their gesture is awesome and I pre-ordered it myself but I'm not gonna redeem some lousy mp3 encoding download . I prefer to either let them have the money and download a better version when it its the stores or just ask for a refund, whats your opinion on this?

I'm curious to see exactly what downloaders get, that's why I'll be waiting until other people have downloaded and commented on it before I pay anything. It wouldn't surprise me to see CBR MP3s made with a mediocre encoder, rather than the LAME encoded VBR files people here would make. However I wouldn't mind that as long as the files don't sound too bad.

Radiohead have made a big deal about wanting to sell it as an album, rather than individual tracks, so that it's treated as a complete work and their art isn't compromised. Considering the care the band take with their sound I doubt they'll be selling files that sound terrible. I think poor sound due to loudness war mastering is more likely than poor quality due to the lossy encoding.

I think MP3 is a sensible choice for the download, lossless files would probably eat too much bandwidth, and other lossy formats don't have the hardware support. I'll definitely be disappointed if they use any form of DRM, but considering that they're allowing people pay £0.0 for it, DRM would seem utterly pointless.

As for asking for a refund, Radiohead haven't made any promises about the quality. I don't really see it as cause for a refund even if the quality is a bit disappointing.

I wonder what the legal issues are with sharing these files? Could I legally ignore Radiohead's site (considering the number of downloaders it isn't going to be fast, I'd be surprised if it stays up at all) and download the album using bittorrent?

I'm not that petty.

Radiohead have put forth an amazing deal; you can download the album for nothing if you like, the choice is ahead of you to buy the physical album if you see fit. Pristine sound quality does not concern me, I'm more interested in the material and the prospect of repeated listening etc.

simple, I won't redeem the coupon if I see people complaining about the quality, in fact I believe I'll stop over here to check that out before I decide to redeem my code, so its more of case of returning an unused item than demanding a refund, also has for mp3 being a sensible choice you should bear in mind that its not really legal for most linux users or any open-source user to download an mp3 player since no one payed thompson and fhg the proper licenses so they should at least offer people the choice of a patent free format, also rockbox is runnning on pretty much anything these days so its really not that hard and it would be good to make people aware that their shiny new ipod is a vendor lock-in festival.

And flac has almost universal support except for the die-hard monopolists but anyone with a computer can transcode a flac file to their favorite lossy format the way they see fit.

It's going to be mp3. There is no other format that makes sense to give to thousands to millions of people.

Most people don't even know what FLAC is, and especially not what to do with it.

Is it possible that the download will be CD Audio files (like Rhapsody does)? You would then have to burn them to a CD for it to work.

they can be explained in a single sentence, then pop the flac into nero/lame/itunes, even if in the rare chance they don't have the codecs that too can be packed in with the rest of the download as its microscopic compared to the album, also they could offer a vorbis option, same server load since they seem to be going for a "one user, one download" and actually reduce the server workload or adding quality by doing that.

My guess will be 320 CBR MP3. FLAC would be a real bonus.

The idea that people may ask for a refund amuses me. I don't know what the deal is with pre-ordering something when you don't really know what it is. If you're that concerned then I would suggest not pre-ordering. I find it hard to believe that people pre-ordered on the assumption that it would be FLAC and will ask for a refund if not; you may get lucky, but I severly doubt it.

On a related note, I have a topic in which I ask people to state how much they are willing to pay for the download here.

Who on earth is going to be parting with their money with expectation it's to be lossless? Those people don't deserve a refund.

I've pre-ordered, paying £2 and will be buying the CD when it's released. I'll not be asking for a refund.

That's the problem with this offer. You have to be a Radiohead fan, I guess. For someone like me who occasionally likes to listen to some Radiohead tracks but doesn't like all of'em it's not an option because I not only don't know what quality to expect ("bitrate-wise") but also havn't heard a single note. Of course, I could -- as a precautionary measure -- pre-order the album at a low price. But this might also send the wrong message. I'd be glad to pay a price I think is appropriate but without knowing what it is I get this is impossible.

Cheers!
SG

I assume that we will know the format and quality in a couple of days' time. At that time I will decide what I feel is the appropriate price, although I am considering £4-5 at the moment. Of course, this doesn't solve the problem of pre-listening. Perhaps fans will have to download via P2P to pre-listen and not distort their statistics... (although I presume that this would still be considered breach of copyright).

