Adventures in music downloading. OR: It all started with a CD given to me.

Gentle readers,

One of my co-worker stereo buddies told me about a demo CD he had from a high-end (six figure $, made in France) speaker company. He said he'd make me a copy.

The company is FOCAL JMLabs. As I said, they are French. Here is a place in the USA that sells them: Focal JM LAB

So, he did make me a copy. Plus a copy of the list of songs. Only seven and some are cut short.

Bird of Prey by George Winston (Solo piano)
These Bones by Fairfield Four (Gospel)
All at Once by Jack Johnson (soft rock)
Adagio in G Minor by Albinoni by Gary Karr (Cello and church organ)
You and the Night by Patricia Barber (Jazz)
Tin Pan Alley by Stevie Ray Vaughn (Blues)
Vol de Nuit by Hadouk Trio (Jazz)

As you know by now, I'm very pleased with my stereo, especially in the listening room verses when in the living room.

Let me tell you, for the first time in 35 years of listening to music on good equipment, this CD sounded like LIVE music in front of me! Especially in the second tune, I never knew the human male voice could sing so D-E-E-P! WOW!

Every cut is awesome. If only all CDs could sound this good!

So, I was now on a quest. To find the CDs that these tunes came from, not all of them, just Jack Johnson, Patricia Barber, Stevie Ray Vaughn and the Hadouk Trio.

Thanks to the Internet, eBay and Amazon I was able to find them all at bargain prices!

Next, I was going to see if I could find more Focal Demo CDs. That was where the adventure began.

I do not believe in MP3 technology! I have no desire to own an iPOD or any other device that will hold and play MP3s. The process of making them from standard digital music sources removes a lot of the music. Which is why people listen to them on "ear buds". They are incapable of playing the full 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz of audible sound.

That said, I have never, until this project downloaded music or videos. Never been that need. My guess is that Focal gives out these CDs with purchase of their high-dollar speakers. Or perhaps selling them to buyers of them. I don't know.

It seems there is much demand for them, based on what the other of my stereo buddies at work tells me. It didn't take me long to find them. Six total and here is what the fellow that tracked them down wrote:

"OK, finally all in one easy place to download. All 6 Focal Demo Discs. All tagged and in Apple lossless format. Get 'em while you can."

Here is the page he wrote the above:
All 6 Focal Demo Discs Ready for Download - DIYMA.com

You see, I'm not telling you where to get them, just where I found the links. That way I am not promoting music down-loading. If YOU want them, you know where to find them.

Now, the adventures. They are in RAR format. I had no idea what that was, but found that it was invented by a Russian fellow some years ago.

So, now, I had to figure out how to open RAR files. A search revealed "7-Zip". It is a free program that will unzip many different types of files.

Now they are in MPEG-4. This is the "Apple Lossless" the fellow refers to. OK, now what? I had to download Apple's "Quicktime" player. Now I could play them on the computer, but not put them on CD!

I needed a program to convert MPEG-4 to WAV format. Free to download but $39.00 to buy a one-year license is "AVS Audio Converter 6".

Knowing not much about digital music, other than "Red Book" CDs are sampled at 44.1 KHz, I chose the highest of everything: PCM codec, 96,000 Hz and a bitrate of 6144. Whatever that means.

Now, they are in WAV which should write to CD, right? Nope. Window's Media Player had to convert them down to Red Book first! I guess that's what it was doing.

Now, ALL of this takes TIME. Lots of it. So far, I've done five CDs. The last is test tones and other stuff. It's called "Demo Disc 2".

So, they have all kinds of music on these CDs and yes, they do sound FANTASTIC!

I have just completed the conversion and recording of the Test Disc. Now to show how much the Apple Lossless MPEG-4 compresses the music, the TOTAL file size is 2.44 Gigabytes. Uncompressed as recorded onto CD the TOTAL file size is 18.9 Gigabytes! WOW!

