Bargains

[teamsaint]

Might as well put it on shuffle play, perhaps.

I recommended that to a board member who was having trouble labelling his library on itunes, and got roundly blanked !!!

[Paul Campbell]

I have just tried opening those two 'tracks' in Sound Forge, edited out the brief digital silence and the end of the penultimate and start of the final track and still they will not play seamlessly. There is audio data missing from the ends of the mp3s.

I have had this experience with a number of mp3 downloads. It is maddening and inexcusable. An email to customer service will usually result in a refund, although I have been offered just the price of the offending file before now!

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

I have just tried copying and pasting the last 'track' of Das Reingold onto the penultimate one only to find they do not play seamlessly. There is a slight but annoyingly noticeable stutter.

No how does one reject and claim a refund on a faulty Amazon mp3 download?

Downloading from Amazon straight into iTunes, the tracks flow seamlessly, although looking at the timing bar for the penultimate track of Rheingold, it does seem to run down to 0:00 left, but then plays on a second or two before shifting to the final track.

Re the mislabelling of tracks, it's Disc 9 where they've got in a pickle.

Track 1 should read: Siegfried: Act II Scene 2: Siegfrieds Hornruf (Siegfried's Horncall)
2: Siegfried: Act II Scene 2: Haha! Da hatte mein Lied (Siegfried, Fafner)
3: Siegfried: Act II Scene 2: Da lieg, neidischer Kerl! (Siegfried, Fafner)
4: Siegfried: Act II Scene 2: Zur Kunde taugt kein Toter (Siegfried, Waldvogel)
5: Siegfried: Act II Scene 3: Wohin schleichst du eilig und schlau (Alberich, Mime)
6: Siegfried: Act II Scene 3: Was ihr mir nutzt, weiss ich nicht (Siegfried, Waldvogel, Mime)
7: Siegfried: Act II Scene 3: Willkommen, Siegfried! (Mime, Siegfried)
8: Siegfried: Act II Scene 3: Neides Zoll zahlt Notung (Siegfried)
9: Siegfried: Act II Scene 3: Heiss ward mir von der harten Last! (Siegfried)
10: Siegfried: Act II Scene 3: Nun sing'! Ich lausche dem Gesang (Siegfried, Forest Bird)
11: Siegfried: Act III: Vorspiel
12: Siegfried: Act III Scene 1: Wache, Wala! Wala! Erwach'! (Wanderer)
13: Siegfried: Act III Scene 1: Stark ruft das Lied (Erda, Wanderer)
14: Siegfried: Act III Scene 1: Mein Schlaf ist Traumen (Erda, Wanderer)
15: Siegfried: Act III Scene 1: Wirr wird mir, seit ich erwacht (Erda, Wanderer)
16: Siegfried: Act III Scene 1: Dir Unweisen ruf' ich's ins Ohr (Wanderer, Erda)

A bit of cutting and pasting is in order, methinks. I'm not sure if that's the reason Amazon is offering this download so cheap. Surely it wouldn't take much for them to correct it?

[Dave2002]

I have just tried opening those two 'tracks' in Sound Forge, edited out the brief digital silence and the end of the penultimate and start of the final track and still they will not play seamlessly. There is audio data missing from the ends of the mp3s.

That's a shame. Perhaps if anyone has the CDs they could send you a copy of the track(s) which don't work properly. Otherwise you could perhaps patch in from another version, though if it's a vocal section it might sound very obvious. For the price may be simplest to just not worry about it.

[Jon Benger]

Track 1 should read....

Thanks very much for this information, I will re-tag these accordingly. Still on Rheingold at the moment, it's not bad at all.

[johnb]

I have just tried opening those two 'tracks' in Sound Forge, edited out the brief digital silence and the end of the penultimate and start of the final track and still they will not play seamlessly. There is audio data missing from the ends of the mp3s.

I find that when the same two tracks are joined (in Soundforge) and the silence is edited out the join is completely seamless. This is the case whether I edited them as mp3 files (and save the result as an mp3 file) or if I convert the tracks to wave files first.)

However, when I trim the mp3 files in Soundforge and save the two tracks as separate mp3 files then they do not play seamlessly.

But, if I convert the tracks to wave, then trim the silences of both tracks and save them as FLAC (or wave) they do play seamlessly.

This suggests that that, as well as the problem of the spurious silences, there are problems specific to mp3 editing to contend with, rather than there being audio data that is missing.

Anyone wanting to go through the tedious business of editing out all the silences might be well advised to convert the tracks to wave, edit out the silences then save the result as FLAC files. The re-tag the whole lot!

..... Then again, life's (much, much, much) too short.

[Bryn]

johnb, I forgot to copy here a PM I sent to another concerned contributor a few days ago. It read, in part:

I went straight to the last two 'tracks' of Das Reingold with the plan of making a single mp3 file of the work. Both using mp3DirectCut to copy and paste the files together and by opening them in Sony Sound Forge 10, continuity was not achieved. However, this morning I made another attempt using Sound Forge and managed to successfully remove the 0.053 seconds of digital 'dead air' from that join. I find the same problem with all the files I have looked at so far. Regarding the 'missing audio data', I may have been a bit too quick to come to that conclusion. I am not sure why, but I did not find the same problem with those two files this morning. It is just possible that it was mp3DirectCut which lost some audio data. I will investigate further.

Unfortunately I have not been able to find time to devote to further investigation. In fact, as amazon.co.uk have since given a full refund and referred the problems to their engineers, I no longer really have the right to work further on those files. I will delete and overwrite them.

