It's time to send a message to the industry!

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ArmyOfQuad

2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Since 2002/2003
Joined
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Messages
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Location
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Lets face it, we live in a time where physical media is on it's way out, and digital files are on their way in. And we can do some cool stuff with that.

Unfortunately, the industry is not moving in this direction properly, in a way that uses the available technology we have to it's fullest potential.

I think it's obvious to anyone that is here that, if digital files are going to take over, flac files is the obvious choice. It uses lossless compression, can be CD quality, or better, and can do 5.1 surround sound.

With the technology available to us today, if I was preparing a 5.1 album to release for others to listen to, it should be as easy as me encoding the final product to .flac files, and allowing others to download those to listen to at home on their.....well.....what? And there is the problem.

Now sure, the more tech savy of us would know what to do. The most simple solution, download the right software for your computer, get a surround sound card, hook up some speakers. Or hook up the surround sound card to the home theater system.

Or, one may author their own disc if that works, but that's a lot of work to expect from an end user.

Or, play it back on a device.

But, what device?

Well, there's a problem as well. The industry has all but ignored flac as a standard. Oh sure, many devices play them, some places sell them. But, it's more of an exception, and afterthought. Also, as far as I know, using flac for 5.1 is not something being done officially by anyone, and if it is, that would be very rare.

Anyways, if we don't even think about 5.1, it's still a struggle. I ripped all my CDs to flac, and I've not really been able to fully take advantage of that. Sure, the Oppo player plays flac, but not gapless. And there is a huge problem.

No one is taking gapless seriously. And I can't understand how or why this can be. Would anyone here settle for sitting down to listen to Dark Side of the Moon with gaps added between every song? Fuck no!, the first gap each and every one of you would stop that thing, and find another playback method, which would probably mean going for the disc.

Yes, there are devices that do gapless flac, but it's not the standard. As it is, I spent a lot of money on my Oppo player, and all they can tell me is, it's the manufacturer of the chip's fault, and they only really care about disc playback.

Well you know what? That doesn't cut it anymore. We live in an age where digital file playback is the future, and it's hear now. If you can't get with the times, and manufacture equipment that fully utilizes today's digital technology to it's fullest potential, then get out of the way and let someone else do it! Anything less than gapless flac is unacceptable, and it's time we demand this from the manufacturers!

The only reason the industry adopted mp3 like it did was due to consumer demand. It was us the consumers that started making mp3s as something cool we could do on our computers to share music easily, and when it took of like it did, after years of trying to fight mp3, the industry was left with no choice but to embrace it, and sell it.

It's time for us to demand flac. Mp3 is an unacceptable compromise, that with today's technology there is no reason to settle for anymore. Sure, mp3 takes less space than a flac file. But, you know what? If you cut records to 16 RPM, you could fit twice as much on one disc. Did the industry do that? Hell no, people wouldn't accept 16 RPM as the standard. Flac is here, flac is what the technology is capable of, it's time to embrace it, or get out of the way and let someone else do it.

As far as gapless playback, I've struggled to find a way to listen to my flac files. I played around with different softwares to interface with things, but the bottom line is the Oppo won't do it. I've played around with a roku box, which is a fairly common and cost efficient device that does some cool things, but it won't do gapless flac. At least I haven't found a way yet. One thing that looks promising is the boxee box. However, I found out with a little searching, that it won't properly do 5.1 surround flac, it reverses the rear left and subwoofer channels. A ticket is currently opened and assigned to a tech, with a status of minor. It's been open for about a year now.

A year? You can't program your damn box to playback the correct channel assignment of a flac file in a year?

Flac is here, and if digital files is the future of music distribution and listening, then we need to support what it's capable of. We need flacs being sold, standard. We need gapless flac playback a standard in all devices. This needs to happen.

Without these standards, releasing something as flac instead of a disc isn't a realistic option. We need to start with the players. Yes, we want to see the labels release surround downloads. How can we expect that, when we can't reasonably expect someone will be able to play it?

So, be loud, spread the word. I encourage everyone here to make waves, make some noise. Have a piece of equipment that you'd like to play flac and it doesn't? Send an email or tweet to the manufacturer. Have a device that plays back flac, but not gapless? Let them know, this isn't acceptable anymore, we won't stand for it, and if they want to keep you as a customer, they need to add gapless flac playback to their device.

