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 conatins 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 last 4 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.

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