted August 19, 2010 I am AMAZED by the awesome quality and consistency of all the APDs this year. The best by far in many years IMO. The volume is there and the sound is much more characteristic and authentic than in previous years. Especially the battery. In past years the sound seemed weak, artificial, and over-processed. I bought all my fave shows from the Houston show and probably won't buy the ones from Quarters because of the dome factor and that the Houston ones are so phenomenally awesome. MUCHO KUDOS to the genius recording engineers! Was wondering if drumcat could shed some light on the reasons for this years improvement?? I've listened to the Top 5 from Quarters so far and, to be honest, I have to think to listen for any dome reverb. I can't say that about Atlanta's recordings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gbass598 Posted August 19, 2010 Share Posted August 19, 2010 If any of you intrepid types want to test the bundle, you'll be downloading "081210_indianapolis2.zip" now. I'm trying to download again but something bombed out and failed once I got 99% of the zip file completed. I'll see if it happens on my 2nd attempt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FaustianMachine Posted August 19, 2010 Share Posted August 19, 2010 I'm trying to download again but something bombed out and failed once I got 99% of the zip file completed. I'll see if it happens on my 2nd attempt Yeah, give them "A Sec2nd Chance" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
packetslave Posted August 19, 2010 Share Posted August 19, 2010 Hey drumcat, I know it's not your area, but you might want to tell TheFanNetwork guys that their SSL certificate expired at 8pm ET today. That essentially means purchases through the store aren't encrypted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drumcat Posted August 19, 2010 Author Share Posted August 19, 2010 Hey drumcat, I know it's not your area, but you might want to tell TheFanNetwork guys that their SSL certificate expired at 8pm ET today. That essentially means purchases through the store aren't encrypted. I will let 'em know, of course. It's not that they aren't encrypted, but rather the trust certificate run through the third party vendor has expired - so you wouldn't have that typical 3rd party trust. It's on the list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drumcat Posted August 19, 2010 Author Share Posted August 19, 2010 Yeah, give them "A Sec2nd Chance" All of the individual files are propagating now. If they stall out, grab another and come back. They'll be splitting over the load balancing stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gbass598 Posted August 19, 2010 Share Posted August 19, 2010 looks like I'm still having problems with the zip file, it has stalled out on me 2 times at 99% w/ 3 MB left to download Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drumcat Posted August 19, 2010 Author Share Posted August 19, 2010 I am AMAZED by the awesome quality and consistency of all the APDs this year. The best by far in many years IMO. The volume is there and the sound is much more characteristic and authentic than in previous years. Especially the battery. In past years the sound seemed weak, artificial, and over-processed. I bought all my fave shows from the Houston show and probably won't buy the ones from Quarters because of the dome factor and that the Houston ones are so phenomenally awesome. MUCHO KUDOS to the genius recording engineers! Was wondering if drumcat could shed some light on the reasons for this years improvement?? A little bit. We've had the engineers for several years. They're really good, and experienced with drum corps in particular. We've changed how we do things as we've evolved with The Fan Network as a whole. This skims the surface, but should suffice. The improvement has been an evolution. Basically, when the whole thing started out (remember dci platinum memberships?) we focused heavily on getting audio turned around quickly. The impulse buy on knowing the show is going on is a strong one, so we did that for a few years. There's only so much you can adjust when turning around audio in less than an hour, as we used to guarantee. We took what the engineers had, transcoded, "fraunhofered", and if we had time, slapped some meta tags in. The difference lately has a lot to do with the on-demand video, and live events. Live events keep us rather busy, and fans get their jones. Same with on-demand video. We've recently changed some of our methods, and the video content partner (flash, anyone?) and this has again sped the process. That's how we got all of the video up as quickly as we did overnight for Finals. If not for a delay with unscheduled maintenance, we might have even had it up earlier. All that to say audio isn't the immediate priority. Video is king when it comes to 'right now'. So I've been taking more time to actually take the different recordings, and match them to what the "real" environment would be like. One engineer's setup is different from another, and stadiums differ, obviously. If we take them into account more, and "tweak" the audio ever so slightly to be more like your experience in the stadium, it improves the product. Philosophically, I'm after a 28th row / 50 yard line experience, and one that while could be done a thousand different ways, is to me the most accurate I can do in a couple of days. Add to that improved raw recording rates (hey audiophiles - 24bit 48k on everything), and you end up with malleable sound. We offer it at 320kbps so it's super-compatible, but also it's the best mp3 can do (with constant bitrates). All that techgeekery with a little more time allows for what I hope is a better product. It's not going to be quite at the level that the CDs are done with, but balancing time and effort, we're doing better. Finally, from an overall perspective, we really are sensitive to what you guys want. It may seem like at times we're not, but I'm a big audio geek too. I listen to these files too, and so when I'm on the iPhone, I want to hear good stuff too. Same with video -- just to go on record, it's not quite as simple for the HD online video to happen as you might expect for a bunch of reasons not worth explaining here. But let me assure you, we want to provide as much quality as we can, and when the equations change year to year, we max that out as best we can. Thanks for everyone's understanding today. And as long as things aren't blowing up, I'm going to bed in 15. Long day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drumcat Posted August 19, 2010 Author Share Posted August 19, 2010 looks like I'm still having problems with the zip file, it has stalled out on me 2 times at 99% w/ 3 MB left to download Is that happening on multiple browsers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gbass598 Posted August 19, 2010 Share Posted August 19, 2010 Is that happening on multiple browsers? I use firefox. I haven't tried IE yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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