I've started a new twitter trend, or I've attempted to anyways, of #gaplessflac, and have sent some tweets to some manufacturers. But I can't do this alone, we're all in this together.

It's time to demand a new standard from the industry, so that for once and for all we can have a simple way of purchasing, listening to, and distributing music.
 
I listen to almost everything now from my computer through Foobar either through the ASIO of my sound card or through the SPDIF out if it is a DTS file. No gap problems, perfect playback of everything - even ISOs of SACD and DVDA. My sound card, a MAudio Delta 1010LT only goes up to 96/24 but it's no biggie.
 
awhile back i had become annoyed while traveling with my ipod at the poor quality of it's mp3 playback and decided to search for a better portable playback device while traveling. well the bottom line is that i found the samsung galaxy S. it is a 5" touchscreen media player, android based (no phone) . with poweramp as the playback software it will play flac gapless as well as 24/96 stereo wav files,and pretty much anything else i've thrown at it as well. this player smokes any i-pod/phone/pad that ever lived. so if you are looking for a true hi-rez portable player check it out.
 
From the details given in the original post, I think it is safe to say that digital delivery is still not yet here at all.
As we expected it to be (and by "we" I mean fellow cynics like myself) it is a mess of conflicting fiormats with no agreed universal standard.
Some are open source, iTunes will stay with Apple codecs, everyone will do their own, bloody minded independent thing.

You forgot .dtshd too in the list - these files should play back on the Oppo easily but I doubt it will ever be gapless as there are no playlists getting created.
I do not want all my music on a PC or an HDD of any sort. I have had them fail on me far, far too pften - not to mention the same issue claimed for discs - obsolesence.
How many nmodern PC or Mac can read an old IDE HDD? What happens when USB1-2 is gone for good, and your drives have no other connector? Mac users have this problem with firewire already.

Sorry, but give me silver discs, replicated at the factory. These will last an awful lot longer than any HDD ever built and they do not get erased by accident or disaster.
As for no players in 5 years? They said that in the early 80's about vinyl, it was said again about both CD (sales of physical discs up again in last 2 quarters) and DVD (dead within 2 years of BD launch, etc) yet still these formats refuse to go away.
The way I see it, it is a matter of choice. If you want a download you should be able to buy it that way.
However, I do not like being forced down this route, and believe me I have tried this service and I do not like it for a number of reasons:
1 - Half the stuff I want to buy cannot be purchased where I live for "licensing reasons". I can buy physical media on import - job done.
2 - It is a strange thing, but I do not feel I have actually got a good deal. I paid premium price ($25) but got a set of FLAC files and a PDF. I still had to decode them & burn my own disc, and there is no satisfaction of ownership here at all. There is nothing to look good on the shelf if I do not burn a disc, and burned discs on the shelf kinda feels like having a cvollection of C90 cassettes did.
3 - I have to archive those original files now, and hope that the HDD does not go to IBM heaven.
4 - No artwork and/or printed material - more files on a computer again.

No thanks.
Give me physical media or I take my business elsewhere
 
To get around the FLAC gapless playback issue you can create a .MKV file from the flacs using Audiomuxer and then play those.

The authoring is relatively straightforward with Audiomuxer.
 
This is a great discussion. I feel the OP's pain, for sure. The vast majority of my "stereo" listening is done with flac files. I have my entire music collection ripped to flac, about 500GB worth of data. I just multiple Logitech squeezeboxes throughout the house to play the music in various rooms, all controlled with an Android app. The newest squeezeboxes (the touch) handle 96/24 and for critical listening I use an external DAC. In other rooms, like the bedroom and kitchen, I just use the analog outs, which are decent.

Unfortunately, though, Logitech recently announced they are discontinuing the Squeezebox line of products, which really surprises me. There aren't many alternatives in this area, so I would've thought that sales were good. But, since the Media Server software is open source, I expect they will continue to work fine for years to come.

For portable listening, I use a Samsung Galaxy S running PowerAmp like holland123. It works very well. For running, I use a Cowan iAudio 7. Very tiny, and the battery lasts for about 48 hours of listening. The interface is nothing fancy, but it offers an incredible amount of EQ tweaking, which is great for IEM headphones.

