[BC] Internet STLs

[Tom Bosscher]

    About two or so years ago, I had a 28 year old PD/MD who could hear 
the difference between a CD and song's sent to up from Promo MPE. I 
thought he was nuts, but I did the blind test on him with 5 different 
songs, and he picked the Promo MPE cut right out, everytime. We sat 
down, and with the two stations, we notified the record labels that we 
would not accept any songs sent to us from Promo MPE. If they wanted the 
song on our reporting stations, they had to send us the CD.
    We insert the CD's using a Denon 961FA, with the AES output to a 
"single channel" Graham-Patten box. The CD is recorded into the 
Audiovault at full 44.1/16 bits, in real time. The Graham-Patten box 
allows the MD's to fade up and fade out the intro's/outro's.
    Well, that started the phone calls. In due time, a really nice guy 
from Promo MPE called me and we talked. He conceded that the codec they 
were using was squeezing the bits. We tried a couple of beta codecs with 
them, but this PD could still tell the difference.
    The one thing I went after was who was asking anyone to not spend 
the bandwidth for a 35 meg song?  The record people were doing the 
complaining. I figured to physically send a CD, with the other stuff, 
had to cost $ 5 or more. And a 30 meg song, uncompressed, at $ 8 a gig, 
would cost the record folks 3.3 cents per station. The 2:1 CODEC would 
cost them 1.7 cents. I proclaimed that for another 1.7 cents per 
station, I sure would want the quality there.
    After not much time, Promo MPE beta'd a FLAC codec with us. My PD 
could not tell the difference. We tried 10 songs, and he could not hear 
any thing different.
    So Promo MPE did a good thing, got the right Codec, and got a 2:1 
costs savings. I noticed that the "finished" file size was exactly what 
I saw if I looked directly as the CD.

       Oh ya, 2 months later a large national chain took credit for the 
FLAC "push". Hrrrmp

       tom bosscher

p.s., here, all music and program chains are 100% uncompressed. Nada. I 
have competitors who laugh at me and tell me I am wasting hard drive 
costs. I laugh back and tell them to look at their female TSL and look 
at mine.