Here's the song/tune lists:

Focal JMLab Demo Disc 1

01 - Juniot Wells - Sweet Sixteen
02 - Michael Ruff - Wishing Well
03 - Harvey Mandel - Tears For Eric
04 - Thom Rotella - Naima
05 - James Nowton Howard - Amuseum
06 - Ron Tutt - Improvisation
07 - Lincoln Mayorga - Dock Of The Bay
08 - Harry James - Sweet Georgia Brown
09 - Eddyston Light Luxon & Crofut - Bold Nelson
10 - Jeannie Bryson - Fever
11 - Rebecca Pidgeon - Spanish Harlem
12 - Livingston Taylor - Grandmás Hands
13 - Henry Mancini - Pink Panther
14 - Guiseppe Verdi - Requiem Dies Irae
15 - Guiseppe Verdi - La Donna E Mobile
16 - Antonio Vivaldi - Flute Concerto In D

Focal JMLab Demo Disc 3

01 - Junior Wells - Use Me
02 - Livingston Taylor - Isn't She Lovely
03 - Friend 'n Fellow - One More Day
04 - Rebecca Pidgeon - Grandmother
05 - Robert Hohner Percussion Ensemble - La Bamba
06 - James Newton Howard - She
07 - Thom Rotella Band - Patti Cake
08 - McCoy Tyner - Miss Bea
09 - Johnny Frigo - Stompin' at the Savoy
10 - Carlos Heredia - De Volao, Bulerias
11 - Jim Keltner - Improvisation
12 - Carl Orff - Fortune, Introduction
13 - Vaclav Nelhybel - Trittico
14 - Igor Stravinsky - The Soldier's March
15 - Antonio Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, Summer

Focal JMLab Demo Disc 4

01 - Terry Callier - C'est La Vie
02 - Joe Jackson - Cha Cha Loco
03 - Bernard Lavilliers - Romeo Mochado
04 - Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66 - For What It's Worth
05 - Pooka - The Insect
06 - 16 Horsepower - Brimstone Rock
07 - Alain Bashung - La Nuit Je Mens
08 - Lucky Peterson - Who's Been Talkin`
09 - John Scofield - A Go Go
10 - Dee Dee Bridgewater - Killing Me Softly
11 - Pierpoljak - Je Sais Pas Jouer
12 - Black Uhuru - Chill Out
13 - Charly Antolini - Endless
14 - Cyrill Lutzelschwab & Martin Hess - Boxenkiller
15 - Yello - Resistor
NOT RECORDED
16 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Concerto No.21, Andante

Focal JMLab Demo Disc 5

01. OLETA ADAMS Everything must change
02. SOUAD MASSI Raoui
03. RICKIE LEEJONES Dat dere
04. PARIS COMBO Trois petits points
05. GEORGE BENSON The ghetto
06. GRACEJONES I’ve seen that face before (Libertango)
07. DEAN FRASER Dick Tracy
08. MICHEL PORTAL M.P.on the run
09. VEST Who
10. FOXY BROWN Get me home
11. RAHSAAN PATTERSON The day
12. BILAL Fast lane
13. MAD’HOUSE Like a prayer
14. DAX RIDERS Real fonky time
15. DJ FLEX Ready (Radio Edit)
16. LES ZOURILLES Jano lapin

Focal JMLab Demo Disc 6

01 - Feist - One Evening
02 - Molly Johnson - Melody
03 - Emile Simon - Flowers Never Die
04 - J.J. Cale - Hold On
05 - Marvin Gaye - I want you
06 - Mighty Mo Rodgers - The Boy who stole the blues
07 - Roy Hargrove - Hardgroove
08 - Willie Bobo - Spanish grease
09 - Salif Keita - Madan
10 - Martin Solveig - Someday
11 - Audun kleive - Never thought I would
12 - Benny Benassi - Satisfaction
13 - A.R. Rahman - Mumbai Theme
14 - Oscar Peterson Trio - You look good to me
NOT RECORDED:
15 - Monty Alexander Trio - Nite mist blues

Focal JMLab Demo Test Disc (2)