That said, I have been involved in an argument in another forum, where many people seem to believe that we should not be paying for the download - on the general assumption that Radiohead will gain a larger fanbase and recoup more money from back-sales and concerts. This is something I was hoping may get discussed in my thread. I have been arguing (in that forum) that consumers are proving that Radiohead's faith in their fans is misplaced, and risk this model failing for future bands; however I can't help but conceed that they may have a valid point. Do Radiohead want you to play fair, and pay what you see is a fair price, or do they really not care if you pay or not, and are happy with the publicity, and the knowledge that their album is reaching more users - eventually gaining them a higher return. This is a bit OT for this thread, but I would be delighted if members would discuss this in the thread that I created, as I'm interested to hear the opinions of yourselves on the subject.

dude. just pay them for the mp3 download (if you want it). then buy the record.

i'm not seeing the huge complication here...

160 CBR MP3 ??? what the hell thats cheap...

Hell I mailed them asking for 160KBPS vorbis instead, hell -q5 vorbis should keep it in the same size range maybe even save them some traffic

160 kbps CBR mp3...

plain clear that their focus is on the "DISCBOX" for £40.00

thank God I have never liked Radiohead.

160kbps, thats pretty lame and i thought Nine Inch Nails were bad with bitrates when they leaked some of their new tracks online with 320kbps Stero that was encoded on iTunes.

Also if the album is encoded by a Fhg encoder then you will be SOL to get proper gapless.

Mr Questionman says the files are LAME 3.93.

Here's the output from metamp3 --info:

Pretty lame... literally. Just got my download and Mr QuestionMan says it's encoded with LAME 3.93 CBR
Can't say I am not somewhat disappointed and they sure as hell could have done better than that. Nevertheless, I think it was quite unrealistic to expect lossless, to be honest, and way too many people would probably have been stumped by FLAC (Just imagine how much "WTF, I can't play it on iTunes!!!" flak they would have got in return ); so I think MP3 was the way to go... But heck, couldn't they at least use the latest LAME version and some VBR??
In any case, asking for the money back is cheap, lame and pedant, IMHO. Their progressive approach deserves to be applauded for the blow it deals to the recording industry and even if I had known what I would be getting I would still have paid to download the album (although probably not as much as I did...)

Yes - you're right. I paid, what i thought would be a fair price for the CD, just to support the idea. - This is the first time a major band does something like this, and although Magnatune would have been my preferred way of distribution, i still love them for not treating me like a criminal.

I won't feel guilty downloading the album again in better quality, though.

Another artist trying to get it and failing miserably. These sorts of things serve as an acid test for just how much an artist cares about the quality of their released material. Apparently, Radiohead cares about DRM-free downloads exactly to the magnitude of the quality of CBR 160kbps LAME 3.93 MP3s. Not even VBR, much less AAC. Might as well be releasing with 128kbps CBR old-Xing. When an artist releases a Musepack Q5 release, then I'll take notice (I guess Vorbis ~Q6 works too, as guruboolez thinks it sounds better than MPCq5).

I see no evidence that this is anything but a publicity scam and nothing else from a band that hasn't been all that relevant in years.

These are just my opinions. The token thought is nice. The execution is somewhat laughable though.

You can't seriously believe that artists are going to provide Vorbis or Musepack downloads over MP3?

MP3 can be played by almost anything. I know Vorbis has some hardware support, but Musepack? Even AAC is limiting.

Saying that they may as well have used 128kbps Xing is a little melodramatic.

If it was 320kbps MP3 you could possibly transcode, and most likely be happy(-ish). That said, as per other arguments about download bitrate, 320kbps is not a sensible setting to dump directly to DAP - you're hitting middle ground there again.

I was a bit surprised by 160kbps, but at least it is a sensible DAP setting. I would also assume that 160kbps CBR will be perfectly adequate for many, many people.

Seriously, for what they're doing 160kbps CBR is fine. Unless you can ABX it with the original (when the actual CD comes out), then there's nothing to complain about, right?

people should start listening to the music and not the quality of the files.

most people that care about the quality are also most likely to be the ones that actually bothered to pay and encourage them, its a bit of a backstab altough Its intencional I really don't think they know any better and left this up to their merchandising company.

