[mb-style] NGS: Mediums, vinyl, cassettes, laserdisc, dualDisc, etc?

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

2010/4/8 Chris B <chris at whenironsattack.com>

> at least with vinyl, the most important 'split' is between LPs, rather
> than sides - you often have a thematic 'break' or style shift between
> 2 LPs of a double album, whereas the split between sides is often more
> of a necessity than anything.
>

I don't entirely agree: I know at least 2 releases where the last tracks of
each side were much shorter than the other tracks, thus giving a feeling of
conclusion to the each side. I guess other more subtle decisions were made
for similar reasons. I am convinced that many releases would have a
different track order if they had been originally released on a one-sided
medium such as a CD. And I can easily find some LPs in my collection where
one side is much more worn out than the other, but I guess this is not
really a proof.

I often thought that side A of some releases was the really important one
and that on side B tracks were assembled more to give a minimum listening
duration than for purely artistic reasons. Facing a similar issue with a CD,
the Artist and/or the producer might decide to distribute the minor tracks
evenly instead. Just like the page format for a comic book or the screen
size for a movie or the screen resolution for a tv show, these are technical
and physical limitations which the Artist would often rather not have taken
into account, but since he had to, these characteristics did have an
influence on the artistic result. Recording these bits of information is
relevant IMO. But obviously you agree with me at least partially.


i'd prefer splitting a 2xLP into 2, rather than 4, and if we're going
> to split it into 4 we also need a way of showing the 2, if you see
> what i mean! and a way that's beyond deduction, as you can get
> etched/blank sides that complicate things.
>
> i think my ideal scenario would be some way of storing custom track
> numbers (A1, A2, B1, B2, etc), as I think mp3 players/software are
> starting to support those (?).
>

I'd prefer splitting it in 2 x 2 which would be factually correct :-) But
this wouldn't probably work for multi-disks albums where you had to flip the
whole stack instead of turning each disk after the other.

-- 
Frederic Da Vitoria
(davitof)

Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » -
http://www.april.org
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