For 5.1 hi-res listening, I still use physical media, played through my Oppo 83se. I don't mind putting in a disk when I am sitting down to do quality listening. I have figured out how to stream DTS using the squeezebox, but it can't do higher bitrates than that.

I would absolutely LOVE if the industry would go to flac over MP3s, but in order for that to happen, we would need to convince one of the big players like Apple, or perhaps Amazon. Apple devices won't play flac at all, which is one of the main reasons I avoid them at all costs.

We have Neil Young on our side with the Pono service he is promoting:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-expands-pono-digital-to-analog-music-service-20120927

Apparently, he has the attention of Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music. So, you never know what might happen over the next year.
 
From the details given in the original post, I think it is safe to say that digital delivery is still not yet here at all.
As we expected it to be (and by "we" I mean fellow cynics like myself) it is a mess of conflicting fiormats with no agreed universal standard.
Some are open source, iTunes will stay with Apple codecs, everyone will do their own, bloody minded independent thing.

You forgot .dtshd too in the list - these files should play back on the Oppo easily but I doubt it will ever be gapless as there are no playlists getting created.
I do not want all my music on a PC or an HDD of any sort. I have had them fail on me far, far too pften - not to mention the same issue claimed for discs - obsolesence.
How many nmodern PC or Mac can read an old IDE HDD? What happens when USB1-2 is gone for good, and your drives have no other connector? Mac users have this problem with firewire already.

Sorry, but give me silver discs, replicated at the factory. These will last an awful lot longer than any HDD ever built and they do not get erased by accident or disaster.
As for no players in 5 years? They said that in the early 80's about vinyl, it was said again about both CD (sales of physical discs up again in last 2 quarters) and DVD (dead within 2 years of BD launch, etc) yet still these formats refuse to go away.
The way I see it, it is a matter of choice. If you want a download you should be able to buy it that way.
However, I do not like being forced down this route, and believe me I have tried this service and I do not like it for a number of reasons:
1 - Half the stuff I want to buy cannot be purchased where I live for "licensing reasons". I can buy physical media on import - job done.
2 - It is a strange thing, but I do not feel I have actually got a good deal. I paid premium price ($25) but got a set of FLAC files and a PDF. I still had to decode them & burn my own disc, and there is no satisfaction of ownership here at all. There is nothing to look good on the shelf if I do not burn a disc, and burned discs on the shelf kinda feels like having a cvollection of C90 cassettes did.
3 - I have to archive those original files now, and hope that the HDD does not go to IBM heaven.
4 - No artwork and/or printed material - more files on a computer again.

No thanks.
Give me physical media or I take my business elsewhere

I agree with Neil. Physical discs are still the way to go.
The main problem nowadays is with the exception of Steven Wilson's mixes (and a few others), the labels insist on only re-releasing 5.1 and Quad mixes we already have instead of mining through the large collection of unreleased mixes still laying in the vaults.
Universal is a perfect example. Here we have a reissue of Clapton's Slowhand coming out near Thanksgiving, which has already been released on SACD, and yet they can't even do a simple CD/DVD(-A) combo for unreleased Elton John and Steely Dan 5.1 mixes!! The mind truly boggles!

If downloads are the only way we can get these unreleased mixes in the future, I'll take it as it's better than nothing, but if recent examples like the ELP discs and RUSH's Moving Pictures show, the labels are still capable of great inexpensive products like these when they really put their mind to it...
 
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There is a whole lot to say about this.. But before we do, it seems the question is:

What condition is the "Music Industry" in now? What is their thinking about any type of release? What type of stuff are they releasing? Are they not happy just to sell stuff as MP3? And, what is the music industry now? YouTube?
 
Not being technically minded at all, can someone provide a simple explanation of gapless flac playback. What exactly is the problem regarding the inability to playback gapless flac? I am familiar with flac files and will definitely always choose a flac file over a crappy MP3. I feel the MP3 is an abomination and still cling to physical media, but I am certainly not in the demographic of the bulk of the current music buying public. Like Neil, I don't get why anyone would want to spend money to purchase a crappy MP3 file vs an actual physical product with artwork and such. But that's just me and I will always love the old vs the new.
 
Not being technically minded at all, can someone provide a simple explanation of gapless flac playback. What exactly is the problem regarding the inability to playback gapless flac?

