LosslessBob
This
site documents some of the lossless Bob recording versions that have circulated
by ftp, binaries newsgroups, and bittorrents. This
site does not document official commercial releases.
As
this information accumulated, some found it useful and thought some others
would too. So this site was created and is here for scholarly historical
informational purposes. The information is just rough uneditted
and unreviewed notes.
Through
community cooperative effort, it also may grow or aid in the development of
something more useful such as what was accomplished by the grateful dead
community. They have catalogued their circulating lossless versions and used it
as a basis to see that the best versions are available to circulate so that the
artist is presented in the best available quality. An example of what they have
done can be seen at:
http://db.etree.org/shnlist.php?year=1969&artist=2
The
hopes are to grow this so we can all identify and share the best versions of
all shows. That will take a lot of cooperative effort. A yahoo discussion group
has been started to discuss such future endeavors: (it is a development group -
not a trading or request group) (if you wish to join the group, put something
in your signup message that briefly explains your interest or somehow
differentiates your signup from a yahoo spammer’s signup such as naming bob’s lastname) (Currently
this newsgroup mainly contains a preview of updates soon to appear on these web
pages and is recommended for those involved with bittorent)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/losslessbob/
Information
on some lossless recording versions was collected from ftp, binaries
newsgroups, and bittorrents over the years. Each
version has been assigned an LB number and placed in a database. As information
on a new version is collected, its info file gets an LB number assigned. Some
of these are starting to get seen in some lossless sets. This is to help
identify a recording version lossless set. It may also help some from getting
duplicates. Simple rudimentary web pages have been generated from this
database. They are sorted by date within year and by latest LB number. There is also a section to help with bootleg cds.
Warning: The notes on this site
have not made it clear enough what an LB number represents and as a result some
have unintentionally used the LB number to misidentify other recording versions
that are not the LB number but may instead be like or close to the LB number or
a guess that they are the LB number. An LB number is unique to a lossless set
such that an md5 checksum defines it. A
different cdr burn or rip derived from an LB number
is no longer that LB number and should not be represented as that LB number. To
do so causes too much confusion. For example a recent torrent identified itself
as a certain LB number and matched it in timing and flaws, but turned out to be
a mini-disk or mp3 derived version. Of course it could have been the opposite
where it was the better one, but those already with that LB number would have
skipped it thinking they already had it which defeats the purpose of having an
LB number identify a lossless set. A remaster or
different cdr rip is no
longer that LB number, but instead should be represented as a remaster of that LB number or a cdr
rip of that LB number or whatever was done to it. If it is a guess that it is
the LB number, then that is what should be stated. Otherwise there is no reason
to have an LB identification system if every different recording version and
possibly bad cdr rip for that show becomes that LB
number as the purpose of the LB system is to be a reference to differentiate
among the many versions.
A
comment from another user: LB numbers are meant to identify lossless filesets as opposed to identifying specific
recordings/masters. They may be used for such purposes but only insofar that
you might state that 'this set is based on the same recording as LB-XXXX"
A description of what the presented
information means is here.
Users can register and then enter comments
for an LB number