I would say to anyone complaining: why pay for something when you don't know what it is? You really have no-one else to blame.

Calling this a "backstabbing" move is a little unfair.

I personally believe that many (most) people who payed will be perfectly happy with the quality.

As I've said before: I'm a little surprised by 160kbps, but anyone expecting FLAC, AAC, Vorbis or Musepack, and payed on that assumption, were just away with the faries.

Absoloutely.

Musepack? The drama is too funny.

I'm a little dissappointed that the release isn't VBR but hey, so what, the CD will be released and I'll make my own MP3s. This is exactly why I chose to only pay a couple of £'s.

I think we're loosing site of what a great thing Radiohead have done here and rumours are that Oasis and Jamiroquai are following suite in a similar fashion. The music industry will be slowly crapping thier pants.

I was hoping for 256Kb and preferably VBR, but was half expecting 128Kb from a poor encoder. 160Kb CBR LAME doesn't sound bad; I doubt I'll notice any loss of quality when listening on my MP3 player, and I bet it'll be perfectly fine for 99% of other downloaders. I'll definitely be downloading a copy and paying what I think it's worth based on the music, rather than giving them less because they didn't meet my lossy encoding preferences. Wait until December and I'm sure there'll be FLAC rips floating around, although I that's a legal grey area...

I don't really understand whyso many people still don't use VBR; it's been a long time since I've heard of an MP3 player that doesn't support it, and the benefits are pretty obvious. Yet most of the legal sites offering MP3s seem to stick with it, and from a quick look at current MP3 torrents, it looks like CBR MP3s (especially @ 192Kb & 320Kb) are still very popular for less legitimate MP3 downloads. Apart from for streaming audio CBR seems obsolete, it's time MP3 encloder frontends stopped using it as the default; I assume that's why it still turns up so often.

Streaming, perhaps?

Ripping councils, r3mix etc have scared normal people away with their crazy informal voodoo lines and hacks. For the normal user CBR is official pro way , VBR is for some geek ripping scene. They just want 128k or so, not one month of --r3mix, one month of --alt-preset . If from the start VBR was used wisely like CBR: -v or V0~9 maybe there would be better adoption today.

The most genious step for LAME is when the devs merged --alt-preset into CBR / VBR with v3.94. This way like Vorbis, MPC , AAC the devs can tweak things without forcing the end user to adopt new settings.

IMHO VBR is appropriate even for streaming when you choose a reasonable upper bitrate limit, to save traffic on "easy" parts. And small bitrate peaks shouldn’t matter with some buffering.

I wouldn't wait for any commercial releases in anything other than MP3 and AAC. Despite HA's penchant for Ogg/Musepack/What-have-you, those formats have no presence among the music buying public. They may be wonderful, but that isn't the point. The great majority of users would have no clue what to do with those files, and frankly that is not likely to change.

That said, MP3 is a fine choice. But I am very puzzled that Radiohead didn't follow the model used by eMusic and Amazon and provide VBR files @ 192-256 kbps; this has already been a demonstrated commercial success and thus the barriers are nil. It makes little sense to offer files in a lower quality format than current commercial standards.

While I applaud Radiohead's efforts to forge a new path, I find this disappointing. I might buy the CD at some point if the music is decent, but otherwise this ain't working for me.

Why not offer multiple formats?

In my opinion, LAME 3.93 CBR 160 kbps joint-stereo is just nice and fair.

My choice would have been LAME 3.97 -V 2, but 99% of downloaders will be perfectly happy with CBR 160.

I would suggest an ABX test against the CD when it's released and then we will know if the choice was right or not.

In any case, CBR 160 is a good compromise between space and quality being joint-stereo and all.

"Suave" to my ears, and I'm not even a fan

My point there was one of quality. Yeah, okay, I used a bit of hyperbole. Their choice simply shows their attention to detail and their commitment to quality. Here they've shown nothing even resembling a commitment to quality. 160 CBR? I haven't bothered with that since before Winamp was skinnable, unless it's something exceptionally rare.