[As an addendum, does Sound Forge actually join mp3s or does it rather appear to, while actually converting to PCM and then back again 'on the sly'? I suspect the latter.]

[cloughie]

I think this has been raised before but I received a CD today - ordered from Amazon merchant All Your Music based in USA. The parcel arrived via Royal Mail posted in Middlesex. Naturally I now always, once stung, stay under the HMRC limit for out of EU purchases, but am I being over-cautious in this case. All Your Music are often the cheapest price offered - has anyone ventured for more expensive offerings from them and with what consequences HMRCwise? Also what's the situation with Swiss purchases?

[Beef Oven]

I think this has been raised before but I received a CD today - ordered from Amazon merchant All Your Music based in USA. The parcel arrived via Royal Mail posted in Middlesex. Naturally I now always, once stung, stay under the HMRC limit for out of EU purchases, but am I being over-cautious in this case. All Your Music are often the cheapest price offered - has anyone ventured for more expensive offerings from them and with what consequences HMRCwise? Also what's the situation with Swiss purchases?

HMRC can be hit and miss. I've had a few over the limit items that weren't picked up, but I got stung on a Kna Parsifal.

I tend to keep below the limit (£18ish?) for safety sake.

Get some CDs from Switzerland fairly regularly, never above £18 though, so can't shed any light here.

Having move almost entirely onto downloads, I guess it will be less of an issue for me.

[Dave2002]

I think this has been raised before but I received a CD today - ordered from Amazon merchant All Your Music based in USA. The parcel arrived via Royal Mail posted in Middlesex. Naturally I now always, once stung, stay under the HMRC limit for out of EU purchases, but am I being over-cautious in this case. All Your Music are often the cheapest price offered - has anyone ventured for more expensive offerings from them and with what consequences HMRCwise? Also what's the situation with Swiss purchases?

Is it possible that some foreign suppliers do bulk deliveries to agents based in the UK, and then use the local postal service? That would at least explain how your CD arrived from Middlesex. How the suppliers would deal with HMRC I don't know, but presumably that explains how they seem to be able to guarantee the prices, including the delivery charges.

[DublinJimbo]

Delivered today was a 9-CD set of Schubert's complete piano sonatas played by Paul Badura-Skoda on five different fortepianos from his own collection.

The recordings date from between 1992 and 1997 and have been compiled and reissued by the Belgian group Outhere Music on the Arcana label. I bought direct from Outhere Music for the princely sum of €19 (and that's without any additional charge for post and packaging). A quick sum: that's just €2.11 per CD.

[amateur51]

Delivered today was a 9-CD set of Schubert's complete piano sonatas played by Paul Badura-Skoda on five different fortepianos from his own collection.

The recordings date from between 1992 and 1997 and have been compiled and reissued by the Belgian group Outhere Music on the Arcana label. I bought direct from Outhere Music for the princely sum of €19 (and that's without any additional charge for post and packaging). A quick sum: that's just €2.11 per CD.

Many thanks for this, DublinJimbo. This set is on my list and, thanks to you it's moving up

If you felt the urge to give us a review/overall impressions when you've had a good chance to sample it, I'd be very grateful

[hafod]

Free download

I've been away so not sure if this freebie download from The Sixteen and CORO has already been mentioned.

According to the blurb - "At The Sixteen we are looking forward to a great summer of music with concerts across the UK and new releases on our record label, CORO. We have two forthcoming albums of music by J.S. Bach so we thought we would whet your appetite by offering you a FREE download of one of our most popular albums - a baroque double-delight featuring Bach's Magnificat and Vivaldi's Gloria".

http://thesixteen.com/page/3439

I hope this works; my track record in posting trouble-free download bargains is not good. On this last point Amazon.uk now has the Essential Sibelius box at the same price (£7.49) as the troublesome Play.com (or whatever it now calls itself).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sibelius-Essential-Love-Derwinger/dp/B0041GRVRY/ref=sr_1_69_digr?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1373314415&sr=1-69

[hafod]

Amazon uk has a number of what appear to be bargain priced downloads (again, apologies if already listed):

Shostakovich symphonies on Brilliant classics £7.49 [11 cds equiv]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shostakovich-Symphonies/dp/B00D1VZUQ4/ref=pd_sim_dmusic_a_1

Czech string quartet box from Brilliant Classics £7.49 [15cds equiv]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Czech-String-Quartets/dp/B00CMUYQAG/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk

Max Reger collection on Brilliant classics £7.49 [11cds equiv]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reger-Collection/dp/B00CD4BYVA/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk

[Bryn]

Amazon uk has a number of what appear to be bargain priced downloads (again, apologies if already listed):

Shostakovich symphonies on Brilliant classics £7.49 [11 cds equiv]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shostakovich-Symphonies/dp/B00D1VZUQ4/ref=pd_sim_dmusic_a_1

Czech string quartet box from Brilliant Classics £7.49 [15cds equiv]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Czech-String-Quartets/dp/B00CMUYQAG/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk

Max Reger collection on Brilliant classics £7.49 [11cds equiv]
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reger-Collec...m_cd_album_lnk

Well, leaving aside the fact that a fair few of us here bought that Shostakovich set for even less on CD a few years ago when Superdrug were clearing them off their shelves, they do more likely to be reliable than I found Thielemann Ring mp3s from the same source. In these cases, each mp3 looks to be a separate movement, though I suppose there will be the odd attacca to mess things up. The Shostakovich 8th springs to mind.