Many playback devices, whether they are playing back and mp3 or a flac file, cannot transition between tracks without a brief "gap" in the playback. The listener would hear a brief moment of silence before the next track starts. Not an issue if there is silence at the end of the previous track already, but as the OP said imagine listening to "Dark Side of the Moon" without gapless playback! It would be annoying.
 
If it plays flac files will it play 96/24 flac files as well?

yes bob the samsung galaxy S plays wav and flac at sample rates up to 96khz at 24b. it handles them very well. for gapless playback just like other file based portables you have to join the files as 1 before loading onto the player. i tested alot of portables as i travel alot and this is the best on the block hands down.
 
Well, I think I found something that should be the model of what all equipment should be able to do. Once it arrives, I will do testing and report back, but what I'm reading online sounds good. I've managed to pick up a Netgear NTV550 HD Media Player. http://www.netgear.com/home/products/hometheater/media-players/ntv550.aspx#

It's looking really good. It'll hook up to my receiver via hdmi, and will do high res gapless flac, and will do flac 5.1, according to what I'm reading online. Plus, it includes an e-sata port, which is really cool. I currently have a s-ata hard drive dock hooked up to the e-sata port of my Oppo, which is great for docking hard drives that include my .iso images of dvd-audio....so I'll probably move that dock over to the NTV550 instead. According to the reviews I've read, it'll do .iso playback as well for dvd and bluray. But, at this point, gapless flac is making .iso playback looking less necessary to me. There's nothing like devoting time to creating menus to make one stop caring for them. I think I'm going to just rip my dvd-a discs to flac, and rip any bonus video content to video files to include in the folder. This will be far more convenient to having to navigate to my image, and then navigate another menu.

Just imagine.....if this was standard in all equipment. If receivers came ready to network or dock hard drives and playback flac 5.1 gapless. Or if all these devices that people are commonly picking up to connect to their systems for home media use did this. We'd have the general public ready for the next phase, easily selling surround music online.

For starters...what would it take to start an online music store selling flac files of out of print dvd-audios? There's an easy starting point for the industry to test the waters with.

Don't get me wrong. I still love physical product, and will take it over downloads so long as they're both an option that are in the same ballpark price wise. But, if someday a flac 5.1 store opens up, and offers out of print things I haven't picked up yet, or offers things only available as part of an expensive box set, or offers previously unavailable stuff, you can bet I'll be buying those flacs. Right here is an easy way for the industry to deliver surround music to us, without having to manufacture discs or create a new format for surround sound. We just need to get more equipment to do this, and to have it be the standard. If all equipment started doing these things standard, over time it'll work it's way into people's homes.

It's already pretty standard for things to do flac, it's just the gapless part we need, and the 5.1 capabilities.


Anyways, I'll follow up once my new toy arrives and I've tried it out. This should be cool.
 
Things are slowly going personal NAS-storage equipment.
I do feel the point that Neil made in his post but as i move forward to NAS storage i need to admit that is *a lot easier* for me to move my entire digital musical collection on a Nas (Synology DS 441J, 3+3+1.5+1.5 Tb hdd) in a single 40x30x30 cm box than a whopping 50 30x30x30 boxes for CD (100 each) PLUS dvd-a, sacd and else. Phisycal media is good, however it's heavy, and if you're one that moves frequently like me, the NAS storage option is a real backbone saver. :)
CDs are ripped into single FLAC+Cue, and on Pc they do plays ok with Foobar - no gapless problem.
As "other systems" the Android OS-based stuff (phone and tablets) can use Poweramp that does flac+cue perfectly -it is working on a old HTC Wildfire without problem.

Probably the next step, and one i'm willing to look into, is Android tablets. There are cheap 7" devices that does feature HDMI out, so there's a way to spit out a decent signal from them; from what i've seen on Android OS, spdif is possible yet i've not found a device that has a spdif out at all - this will be good for a small CD-like player, with a decent DAC after the tablet.
The only real problem i've found is that HDMI out can't be used for audio-only out (thus keeping the Video part on the tablet screen).
 
Well, the netgear box (NTV550) is not the answer. I'm glad I found it for half price used on ebay, because it's barely worth that much.

The only good thing about it is that it does do gapless 5.1 flac playback. Everything else about it basically sucks.

