[Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

[retard]

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 19:12:37 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:58:39 -0400, Walter Bright
>> <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>>> FWIW, Metallica's Garage Inc (the second disc) has some sort of
>>>> anti-copy distortion.  You can actually see a pattern on the data
>>>> side of the disc.  The result when you encode it via MP3 is some
>>>> slight distortion, even at 160kb/s.  It's pretty bearable though.  I
>>>> would expect that a bit-for-bit copy would not have any issues
>>>> though.  It's not copy protection, it's ripping protection.
>>>
>>> Given that Metallica uses heavily distorted guitars anyway, who would
>>> notice?
>> 
>> You notice in the cymbals the most :)  And Ulrich uses a lot of
>> cymbals.
>> 
>> But you are right, the guitars aren't as noticeable (you can still hear
>> it though).
> 
> 
> Back in the 80's, it wasn't unusual for a compiler vendor to release a
> "student" version or some such, that was missing a feature like floating
> point. The problem, though, was that the compiler would earn a
> reputation as not having floating point and people would turn elsewhere
> when they would want to buy a professional compiler.
> 
> In introducing such subtle distortion, Metallica runs the risk of being
> labeled a band with lousy sound.

I doubt they have any power to fight the record company in these kinds of 
issues. A friend of a friend signed a deal with a record company owned by 
a multinational mother record company. Now they are told where to play 
concerts, how the cd distribution is organized, and when they are 
supposed to release the next two albums. That's like slavery.

Another thing is, I doubt the degraded audio quality matters as much as 
the pesky DRM protection scheme. I once had few of these sony key2audio 
(iirc) discs. They refused to play on windows so I just made an illegal 
copy for backup purposes and used that instead. There are far worse 
things than CD DRM systems decreasing the audio quality, e.g. the 
loudness war, the audio artefacts in mp3 distributions, and terrible 
(it's subjective) effects like autotune in modern pop music..