[album] Sketches of Pain (ogg)

[Sam_Zen]

Some of these tracks I probably have published before here, but now I've finished the album :

Sketches of Pain - 28:11

[Nahkranoth]

404

[AlisterFlint]

the URL is:http://www.louigiverona.com/webarchive/samzen/album/sketches.html

[Nahkranoth]

Thanks, Al! d/l-ing now.

[psishock]

A's link is accurate, but tried with multiple browsers and:

Online Playlist = 404, not functional
Streaming playlist = 404, not functional

[Nahkranoth]

Online playlist have no links in it, just filenames, but I managed to d\l the whole album just now, thanks to my unsurpassed deduction skills and fortitude+5

[psishock]

lol well yea, i know the downloads are working, but still i usually like to listen to pieces online, and only download stuff on very special cases, when i need to see/work with the samples, or some various other reasons. Usually when i'm checking stuff on the net, im listening to them a few times, them moving on. That doesnt mean that im forgetting/disrespecting/whatever them, i know the place where i can listen to them again if i want/need to, but its just the way i work with the net nowdays. There are pieces that i'm listening over and over over streaming as well of course. Streaming become something more regular/natural on daily basis, and downloading became more rare. (steps towards cloud computing ^_^) I dont need to "waste" my personal space, i dont need to sort my stuff, use my resources. Everything can be accessed and used on instant demand, on each artist personal page, or a collector site, that shares them or even better, make audio streaming available. Dont even hafta wait (minutes or hours) for the large album downloads, you can listen to them right on the first click.

Think about it as a step forward again. You dont save "sites", articles today on your HDD, but access them from the net, on demand, if you need them any time.

[Nahkranoth]

I'm totally with you, but I usually listen to when I'm not at work and not doing something - to concentrate on music. So mostly I'm stuffing my mobile with music.

[AlisterFlint]

if you DL the ogg and the m3u files in the same location, it'll work nicely.

as to ogg streaming, i think it requires a ogg-enabled media server, such as Icecast..

[psishock]

Well, the main idea is to listen to music instantly within browsers, without downloading it, and without installing additional streamer plugins or offline player programs (that would have security holes or would take up the memory, may not be compatible with your device, os, etc).

[AlisterFlint]

i agree with you on that point. although there are a few workaround for this: streaming mp3s instead of oggs,
as i'm pretty sure the average audience, with the average hardware, would hardly notice the difference.
there's also a way to stream ogg with a fash-based app, eventhough macromedia doesn't officially support ogg format..

[uncloned]

firefox now streams ogg natively

not sure how a playlist would work

but

obviously a link to each piece, in order, would come close.

[Sam_Zen]

Sorry guys for the crappy URL.
I discover some controversies here :

1. Downloading or streaming.
Everyone has his own policy about that.
If I like to play a piece at really any time, I download it, because to me having the pc on,
doesn't mean automatically being online.
The pc is my toolbox for sound, and when I'm at work, I see no reason to log in at the net at the same time.
On the contrary, the less time connected to the net, the less chance of infection, intrusion, ads, etc.
And if CEP is making some intensive calculations, I avoid having some mailmessage popping up.
And, trend or not, to me cloud computing is a horror scenario.

Any interesting work comes on my HDD (plenty of space), so including yours Psi (23), and I would be able to play them,
even after my telephone connection fails, I couldn't pay some bill, or some dictator blocks my iNet.
But I'm aware of the fact that most people wants to listen streaming.

2. File format.
I definitely will not replace the OGGs by MP3, although I know that only Firefox can play them without any plugin.
Not only because it has a better quality, but it's open source. (And has multichannel properties)
I don't need to reach a vast audience, choosing the common denominator, which slows down progression.

3. Playlists.
The page is clearly saying "Offline". A division between "Online" and "Streaming" would be ridiculous.
As AF says, the offline .m3u should be placed in the same directory as the tracks.
Although there is a more advanced version of the M3U format, a simple list of the files is sufficient.

The streaming .m3u file was an experiment. I thought a list with the full URL of each track would be sufficient.
Obviously not. Firefox still asks for an external player, or offers the choice to download.

offline player programs (that would have security holes..

Sorry, but this assumption is merely nonsense imo. Better be careful with online players regarding security.

[psishock]

I definitely will not replace the OGGs by MP3

nah, you aren't even asked to do that. I find OGG cool because its freeware and it really has some additional features (that most of the people wont use anyway, but i agree that it still has some interesting features). We would need some standardized, freeware, in-browser (or at least flash based) players however...

offline player programs (that would have security holes..

Sorry, but this assumption is merely nonsense imo. Better be careful with online players regarding security.

you can't take out that part of the sentence out of the context . The whole sentence would explain what was i trying to say. Security holes are certainly meant for random online plugs, and memory eating or database sorting troubles are meant for offline progs.

The page is clearly saying "Offline"

srry Sam,  i've read "online playlist", my simple misspelling mistake.

Downloading or streaming.
Everyone has his own policy about that.

I agree with you (however, not having an option to stream.... isn't helping me much to choose ). To me net has become something that most of my work and daily life depends on, so i certainly dont count with the possibility, that i would not able to access it at any time of the day, and i dont hafta be afraid from infections/adds, im an experienced user with a secure system, that i trust, and know that i can depend on. (if a dictator would decide to block inet completely... well i would definitely suit up and go for a journey, to visit him.

That would be a clear fight for information freedom. The inet is becoming very powerful and very important tool, base of source for us all, should not let anyone take it from us by force)

Im not having trouble with offline space/resources at all, i'm just saying that i skip all the additional sorting and stuff that comes with downloading nowdays, because i mostly stream what i need. It's more "cleaner" to work that way, dont hafta cleanup, sort, etc after each downloads.

to me cloud computing is a horror scenario.

Well the whole concept has a meaning only when you have 24/7 inet connection with decent speed at global scale. Before that, it wouldnt be archived at all (at significant level). It has a tons of good sides, and with fast net you would feel the experience, as you would work on powerful computers, with huge storage spaces, from your space and energy efficient "home terminal". You can forget downloads, movies, music can be streamed online. Programs can be used with one click also ("shortcuts" will point to applications on the servers), no install, no sorting. Incompatibilities and tiresome specified hardware optimizations can be killed with cloud computing. You would still have you virtual space that can be accessed and filled with chosen downloads, own stuffs to work with. But many programs would offer to skip that also, because you could open a given file format from a given site, with a given program directly, on another site, and work with it there. Im using this kind of stuff even nowdays, loading an image from random site to a certain imagesharing service only with the image url, resizing, cropping, messing with it, then direct linking it after to some random forums (the image never touched my HDD). Im using the interesting Google services also. The cloud concept would simply eliminate unneeded file moving processes.

Of course, every technology can be abused even nowdays. You can use a knife to help you with the eating, or you can kill with it. But as you can see the inet, for instance, still has huge number of good sides, asides from the bad/abused ones.

[Sam_Zen]

( I wrote this before reading the previous post by Psi )

One more thing :
If I decide to publish an album, it's not just a bunch of tracks in one pile.
It's more than that. I consider an album as a unity on its own, as a composition as well.
I compose the order of the tracks and the volume relation of each track within the album.
And of course I compose the graphics as well.
In this concept, it's just a service to offer the single tracks instead of one big zipped file.
It's a virtual CD that can be downloaded free.