The navigability isn't that great. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to deal with navigation of a library of huge files. I do use folders to some extent to sort things out, but that is only useful if you navigate by folder. I do also make sure all my files have the id info filled out. But, then you run into situations where, if I search by artist, I may have multiple versions of each. I suppose I'd need to id that in the album title field. It seems the netgear won't show me more than one version of an album when they have the same name, meaning folder navigation is the only way to go. Which, is how I normally do it since my organization relies on it, but sometimes it would be nice to search by artist, and see everything my library has of that artist. Also, one thing that took me a little looking around to figure out, there is a world of difference in using the ok button and the play button. The ok button is interpreted as meaning you just want to hear that song. If you want to play an album, you need to use the play button. Ok, that is a little logical. But, the ok button is located right in the middle of the direction buttons, so you're navigating through your menu, and by instinct you use the ok button. Then you get to the end of the first song, and nothing.....I don't understand why the box going idle is a better option than automatically continuing on to the next song in the folder.

Of course, it doesn't support dvd-a iso playback, which I wasn't expecting it to. But, it doesn't seem to do all that well with regular dvd playback. When testing it out on my dvd-a .iso images, it did default to the dvd-v portion, but not all discs navigated the menus properly. I do plan to use this box primarily for files, not images, so it wasn't really a deal breaker, but it's a bit frustrating that this feature doesn't work right. As it is, I have all the features I really want spread out to different equipment.

Also, this box doesn't have wifi built in. I knew that going into it, and planned on wiring it in, but it seems in this day and age having wifi in a piece of networking equipment is a must. I understand where they were coming from though, you can add a usb wifi adapter if you wish, much like you could with the oppo if you wanted to. But, I've talked to someone who has a different netgear box for their netflix, and he informed me he's always struggling with it, it often forgets the security code and has to be reconfigured to connect to the network, and sometimes gives him problems. To be fair, I've not tested using a wifi adapter on this box yet. I may do that at some point to see how it does.

Also....no netflix on this box. Apparently it was suggested that they were going to add that. There even is a menu option for online content, which when selected informs you it will be added with a future firmware upgrade. A little research online and I found, after a few attempts of having the equipment certified by netflix for it's use, it failed, and they gave up. Real nice! I feel bad for the people that bought this, expecting that to be added in the future, but I suppose that's the risk one takes buying something before it's really ready.

One thing I thought was cool about this box is that it is supposed to work with youtube. However...it doesn't work. I search for a youtube video, I find it, I select it...and it give me an error message about the content not being supported. I'm wondering if it's youtube that is to blame here though. I know that there used to be an app to do youtube on the roku box, but now there isn't, and I think I read it having to do with youtube pulling support or blocking it.

Also, in general...this box is just pretty shitty. It freezes up periodically or stops responding, and the only way to get it to shut off is pulling the plug. Also, I've had difficulty getting the thing to actually connect with my receiver/tv when powering it on out of standby mode. The settings do allow you to set it to go completely off when turning it off instead of in standby mode, which means it takes a little longer to power on. But, to me, this is a time saver, since it was giving me such problems turning it on out of standby, forcing me to unplug it, and then waiting for it to power on from off mode anyways.

So, there you have it. Yes, it does do the one thing I bought it to do. But, everything else, basically sucks. I will probably be getting a lot of use out of this box since it is the only thing I currently have that will do gapless flac on my system. But, not in a million years would I recommend anyone else consider picking one of these up. Basically, I'd only recommend going in if you find one really cheap, and you're ok with this box only being used for file playback, and can deal with the periodic restarts and navigation issues. All in all, this box is quite disappointing. I've yet to find a box that comes close to doing what should be standard and easy to do with today's technology. Oppo, roku....no gapless. From what I've seen of squeezebox, no hdmi. Boxeee, no 5.1. Netgear, no quality.

Oh, one other thing I noticed, there's a lack of consistency on how it displays folders when browsing your content. On some screens, it goes alphabetical, as it should. But on others, it goes in order of the folder being added, showing the more recently added content first. Which, makes the order a bit haphazard, and difficult to find what you're looking for. It seems a simple firmware upgrade should fix that, but I'm wondering if netgear has written off this box by now since it is so shitty. I'll have to see about getting in contact with them and find out what the status is on this box, and future firmware updates.
 
there are DNLA servers, to render audio and video from your PC/Mac to TV and receiver.
i installed PC3 Media Server and so far it's works albeit i don't use it too often. it support
virtually everything, except DVDA and SACD.
i guess if there would be interest, DVDA and SACD can be implemented as it was done
with foobar2000. at least present version support flac 5.1 @ 96/24
if you have wired/wireless BD player, you can use it as a transmitter of the audio from
computer to amplification.
b.t.w. it's free.