01 - Technical Tracks - Left and Right Channel Test , 02 - Pink Noise-
Ref 14dB Fs, 03 - Front Channels Polarity Test, 04 - Subwoofer Tracks -
Single Cylinder Moto Engine, 05 - Muffled, 06 - Sourdo, 07 - Walking
Cello, 08 - Setting Interface Test-Digital Silence 0 bits
09 - Sine Wave Signals - 1kHz-Ref 14dB Fs, 10 - Sine Wave Signals -
20Hz 11 - 25Hz, 12 - 31Hz, 13 - 40Hz, 14 - 50Hz, 15 - 63Hz, 16 - 80Hz,
17 - 100Hz, 18 - 125Hz, 19 - 160Hz, 20 - 200Hz, 21 - 250Hz, 22 - 325Hz,
23 - 400Hz, 24 - 500Hz, 25 - 630Hz, 26 - 800Hz, 27 - 1KHz, 28 - 1.25KHz,
29 - 1.6KHz, 30 - 2KHZ, 31 - 2.5KHz, 32 - 3.15KHz, 33 - 4KHz, 34 - 5KHz,
35 - 6.3KHz, 36 - 8KHz, 37 - 10KHz, 38 - 12KHz, 39 - 16KHz, 40 - 20KHz,
41 - Sliding Frequencies - 20Hz to 160Hz, 42 - 160Hz to 1.25kHz. 43 - 1.
25kHz to 10kHz, 44 - 10kHz to 20kHz,
45 - Staging Evaluation - Walking Saxophone - Left-Center-Right-Center 'Le feu des Dieux' - Olivier Lataste 46 - Pencil Circle Drawings - Macro
Stereophonic Recording, 47 - Tape Roller Unrolling - Macro Sterophonic
Recording, 48 - Transient Response Test - Bulb Drop, 49 - UDU Sound
Take (Jug), 50 - Musical Instruments - Oboe, 51 - Cello, 52 - Acoustic Guitar, 53 - Drums-Progressive Rise In Intensity, 54 - Drums-Toms, 55 - Bass Line Drums, 56 - Bass Play, 57 - Bass Slap, 58 - Applause, 59 - Applause outdoors.
60 - Musical Tracks - Olivier Lataste - Le phare et la lune,
61 - Male Voice-Pierre Delorme - Reves,
62 - Female Voice-Chislain Marchetto - L'homme de la derniere chance
63 - Male and Child Voices-Gilles Pauget - Blues d'automne
64 - Vocal Group-J.Joplin arranged by E. Moulin - Mercedes Benz
65 - Jazz Rock-arranged by R.Guillard - Over The Rainbow
66 - Jazz-(P.Ruche) RMR - Maia
67 - (A. Ciesla) Doumka Clarinet Ensemble & Youval Micenmaker - Danse du lustre
68 - 109 - Donne
69 - Romain Gayral - Solminharm (High spectral density setting drivers response test)
70 - Educational Tracks - Compressed Drums, 71- Uncompressed Drums,
72 - 25Hz to 20kHz Compressed-Olivier Lataste - La derniere borne
73 - 25Hz to 20kHz Uncompressed-Olivier Lataste - La derniere borne
74 - Full Fledge Orchestra, 75 - Full Fledge Orchestra

Now, if you are like me, you probably don't recognize most of these artists. Disc 5 is mostly music that Nancy would like. In fact, I just put it in her computer for her to try out.

So, why do they sound so great? I suspect great care was taken in making them. Close miking, careful mixing and mastering. The main thing is they all have IMPACT. Even the Baroque music has so much LIFE to it.

Of course one must have really good equipment to fully realize just how real the music sounds.

You may have noted that on two of them, the last tune did not record. I don't know why, just that WMP found an error in them.

That's it for now. My next post will be on replacing the fluid leaking steering rack on my Audi TT Quattro. To see what is involved go here:
Power steering rack replacement how-to - AudiWorld Forums

Life's too short to waste! Have some adventures!

Take care,

Scott