ALAC-HD Downloads Interference

[jwesche]

Hi all,

 

This is my first time posting here. I am a neophyte and aspiring audiophile, so forgive me for not having the most sophisticated system. I listen to my music through iTunes (I know, I know), either on my MacBook, my iPhone, or my AppleTV. I have a pair of JH5 in ear monitors, but other than that, this is the best I can afford right now.

 

My situation is this: I download ALAC-HD files of live Phish soundboard recordings from the band's official distributor (LivePhish.com - Live Phish MP3 Downloads FLAC Downloads Live CDs). Recently, a batch of these recordings have been plagued by a sharp static every several minutes or so. The distributor is telling me that they see no sign of this on their master recordings and that it must be my playback system. They allowed me to download the files again, and this time most of the static is gone, but it has still appeared in at least one place. I brought the files into Soundbooth just to look at the waveform, and it's clear the static is there before the files have been touched by iTunes or any other playback software.

 

My question is, does anybody have any information about what could be causing this? Could it be something with my internet connection that's corrupting the files? My concern is that, even without the static, something is preventing these files from being as high a quality as I should expect.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you,

 

Jason

[wgscott]

The simplest thing to do is to see if the size or the checksum of what you downloaded matches that of what is on their server. I think it is extremely unlikely that anything other than file truncation (and that only rarely) could have happened during download. I don't know how livephish.com works, but some places use download software that converts from flac to alac on your computer. If that software exists and is buggy, that could be the cause. Are you allowed to re-download as FLAC and convert it with XDL or something?

 

What would you recommend for a good live HD phish download?

 

Oh, and welcome.

[jwesche]

Thanks. The files are definitely the same size, my thinking is that something is happening in the conversion process. I don't think they'll let me re-download as FLAC, unfortunately. I'm not sure how it works for these companies, but they make it sound as if the download process is a big percentage of their cost, so they treat each download as a purchase, and they're reluctant to let customers re-download as another format. If the conversion does happen with their software on my computer, is there something about my hardware that could cause variability in the outcome?

 

As for live Phish recordings, anything from this most recent tour from 11/27-12/04 should be fantastic. I particularly recommend:

 

LivePhish.com - Download Phish 7/26/13, The Gorge Amphitheatre, George, WA MP3 and FLAC

 

LivePhish.com - Download Phish 7/27/13, The Gorge Amphitheatre, George, WA MP3 and FLAC

 

LivePhish.com - Download Phish 7/31/13, Harvey's Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena, Stateline, NV MP3 and FLAC

 

LivePhish.com - Download Phish 8/4/13, Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, CA MP3 and FLAC

[jwesche]

Sorry, that should be 07/27-08/04. Anyways, if you download them let me know what you think.

 

I should also mention, the other thing that's troubling is that they're saying they haven't had any other complaints about this.

 

Thanks again for your help.

[Garf]

I had something odd happen whenever I would copy over network to my music server. Some song files I had would have a half a second or less "skip", occuring 3 or 4 times per album . Drove me batty. I isolated it to one computer (my main desktop rig), and would happen to large files copied over network. I finally pinpointed it to a network card that had been optimized for low latency, something to do with the block size. I was due for a system refresh, so a re-installation took care of my issues (love Windows!)

[jwesche]

Well, I updated to Mountain Lion last night, and a quick check still revealed the issue. I'm testing on files directly downloaded to my hard drive, before transferring them to my server.

[Fredrik Lundholm]

Well, I updated to Mountain Lion last night, and a quick check still revealed the issue. I'm testing on files directly downloaded to my hard drive, before transferring them to my server.

 

I have seen the same phonomenon when downloading large files over http without any download manager.

Sometimes it works, but if there is a glitch there is no cheksum to verify the download.

I suggest, try to download the files again

Try to use another software for download

(If you used Firefox, try IE, or better if the site offers FTP or a download manager which would actually check each downloaded piece checksum).

[jwesche]

Update:

 

So I did some extensive troubleshooting of this problem over the weekend and the one common denominator was either our modem/router (a Motorola Surfboard), or our internet connection. I tried it on multiple connections and on multiple computers, but when I downloaded from work, or at my friends house, I didn't get the static.

 

The other thing, is that I didn't get any static when I downloaded music from HD Tracks, but it failed and retried on several downloads. So I'm thinking that it's a combination of a bad line or something, and the websites download manager not doing a robust enough check.

 

I was surprised, because I didn't think the internet connection could actually corrupt a download.

 

Anyways, if someone can shed any light on this I'd love to hear it.

 

Thanks.