"Was this CD mp3 sourced?"

[Brendan]

I've been doing a fair amount of CD trading by mail lately. All the music is unreleased stuff, a mix of live concerts and unreleased studio tracks and demos. Some cds come as .wav files, some as .flac files which I convert and burn as .wav to cd. Occasionally, I get a cd that I can clearly hear was once an mp3, but I only hear it on my home stereo, and use my laptop to burn, which is usually nowhere near my stereo. What program can I use to figure whether a track or cd was mp3 sourced?

I run suse 10.0, and was trying to find a spectrum analyzer where I could look for the typically lost frequencies, but I can't seem to find one that shows the Hz on one axis, and the time on another. KWaveview would seem to do the job, but it appears to only look to mic or line inputs, and can't just be pointed towards a single file. I thought Audacity would do it, but it doesn't show the actual frequencies, so far as I can tell. What program can I use to get this type of spectrum analyzer? Or, is there some other way to tell if a track was once an mp3 without listening to it?

[onlinebacon]

I don't actually think trading in unreleased stuff is legal

So it isnt really a good idea to discuss it here...

[Brendan]

I don't actually think trading in unreleased stuff is legal

So it isnt really a good idea to discuss it here...

The concern is valid, but not in this case. Many, many bands DO allow the trading of live and unreleased material. The bands in this case are the Black Crowes and Govt Mule, who are the ones who put their unreleased tracks into circulation, and allow the taping of every live show they do, unless the venue/other artists on the bill do not allow taping.

The trading of RELEASED material is illegal, no question. However, that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about audience recording and unreleased studio sessions, which the bands in question allow. (ex: Warren Haynes' trading policy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_...#Taping_Policy ) Keep in mind, we are talking about cd trading, not the use of bittorrent or other file sharing programs that the bands try to distance themselves from.

[onlinebacon]

Ok, that was my only concern, thanks for clearing that up

Here ya go: http://linux-sound.org/scopes.html

[Brendan]

Thanks, bacon! Extace is exactly the type of thing I was looking for.

Once again, proving that nothing, NOTHING, is better than bacon...