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[SamHain86]

To be clear, as I can't find news, have the NIN engineers released a real fixed 24/96 WAV download yet?

This post has been edited by SamHain86: May 12 2008, 09:15

[james.miller]

To be clear, as I can't find news, have the NIN engineers released a real fixed 24/96 WAV download yet?

ill be able to tell you in about....12 minutes. the filesizes are exactly the same so i dont know, but being wav that could just mean they didnt alter the track lengths at all, right?

[james.miller]

To be clear, as I can't find news, have the NIN engineers released a real fixed 24/96 WAV download yet?

ill be able to tell you in about....12 minutes. the filesizes are exactly the same so i dont know, but being wav that could just mean they didnt alter the track lengths at all, right?

nope, they are the same files unfortunately:(

This post has been edited by james.miller: May 12 2008, 09:43

[SamHain86]

nope, they are the same files unfortunately:(

Blast! I have been checking NIN for some news that the files were not true 24/96 but have not seen anything. I have been watching this forum keenly for news that the files have been updated. So when there is news, someone post it, please!

[bryant]

If transcoding from such files doesn't add the kind of artifacts one would get from psychoacoustic files, your idea sounds like a fair deal to me (for high-res files, at least, as far as distribution goes). I'm gonna try it with WavPack 4.50.0 beta on my DVD-Audio rips.

Thanks, skamp, I'd be interested in hearing your impressions.

And just to be clear, the dynamic noise shaping from the beta should not be used for these files. The best noise shaping (IMO) for high sampling rate files would normally be -s1.0 and this is the default behavior for both version 4.41 and the 4.50 beta. This reduces the noise in the audible spectrum significantly.

It's worth noting that the same advantages also apply to lossyWAV, IIRC, with the additional advantage that it is compatible with FLAC. (albeit not Apple Lossless.) But I'm not sure if it's ready for prime time yet.

It would certainly be interesting to see what LossyWAV does with these, but I believe that for high sampling rate files the noise shaping that WavPack applies would be significant (much more so than with CD audio).

[2Bdecided]

It's worth noting that the same advantages also apply to lossyWAV, IIRC, with the additional advantage that it is compatible with FLAC. (albeit not Apple Lossless.) But I'm not sure if it's ready for prime time yet.

It would certainly be interesting to see what LossyWAV does with these, but I believe that for high sampling rate files the noise shaping that WavPack applies would be significant (much more so than with CD audio).

lossyWAV would do quite a different job...

If there are areas of the spectrum with little or no content, it will preserve these "empty" areas (i.e. not add noise), and so drive the bitrate up.

By default, lossyWAV doesn't look above 16kHz when carrying out this analysis, so it won't "see" the empty area above 24kHz in a "48kHz resampled to 96kHz" recording, so this won't bloat the bitrate, but will have some noise added (but no more than the audible range - there's no noise shaping).


If the content is basically loud all across the spectrum lossyWAV checks (i.e. below 16kHz), it will quantise just below the quietest spectral area in this range, and so drive the bitrate down on loud recordings. You can easily be left with less than 16-bits (sometimes as few as 8!); no hope of keeping "nearly 24" in parts where 16 is judged more than enough.

Cheers,
David.

[Synthetic Soul]

Discussion regarding the artistic merits of The Slip moved to Nine Inch Nails' The Slip: Your Thoughts, in General Music Discussion.

Let's keep this thread for discussion on the technical aspects of the release (audio formats, distribution philosophy, etc.).

[Nick.C]

It's worth noting that the same advantages also apply to lossyWAV, IIRC, with the additional advantage that it is compatible with FLAC. (albeit not Apple Lossless.) But I'm not sure if it's ready for prime time yet.

It would certainly be interesting to see what LossyWAV does with these, but I believe that for high sampling rate files the noise shaping that WavPack applies would be significant (much more so than with CD audio).

At present lossyWAV 1.0.0 will do exactly nothing with either the FLAC or the 24bit 96kHz versions of The Slip, other than exit with an error code. This is due to a 'PAD ' chunk inserted before the 'data' chunk in the WAV file. As I had not found the 'PAD ' chunk in the WAV specification documents that I googled / wikipedia'd it has not (yet) been included in the list of chunks recognised by lossyWAV. This will, of course, be remedied and 1.0.0b released ASA®P.

[ningeneer]

since there are issues with the 24/96 version of the slip, i wonder if there are similar issues with the 24/96 version of ghosts? they made ghosts first and then the slip, if they followed ghosts as a guide for the slip, and the slip has issues, what does that mean for ghosts?

No. Ghosts was mastered by a different engineer at a different mastering studio, using different software, etc.

[Nick.C]

At present lossyWAV 1.0.0 will do exactly nothing with either the FLAC or the 24bit 96kHz versions of The Slip, other than exit with an error code. This is due to a 'PAD ' chunk inserted before the 'data' chunk in the WAV file. As I had not found the 'PAD ' chunk in the WAV specification documents that I googled / wikipedia'd it has not (yet) been included in the list of chunks recognised by lossyWAV. This will, of course, be remedied and 1.0.0b released ASA®P.

I've fixed the unknown chunk error to an extent that I can process the two versions of the album:

24bit / 96kHz : 1822kbps FLAC > 697kbps lossyFLAC -q 5.

16bit / 44.1kHz : 797kbps FLAC > 471kbps lossyFLAC -q 5

I would expect to post lossyWAV 1.0.0b tonight.

[Frankie]

I got the FLACs from archive.org today and wonder if there's something wrong with these files, because audio identifier can't read them:






Does anybody else have this problem?

