Apple Digital Masters, Spread the Love Winners, Donor Picks



Apple Digital Masters

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Thank you, ilikepeaches, for the graphic!

Policy Change

RED will now treat Apple Digital Masters as dupes of other WEB releases, unless there is clear evidence of a sufficiently unique mastering. A constant gain adjustment will not be treated as a sufficiently unique mastering.

Background

In this era of streaming platform competition, the same releases are often published simultaneously on multiple digital service providers, like Deezer, Qobuz, and Tidal. In general, our policy has been to treat all such releases as identical. Unless an uploader provides positive evidence of a unique mastering (which is very unusual), we operate on a "first come, first served" basis: The first digital release to be uploaded is retained, and the rest are removed as dupes. Users may not request uploads from specific web stores without proof of unique mastering.

There have been two exceptions. First, Tidal MQA is specifically not allowed. Second, some music on the Apple Music platform is labeled as "Apple Digital Master" (previously known as "Mastered for iTunes"). We have allowed Apple Digital Masters to coexist with other WEB releases without any special proof. This second exception will now be eliminated: Apple Digital Master releases are to be treated the same as other WEB releases.

This policy change is driven by a careful investigation of Apple Digital Masters. Apple Digital Mastering is supposedly a specification aimed primarily at producing masters for high-quality lossy encodes. Documentation on the mastering process is public and can be viewed here: https://www.apple.com/apple-music/ap...al-masters.pdf. This outlines a set of tools to help avoid clipping in lossy AAC encodes, along with lip service (but few details) on Apple Digital Mastering for lossless ALAC releases.

What does this mean in practice? Evidence suggests a common outcome of the Apple Digital Mastering process is a simple constant gain adjustment applied to releases. Users may replicate this result on their home setup with a tool like Izotope RX or SoX. Additionally, many Apple Digital Masters are identical to releases from other providers. There are many representative examples; note that some of the links below will be removed as dupes are removed.

Example details: Show

It is evident that a blanket permission for Apple Digital Masters is not justified. These kinds of constant adjustments are not expressions of musical intent by artists or producers.

Questions, Answered

Even 0.2dB of gain adjustment between CD releases would generally be sufficient for CDs to coexist, why shouldn't ADM also coexist on this basis? Our CD dupe rules were designed holistically based on the fact that most distinct CD masterings do not differ by only a constant factor of gain. This situation is in fact extremely unusual for CD releases. Although we will not be adjusting our CD dupe rules to explicitly treat such cases as dupes, there is no reason to bind our WEB rules to what is essentially an accident of the rules for CD coexistence.

What is the advantage of eliminating a small number of WEB dupes when we already have huge groups with so many vinyl and CD releases? Each media type must be approached separately, and we can only process dupes based on the standards appropriate to each. For example, it is difficult to make exact audio comparisons of analog media. Many of those large groups are built up from years or decades of releases. We were concerned with the trend of Apple Digital Masters being uploaded at some delay after popular WEB releases, but with no particular benefit to our users, and at the cost of additional moderation overhead, generally unwanted notifications, and confusion for downloaders.

How do I request approval to upload a unique Apple Digital Master? Uploaders may send a Staff PM providing evidence that the Apple Digital Master they'd like to upload represents a substantially distinct mastering, then upload the torrent only if staff approve it.

What would qualify as a sufficiently unique mastering? Unique masters will not have identical music content, which uploaders may approximate by comparing waveforms in an audio editing program or test using SpecDiff. Unique masters also will not exhibit only a constant/uniform gain adjustment when compared to other releases. Note that Dynamic Range results alone can be misleading and are not sufficient evidence of substantially distinct masters. When identically gain-adjusted, however, unique masters will produce waveforms that visibly differ from those of other releases, and files that do not cancel out when tested with SpecDiff.

What will happen to the current Apple Digital Master uploads? All Apple Digital Master torrents will be merged with their non-Apple Digital Master edition equivalents, and duplicate torrents will be removed as normal, based on the torrents' upload times. Apple Digital Master content with unique characteristics — such as bonus tracks not available on other digital platforms — will coexist and remain on-site as normal.


Spread The Love Winners

Thank you to every user who participated in the "Spread The Love" contest. Our whole community is built on sharing and generosity, and we hope that everyone will find their own way to bring this spirit to others. Special congratulations to metal4427, Androtica, socie9Ph, deadrabbits, and Boringhandle, who each received the Contest Winner badge and a selection of FL tokens, in addition to various other prizes!


Donor Picks

RED is supported entirely by donations from our members. For more information on our donation system, see the Donor FAQ. Donors who reach ten donor points are welcome to submit a donor pick, and we are happy to share these picks with our whole community. Each pick has been marked Freeload for the next 4 weeks.

LumberJackal's Special Donor Pick

Neck Deep - Life’s Not Out to Get You

Genre: Pop-Punk

Torrents: Neck Deep - Life’s Not Out to Get You (2015)

Review:
Beware, contains a lot of pop punk bangers. December, Serpents and Kali Ma are the songs that really stand out imho.


triptiks' Special Donor Pick

ScHoolboy Q - Habits & Contradictions

Genre: Hip-hop

Torrents: ScHoolboy Q - Habits & Contradictions (2012)

Review:
Not only is this one of the landmark drops from TDE's Black Hippy collective and their legendary run through and around 2012, but it's a perfect example of why sites like this one are so important for preserving music. If you pull this album up on streaming right now, you will probably notice what I believe is the album's best track, "Blessed" (feat. Kendrick Lamar), is missing. From top to bottom, this album ranges from spacey & vibey to gritty & dark, and why ScHoolboy isn't necessarily known for deep conceptual frameworks or braided wordsmithing, Habits & Contradictions is a fully realized artistic statement and a unique one at that.


gekiryu's Special Donor Pick

Soichi Terada (寺田創一) - Sumo Jungle

Genre: Drum and bass, Jungle

Torrents: Soichi Terada (寺田創一) - Sumo Jungle (1996)

Review:
Album that, by bringing Soichi Terada into the spotlight, enabled him to become one of the most highly regarded video game composers of the fifth console generation.


atomicunicorn's Special Donor Pick

Girl Scout - Gaper

Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Electronic

Torrents: Girl Scout - Gaper (2016)

Review:
Fun dancy and funky psychedelic rock with synthesizers sprinkled throughout.