If an artist were to offer something in Musepack or Vorbis, I'd definitely think to myself: "Hey, this guy seems to know what's going on. He's got a clue." That counts to me. It means that the artist has either done his research or is able to hear lossy encoding. In either case, I am impressed.

Because it's a pain in the butt.

praeter necessitatem … Anyway, for me FLAC is sufficient. I use it on my portable DAP, too.

Listened to it today...not sure if I was hearing MP3 artifacts or just effects in the music. I don't get why, if they were using LAME, they didn't just use preset standard?

Agreed. Occam would be proud.
Hilarious. When Hail was released as a copy protected red-book-non-compliant polycarbonate optical storage disc intended to litter the rips with digital artifacts and render the copied files unlistenable, my only question was: HOW CAN YOU TELL? Hey, my Radiohead album is all glitchy. Is that good or bad? I'll have to check with Pitchfork...

exactly what I was thinking. this is kind of a missed opportunity... it's pretty easy to script up a bunch of different bitrates, mp3, vorbis, flac. eliminates all the complaining. and I actually don't think the bandwidth matters much, selling bits like this is very high gross margin anyway.

the success is in the presentation, have just a little quality slider, plus a link to follow for technical people who want to get right in to exactly what it is they're getting. being first with all the publicity, they would have collected valuable data about what people actually want when given a choice, data that no one else has.

too bad.

(edit:typo)

Radiohead could sure settle this issue for good by sourcing the vinyl and CD masters from the MP3s.

the "commercial standard" unfortunately is the aac 128kbps quality that itunes has saturated the download market with.

160kbps 3.93 lame is fairly close if not higher quality, i'm guessing they were aiming for a file size and quality very similar to an itunes release. now yes i hate the idea of paying for lossy, especially for such a middle ground bitrate, but that reasoning sounds fair to me.

Well I paid for the bundle, but since learning that there will be a standard CD release via one of the major labels, I have requested a refund.

I was more than happy to support them for what they appeared to be doing... but since it is obviously all a carefully devised marketing scam, I don't plan to support them at all. To be honest it has tarnished my respect for Radiohead, who have sadly become the Pearl Jam of current times.


Sellouts...

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1571737/2...radiohead.jhtml

I paid a few bucks for it to see what all the fuss is about. The actual amount is too small to bother with any refunds unless I firmly believe it to be justified "on principle", which it is not.

The sound quality is perfectly adequate for most purposes, I found nothing glaringly wrong in 2 casual listenings with decent headphones. Given that there is no "price" defined by the artist, this leaves me with little to complain about. If ever there was a case of caveat emptor, this is it. If you think it is worth nothing, pay nothing. If you think it is worth $50, go right ahead and pay it. No problems.

Given the "set your own price" groundrules laid out by Radiohead, I don't see a leg to stand on with respect to refunds. Go ahead and try, see what happens.

As to the album itself - well, 160kbps is certainly good enough to determine musical quality. I cannot say this makes me any more of a Radiohead fan than before, and my feelings about the band have always been lukewarm. Had I been 16 years old when OK Computer came out, they may have been big favorites. But I was already 40 years old by then and the sentiments felt juvenile; I'd already had that period of life, those feelings and a soundtrack. For whatever set of reasons, I find In Rainbows trying to cover that same ground. It has a few beautiful moments, but feels like old melodrama to me.

Next.

There are so many ignorant statements with regard to bitrate/quality I don't know where to begin.

There is no 'set your own price' for the box set, it costs 40 pounds.

Here will do.

The big question is :

Is the music itself any good? I just bought it for GBP 1.50, and so we'll see.

BTW anyone who would be outraged or upset about something they can choose how much they want to pay for is a good candidate for the "scum of the earth" club.

- Jason

Right. And I will bet that the box set is somehow recorded at a higher bitrate

I doubt that the box set could be returned for quality issues unless there was something demonstrably out of the ordinary, just like any other CD. Plus, the box set has real manufacturing costs that must be recouped.

I was referring only to the open price for the downloads. People are upset that they are not of higher quality, but they are priced such that the argument is nullified.

That much I agree with...

I payed a "normal" price for the CD in the stores but I´m a fan, I expected to be at least 192 kbps so in December when the box is released I´ll download it and that´s end of the story!