Sound Quality of Episodes

[cbax22]

I have a question I hope I can explain clearly...
I assume there have been many different recordings of any one particular episode of the CBSRMT. And I would also assume that they all probably vary somewhat in sound quality. I am wondering if the poorer quality versions of an episode are slowly being replaced by the better ones in this file sharing environment or if the lower quality versions are shared as much as the better ones? Does that make sense? And I would imagine if all these different quality of episodes are mixed up out there you really wouldn't know there's a better version of an episode you already have unless you keep getting different versions of the same episode downloaded in order to compare.
A simple question would be, is there a master set comprising the best known versions of each episode? or is that an impossible dream right now?...
And I love the commercials and news spots so how can I go about getting the recorded versions that include those as opposed to the ones that have been edited? Or is that not possible too?
So many questions...
thanks for any clarification or help,
chris from Oregon

[wadenjulie]

Hi Chris,

I understand the question. The problem is that there are not multiple known recordings of some episodes. Some episodes have only one known available source while others have more than one. The complete set of 1399 was not brought together until the last couple of years so having all 1399 together is almost miraculous in itself. The presently circulating set was the best of the known available episodes when it was put together about a year ago. At one point I had access to three different sources of RMT programs but in comparing them I found them to be largely the same. A few episodes were from different sources but most were identical recordings. What needs to happen is for more people with their own homemade, good quality, recordings to come forward with them and get them encoded to good quality files and make them available for integration into the rest of the set. This is where we stand right now. It's a slow process and it can be overwhelming if not properly organised since there are 1399 files to deal with.

As for the advertisements and news, yes they're great when intact. The problem is that 90 minute cassette tapes were just long enough for two episodes without ads or news and I expect many of these were originally recorded on C-90s in the beginning. That's how I recorded mine.

Hope this has answered your question. We would all love to have better quality recordings but they are slow to come forward.

Best regards,

Wade

[Executive]

And there are dozens of episodes in which the audio is so poor or has odd-sounding "encodes" because the transfer process to computer was done WRONG, that they are impossible to understand or listen to.

Many of those episodes from 1978 on I detailed in my topic on the Sharing / Trading board, that has gone widely ignored....except by one person, and these days there seems to be no trace of Trace.....a mystery in itself.