[alvaro84]

I got the FLACs from archive.org today and wonder if there's something wrong with these files, because audio identifier can't read them:

Do they play normally?
Is that possible that audio identifier can't handle their embedded album art? (I love this feature in these digital NIN releases: I got wonderful slide shows with their albums )

[Ron Jones]

Does anybody else have this problem?

foobar seems to have no difficulty identifying track length, bit rate and so forth. I'll take a look at the nin.com FLACs in Audio Identifier later today to see if it has any difficulties.

I don't recall having any issues with AI reading FLACs with embedded album art before, so this may actually be something else (or just an AI glitch).

[Jebus]

It's worth noting that the same advantages also apply to lossyWAV, IIRC, with the additional advantage that it is compatible with FLAC. (albeit not Apple Lossless.) But I'm not sure if it's ready for prime time yet.

It would certainly be interesting to see what LossyWAV does with these, but I believe that for high sampling rate files the noise shaping that WavPack applies would be significant (much more so than with CD audio).

At present lossyWAV 1.0.0 will do exactly nothing with either the FLAC or the 24bit 96kHz versions of The Slip, other than exit with an error code. This is due to a 'PAD ' chunk inserted before the 'data' chunk in the WAV file. As I had not found the 'PAD ' chunk in the WAV specification documents that I googled / wikipedia'd it has not (yet) been included in the list of chunks recognised by lossyWAV. This will, of course, be remedied and 1.0.0b released ASA®P.

A chunk doesn't have to be defined for it to exist (legally) within a wave file. The only requirement is that the data chunk follows the fmt chunk, but there can be other (undocumented) chunks in-between. Instead of skipping certain known chunks, you should just use a "seekTo(string chunkID)" function to find the data chunk after parsing fmt. It's easy to do; each chunk, even if undocumented, starts with a chunk size. also, don't forget to word-align the size field (chunkSize += chunkSize % 2).

I know, lots (most?) wave readers do the same thing you do, but it is still incorrect.

This post has been edited by Jebus: May 14 2008, 20:12

[treznor]

Gents-
Thanks for the heads up regarding this matter. The corrected files are now posted on our site and if you re-download them they will be the correct ones.
What happened? We mastered this on Friday (5/2) and released it Sunday night. The files went right from mastering to the server without the proper scrutiny (aside from a cursory listen for errors). The last two songs were different because they were redone due to an audible error we did find.
Bottom line: some sort of mastering shenanigans took place.
In addition, there are now 24/96 FLAC files as well as wave files.

BTW, the record was recorded at 24/96 using a Lavry AD122-96MKIII, Antelope's Isochrone OCX clock and mixed in analog through the SSL AWS 900+. We mixed back into Pro Tools through the Lavry as well as a separate rig running at 24/192 using Apogee A/D. The mixes we chose varied song to song based on what sounded best to us.

Trent Reznor

[Ron Jones]

Great news! Thank you Trent.

It's actually rather interesting to hear that you guys are using the Isochrone. Since its release some time ago, I haven't actually seen anyone using it in the wild, which is surprising to me given how damn nifty that box is.

[Jebus]

BTW, the record was recorded at 24/96 using a Lavry AD122-96MKIII, Antelope's Isochrone OCX clock and mixed in analog through the SSL AWS 900+. We mixed back into Pro Tools through the Lavry as well as a separate rig running at 24/192 using Apogee A/D. The mixes we chose varied song to song based on what sounded best to us.

Trent Reznor

Thanks buddy! I wish more rock stars were computer nerds at heart. See you at Pemberton!

This post has been edited by Jebus: May 14 2008, 21:03

[alvaro84]

Magnificent! What can I say? Thank you (again), I'm downloading the new flac files right now (while listening the older version, it'll take some time)...
You guys gave us great support I regret that I couldn't visit your concert last summer here in Hungary (I couldn't get a day off )...

This post has been edited by alvaro84: May 14 2008, 21:52

[james.miller]

thats great news. Thanks for taking the time to tell us personally! awesome stuff:)

[retro83]

Gents-
...
Trent Reznor

Just to re-iterate what was said above, thanks for taking the time to do this. Will be adding this to my archive shortly!

[Axon]

All together now:

thank you.

BTW, the record was recorded at 24/96 using a Lavry AD122-96MKIII, Antelope's Isochrone OCX clock and mixed in analog through the SSL AWS 900+. We mixed back into Pro Tools through the Lavry as well as a separate rig running at 24/192 using Apogee A/D. The mixes we chose varied song to song based on what sounded best to us.

Soooo I don't think anybody will be accusing you of not being an audiophile!

The parallel A/D conversions (to both the Lavry and the Apogee) is interesting, though. Was the 24/192 rig the source of the 24/96 files, and not the source of the 16/44 files? If so, and if the Isochrone was perhaps not used for the Apogee mastering, then that explains the 14ppm speed difference.

[HeavensBlade23]

Thanks, Trent, I'm impressed.

[DARcode]

Awesome! Thanks so much Mr. Reznor! Always enjoyed checking you out live, cheers.

[sauvage78]

I have just re-downloaded both the new 24bits FLAC & WAV files, decompressed the FLAC files with foobar2000, & checked if the CRC of the decoded new FLAC files matched with the CRC of the new WAV files ... it didn't ... is it normal ? I don't have the old WAV files anymore to compare with the two new ones.

Here is my 2 MD5 checksums, if anyone is willing to compare it with the old (bad) WAV files.

Decoded FLAC (24Bits):
8b60e0ac97c9ff5ce58f1e3529b2d2dc *01 999,999.wav

Raw WAV (24Bits):
4753a0e50b01e445b9bbe441988fb86e *01 999,999.wav

This post has been edited by sauvage78: May 15 2008, 04:29

[mcpancakes]

Thanks Trent. As a guy a couple posts up from me said, I wish more bands that I liked were good with tech enough to give us cool stuff like this.

This post has been edited by mcpancakes: May 15 2008, 03:17