[Slowhand] Music Sharing - LISTEN UP PEOPLE!

[Bryan Reid]

It has come to my attention that someone along the way converted the WAV
files I circulated from the Paddington Complete Fillmore Tapes set to MP3
files. I probably should have picked up on this when Luke complained about
the sound quality but I guess I was asleep at the switch that day. 

I truly hope this was accidental. To say that I take a dim view of this is
to be guilty of understatement. I view it as being akin to sacrilege. 

For those of you who don't know, MP3 files are what is referred to as a
"lossy" music compression format, meaning they don't contain the full range
of sound. When you compress a WAV file to MP3, it literally discards some of
the sound data to achieve its size compression. It does this at the high
(treble) end and the low (bass) end. The result is noticeably compromised
sound quality, hence Luke's comments.

There are "lossless" music file compression formats, the most widely used
and accepted being FLAC and SHN. These do not discard any data and do not
compromise the sound quality. They are, in my opinion, the only acceptable
way to compress sound files for trading or sharing purposes. 

IF I FIND ANOTHER INCIDENCE OF MUSIC THAT I AM SHARING BEING CONVERTED TO
MP3 FILES, I WILL TRACE THE LINEAGE BACK TO DETERMINE WHAT GROUP I SEEDED
THAT SET TO, AND I WILL NO LONGER SHARE MUSIC WITH THAT GROUP.

Bryan