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MECO's rare ESB 10" record (Released)

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I saw the thread about preserving the double LP ESB soundtrack album, and it reminded me of my rare 10" Meco ESB 4-track record.

I know a few of these have been released on Meco CDs, but I’m not sure if they are the full length versions and if all the tracks have made it to CD. Here is the tracklisting and running times:

1. Darth Vader & Yoda’s Theme (4:56)
2. Battle in the Snow (8:39)
3. Force Theme (9:46)
4. Asteroid Field & Finale (15:47)

If anyone is interested in these, I have already transfered the vinyl using pro equipment and have high quality MP3s. I can post them on Rapidshare.

The best thing about these is the opening of “Battle in the Snow;” it begins with a CLEAN sound effect of an ATAT walking!

NOTE: Can anyone confirm that all of this material has NOT been released on CD? I’d feel better about posting them if they are truly not available…

UPDTAE: Ok, I did some hunting around online and as far as I can tell, these tracks ARE on Meco’s Star Wars collection, but they are NOT the full length versions… the ESB EP is nearly 40 mins total, so obviously these 4 tracks alone would have eaten up most of the CD. The tracks from the vinyl are MUCH longer…

I’ll be happy to post.

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Can you do FLAC or SHN lossless versions?

Not into MP3's.

I can post the Return of the Jedi tracks by Meco if anyone is interested.

I also have Anything Goes from Temple of Doom.

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Well, for now these high bitrate MP3s are going to have to make you happy:

http://rapidshare.com/files/31176214/MECO_ESB_EP.zip

I'm very much a fan of high quality audio, but I will defy anyone to tell the difference between uncompressed and a 256 bitrate MP3... test after test has shown you just can't tell.

If any of you have reference, $10,000 home audio systems and swear you can hear the difference, I'll come to your house and if you can hear the difference between the original LP and these MP3s in a blind, A/B test, I'll GIVE you the record!
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Originally posted by: Mojo_LA
Well, for now these high bitrate MP3s are going to have to make you happy:

http://rapidshare.com/files/31176214/MECO_ESB_EP.zip

I'm very much a fan of high quality audio, but I will defy anyone to tell the difference between uncompressed and a 256 bitrate MP3... test after test has shown you just can't tell.

If any of you have reference, $10,000 home audio systems and swear you can hear the difference, I'll come to your house and if you can hear the difference between the original LP and these MP3s in a blind, A/B test, I'll GIVE you the record!


Sorry. Guess I'll have to do my own version of this with my album. Uncompressed or nothing.

And yes, I definitely CAN hear a difference.
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It's not perfect, but I think they sound terrific! Thanks a lot for doing this.
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Originally posted by: Mojo_LA
Well, for now these high bitrate MP3s are going to have to make you happy:

http://rapidshare.com/files/31176214/MECO_ESB_EP.zip

I'm very much a fan of high quality audio, but I will defy anyone to tell the difference between uncompressed and a 256 bitrate MP3... test after test has shown you just can't tell.

If any of you have reference, $10,000 home audio systems and swear you can hear the difference, I'll come to your house and if you can hear the difference between the original LP and these MP3s in a blind, A/B test, I'll GIVE you the record!



Is that a promise? Come over and I'll put through my vintage Warfedales. BIG difference. Don't get me wrong, I think MP3s are still great. Especially for the iPod and casual listening. But nothing beats sitting in the "listening room" and turning up the 'uncompressed' sound.
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Could these be uploaded to yousendit or megaupload? Please.


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Everyone is welcome.

If anyone who listens to these really thinks the sound needs improving (and not just because they are compressed, because you really think you can hear artifacts), I will see if I can dig up the original WAVs I stored away and provide a new version.

And to those who CAN hear the difference, many audio magazines have done the double blind listening test with compressed and uncompressed sources over and over again and the results are always the same - no one can definitively hear the difference.

If someone can point me to a test which has shown otherwise, I'd really love to see it.

Here are my specs for anyone interested:

- Technics SL1200 MK2 turntable
- Ortofon "Concorde" cartridge & nightclub stylus (20-22k)
- NAD preamp
- LAME encoder (VBR avg 256)

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Straying off topic, I think the (lossy) compressed/uncompressed debate is interesting.

Obviously if you are doing any audio editing or processing, it makes sense to use the original PCM as a source.

For actual listening, I've seen quite a few members on here who claim they can hear a difference. I can certainly hear the "listening inside an oil drum underwater" type of compression in very low bitrate audio, such as on Youtube videos, but I find any MP3 or AC3 encode with a reasonable bitrate to be transparent. But then, I don't have a hugely expensive hi-fi, and I know my hearing response dips at high frequencies (kids - if you regularly go to nightclubs and value your hearing, wear ear protection, 'k?)

While working on the mono mix, I compared two samples of AC3; one at 448kbps and one at 96kbps. I thought I could percieve a difference - but was that because I knew that sample A was a higher bitrate? (I.e. this wasn't a 'blind' test).

I'm considering doing a blind trial on you lot - it wouldn't "prove" anything because there would be too many variables, but it would be interesting nonetheless. Who's up for that?

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Originally posted by: Moth3r
Straying off topic, I think the (lossy) compressed/uncompressed debate is interesting.

Obviously if you are doing any audio editing or processing, it makes sense to use the original PCM as a source.

For actual listening, I've seen quite a few members on here who claim they can hear a difference. I can certainly hear the "listening inside an oil drum underwater" type of compression in very low bitrate audio, such as on Youtube videos, but I find any MP3 or AC3 encode with a reasonable bitrate to be transparent. But then, I don't have a hugely expensive hi-fi, and I know my hearing response dips at high frequencies (kids - if you regularly go to nightclubs and value your hearing, wear ear protection, 'k?)