  • Ready to launch and play. No codec packs to install. No folder configuration and pre-parsing or this kind of annoying thing. All your folders are directly browsed by the PS3, there's an automatic refresh also.
  • Real-time video transcoding of MKV/FLV/OGM/AVI, etc.
  • Direct streaming of DTS / DTS-HD core to the receiver
  • Remux H264/MPEG2 video and all audio tracks to AC3/DTS/LPCM in real time with tsMuxer when H264 is PS3/Level4.1 compliant
  • Full seeking support when transcoding
  • DVD ISOs images / VIDEO_TS Folder transcoder
  • OGG/FLAC/MPC/APE audio transcoding
  • Thumbnail generation for Videos
  • You can choose with a virtual folder system your audio/subtitle language on the PS3!
  • Simple streaming of formats PS3 natively supports: MP3/JPG/PNG/GIF/TIFF, all kind of videos (AVI, MP4, TS, M2TS, MPEG)
  • Display camera RAWs thumbnails (Canon / Nikon, etc.)
  • ZIP/RAR files as browsable folders
  • Support for pictures based feeds, such as Flickr and Picasaweb
  • Internet TV / Web Radio support with VLC, MEncoder or MPlayer
  • Podcasts audio/ Video feeds support
  • Basic Xbox360 support
  • FLAC 96kHz/24bits/5.1 support
  • Windows Only: DVR-MS remuxer and AviSynth alternative transcoder support
 
Good thread, Jonathan. I feel the frustration.

What the heck is wrong with HDTracks? Why haven't they gotten around to selling the WB/Rhino DVD-A 5.1 files, they're selling the 2.0? It can't be THAT big of a deal to host those files and sell them. Heck, try one or two titles.

As for the gapless deal, it's too bad there were not track markers or whatever they were called when CD's first came out. Anyone else remember that? The CD players had a button for them. You could use the regular track skip, but there was also some index deal. Not sure when it went away, but you rarely think about it these days.

Of course, I may be losing my mind and memory! :)
 
Probably the big issue for Warner 5.1 titles is the watermark status: has anyone tried if a hi-rez stereo Warner download-from-HDtracks album *which was released as a DVD-A* has a DVD-A watermark inside?
I know it wouldn't affect file playback from set-top box or pc, but if someone try to burn it as a dvd-a and the burned disc doesn't work for watermarking issues, it will feel the download-way sucks.
A good 5.1 test pair could be the Chicago X (which remained unreleased, so it's basically a "new" title) and Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" (which was released).
 
They were called index marks. The redbook CD standard catered for up to 99 tracks on a disc and, in addition, 99 Index Marks per track. The primary use for these was for long classical pieces where index marks were encoded to delineate the movements of the overall composition. So for example the CD may only contain one or two symphonies (tracks), and the user could easily navigate to a particular movement within the symphony by using the index marks.

They were rarely used on pop/rock releases however. The only one I ever saw personally was a very early Japanese pressing of Wish You Were Here, where you could navigate to each of the "parts" of Shine On You Crazy Diamond via index marks.
 
funny, I was just thinking the other day, listening to the Tubular Balls SACD, how useful it would be to have indexing on certain Hi-Rez discs.

With just two long tracks (or rather, "Parts").. with distinct "passages" within those "parts", its one rock/pop thing that could possibly have benefitted from indexed sections.

as far as redbook goes, I always hoped that Elton's "The Fox" album could have been indexed when reissued on CD, in particular for the suite "Carla/Étude, Fanfare, Chloe".. there's been two different CD masterings and a host of pressings & re-pressings among them and its never had indexing, they've just been lumped together in one long track, just like the original vinyl.

while I accept/respect the artists'/producers' intent to present things like Tubular B's as a whole and for a CD release to stay faithful to the original LP presentation, etc., it'd be nice to have the option at least to cherry pick one's favourite parts, seeing as the technology's been there all along to index on CD.
 
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