While working on the mono mix, I compared two samples of AC3; one at 448kbps and one at 96kbps. I thought I could percieve a difference - but was that because I knew that sample A was a higher bitrate? (I.e. this wasn't a 'blind' test).

I'm considering doing a blind trial on you lot - it wouldn't "prove" anything because there would be too many variables, but it would be interesting nonetheless. Who's up for that?


I also think this whole conversation is very interesting. I honestly encode all of my ripped music at 128 kbps. Gasp! The reason I do this is, for some reason, even though I can hear a quality difference between 128 kbps and, say, 320 kbps, in the end, I just don't care that much. For storage purposes, I'd much rather have a slightly-less quality rip than "bulky" ones that are only (to me, now, mind you) what I would consider a +7% improvement. I understand quality whores' argument, but the difference between something like 320 kbps vs. CD is (again, to me at least) negligible. The reason being? I can't hear the difference, and I don't have wrecked ears. But, maybe my equipment isn't high-tech enough for any difference to register. People can do whatever they want, but I really do wonder how much of it is just a "placebo" effect.
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Originally posted by: andy_k_250
Originally posted by: Moth3r
Straying off topic, I think the (lossy) compressed/uncompressed debate is interesting.

Obviously if you are doing any audio editing or processing, it makes sense to use the original PCM as a source.

For actual listening, I've seen quite a few members on here who claim they can hear a difference. I can certainly hear the "listening inside an oil drum underwater" type of compression in very low bitrate audio, such as on Youtube videos, but I find any MP3 or AC3 encode with a reasonable bitrate to be transparent. But then, I don't have a hugely expensive hi-fi, and I know my hearing response dips at high frequencies (kids - if you regularly go to nightclubs and value your hearing, wear ear protection, 'k?)

While working on the mono mix, I compared two samples of AC3; one at 448kbps and one at 96kbps. I thought I could percieve a difference - but was that because I knew that sample A was a higher bitrate? (I.e. this wasn't a 'blind' test).

I'm considering doing a blind trial on you lot - it wouldn't "prove" anything because there would be too many variables, but it would be interesting nonetheless. Who's up for that?


I also think this whole conversation is very interesting. I honestly encode all of my ripped music at 128 kbps. Gasp! The reason I do this is, for some reason, even though I can hear a quality difference between 128 kbps and, say, 320 kbps, in the end, I just don't care that much. For storage purposes, I'd much rather have a slightly-less quality rip than "bulky" ones that are only (to me, now, mind you) what I would consider a +7% improvement. I understand quality whores' argument, but the difference between something like 320 kbps vs. CD is (again, to me at least) negligible. The reason being? I can't hear the difference, and I don't have wrecked ears. But, maybe my equipment isn't high-tech enough for any difference to register. People can do whatever they want, but I really do wonder how much of it is just a "placebo" effect.



As someone who works with sound, I hate MP3's.
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Even I agree that 128 is too low - you can definately hear the compression. 192 starts to get transparent, and really, anything 224 and up is fine. People who claim that "MP3s suck" are just being audio snobs. Sorry, but it's true. You'll never be able to pick out a 320 MP3 from the original CD, I don't care WHAT gear you have.

I do understand the storage VS sound quality argument, but here's what I reason - first of all, storage has gotten ridiculously cheap. I just bought a 750 gig drive for $225. So even at a bitrate of 320, you could store endless amounts of music for very little money.

But the main thing is, it's very very possible you may one day say "you know what, I've been listening to 128k MP3s for a few years now and I have finally decided that they DO suck and I can't stand it anymore!" Now you'll have to go back and re-compress your entire music collection at a higher bitrate. Also, I like to make DJ mixes, which means re-encoding a final mix; if I start with low bitrate files, the results will sound awful - if my originals are high bitrate, I can re-compress them and they'll still sound good.

Basically, using a higher bitrate to start with covers you for all forseeable circumstances; going with a lower bitrate to save a few megs of space will inevitably byte you in the end (ha ha, aren't I clever).
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Originally posted by: Mojo_LA
And to those who CAN hear the difference, many audio magazines have done the double blind listening test with compressed and uncompressed sources over and over again and the results are always the same - no one can definitively hear the difference.

If someone can point me to a test which has shown otherwise, I'd really love to see it.
LINK

For a problematic sample of trance music, this person could easily detect the difference in an ABX test between "insane quality" MP3 (320kbps CBR) and the original uncompressed. However, other codecs such as Nero AAC, Ogg, DualStream or Musepack were harder or impossible to distinguish.

EDIT: should probably point out that the test is 3 years old, and that LAME is now several versions older.

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I sometimes "distill" 12" mixes to 7" length, do mashups, etc., but I don't have a problem starting with at least a 192 kbps mp3, though, the higher q the better as I know it will take an extra hit. (I save to either the same quality, one notch lower, or sometimes with mashups one notch higher.)

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Originally posted by: andy_k_250
DigitalFreakNYC - Do you have a portable music player? Do you really just keep everything in FLAC?


I download in FLAC or SHN and burn to CD. Portable music is about convenience. It's clearly not about quality.

But I will use a high bitrate setting for that.

And I'll be doing my own Meco record with all 3 star wars albums plus the 2 Indiana Jones tracks.

if anyone wants to do artwork, please let me know.
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In the past I used compressed audio. First 128kbps mp3, later 256 or 320. Now I don't make compromises anymore. It has to be uncompressed (or lossless like FLAC) or nothing at all, just to be sure.
I think it depends very much on the instruments, the sort of music and the volume if you can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3 or wav.
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