KVR Audio

cron · Post by **cron** » Fri Mar 17, 2017 11:56 pm

I mentioned the 128k mp3 thing earlier in the thread. Youtube used to offer 192k AAC at HD resolutions until a year or so back when they standardised every quality level to 128k AAC. Spotify's free ad-supported service offers 160k Ogg. I've got one track on Soundcloud with really sharp noise bursts and Soundcloud's encoding flams them to bits with the pre-echo. It seems really odd that they haven't moved on to a modern codec or higher bitrate when audio streaming is what they do.

Cyoon · Post by **Cyoon** » Sat Mar 18, 2017 12:11 am

Chapelle wrote:Sounds familiar... We had the same thread last year.
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6383600

yea, it is the same in every year or every second isn't it? Has been a few times already.

incubus · Post by **incubus** » Sat Mar 18, 2017 3:12 am

nonnaci wrote:They provide free sound hosting. Not sure what's not to like. Someone enlighten me from my ignorance!

Considering that I'm a failure at internet humor, all I can say is that very often the sound quality sounds like it has a masking that I don't care for.

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sat Mar 18, 2017 4:29 am

nonnaci wrote:They provide free sound hosting. Not sure what's not to like. Someone enlighten me from my ignorance!

So I don't "hate" soundcloud, I'm just a bit indifferent to them, but, when you provide a service like this, even free, you are competing with other similar free services. The idea of course is that someone's going to pay at some point. That said, you are always going to have an army of "nobodies" who aren't ever going to pay because nobody cares about their music and never will. (That would be me, for example)

So, a free service has to be compelling enough that I'd rather use that, then simply set up something on weebly or the like.

So, for me, there are a couple of things that I don't like about soundcloud. First, their limit is WAY too low. Second, and this is the really annoying thing, you can't edit the audio content after your upload. To change the track audio, you have to create a new track.

So I use hearthis.at instead. They also have some weird limitations, but there not such that they really annoy me that much, and, I wouldn't mind giving them the three bucks a month that they currently want.

I don't know how others use these services, but I just use them to release a few tracks that I then post around on facebook and link back to the bandcamp release with the track that I've posted. Sometimes I also post stuff that I'm never going to put in a bandcamp release.

It has helped me to connect to a few like minded musicians on facebook and bandcamp, and that's cool, but I'm not sure that it's worth paying a lot for.

I "use", literally, soundcloud for sharing private tracks with people that I don't want to put on hearthis.at, that is, I'm not ready to share them with the public. I use mixcloud for DJ mixes.

nonnaci · Post by **nonnaci** » Sat Mar 18, 2017 4:52 am

ghettosynth wrote:
nonnaci wrote:They provide free sound hosting. Not sure what's not to like. Someone enlighten me from my ignorance!
So I don't "hate" soundcloud, I'm just a bit indifferent to them, but, when you provide a service like this, even free, you are competing with other similar free services. The idea of course is that someone's going to pay at some point. That said, you are always going to have an army of "nobodies" who aren't ever going to pay because nobody cares about their music and never will. (That would be me, for example)

So, a free service has to be compelling enough that I'd rather use that, then simply set up something on weebly or the like.

So, for me, there are a couple of things that I don't like about soundcloud. First, their limit is WAY too low. Second, and this is the really annoying thing, you can't edit the audio content after your upload. To change the track audio, you have to create a new track.

So I use hearthis.at instead. They also have some weird limitations, but there not such that they really annoy me that much, and, I wouldn't mind giving them the three bucks a month that they currently want.

I don't know how others use these services, but I just use them to release a few tracks that I then post around on facebook and link back to the bandcamp release with the track that I've posted. Sometimes I also post stuff that I'm never going to put in a bandcamp release.

It has helped me to connect to a few like minded musicians on facebook and bandcamp, and that's cool, but I'm not sure that it's worth paying a lot for.

I "use", literally, soundcloud for sharing private tracks with people that I don't want to put on hearthis.at, that is, I'm not ready to share them with the public. I use mixcloud for DJ mixes.

Makes sense. Is sound cloud the largest player of the free sound-sharing services? Not being an apologist but their limits could be due to the scale of bandwidth usage and storage requirements on the cloud.

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sat Mar 18, 2017 5:00 am

nonnaci wrote: Makes sense. Is sound cloud the largest player of the free sound-sharing services?

AFAIK it is, and, to be clear, if you are a somebody, musically, then you need soundcloud much more than I do because that's where the audience is.

Not being an apologist but their limits could be due to the scale of bandwidth usage and storage requirements on the cloud.

Yeah, of course, but also because they probably have done some analysis and that's the sweet spot for getting people who need soundcloud to pay. For example, if you are a DJ, and there are five armies of those, then you might really care about getting all the attention that you can and so the $10 a month or whatever it is will be pocket change to you.

I'm not saying that what they're doing is bad, I don't care, but you asked "what's not to like?" For me, it's pretty clear that Hearthis.at is better for me.

There is also something to being in a tiny pond of weirdos that is more effective for me at connecting to people than being in a big pond of sharks.

incubus · Post by **incubus** » Sat Mar 18, 2017 5:35 am

I'd just like to see something better. It's 2017, what's so bad about something that has better sound quality?

Rappo Clappo · Post by **Rappo Clappo** » Sat Mar 18, 2017 7:51 am

@cron
Thanks for the info!

Any way, I am baffled Soundcloud doesn't have its own categories. If one could promote their music in a specific genre and SC would have a dedicated browser for genres things will be different. I suppose.
Now it's like a jungle IMO

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sat Mar 18, 2017 7:55 am

Rappo Clappo wrote:@cron
Thanks for the info!

Any way, I am baffled Soundcloud doesn't have its own categories. If one could promote their music in a specific genre and SC would have a dedicated browser for genres things will be different. I suppose.
Now it's like a jungle IMO

Yes, you have hit on another pet peeve, their autoplay sucks. But then, so does everyone else's. Hearthis.at at least tries and I can browse by genre. Bandcamp needs a player from my collection. I just want to have my collection of stuff on random play at times.

Cinebient · Post by **Cinebient** » Sat Mar 18, 2017 4:21 pm

Soundcloud was a great platform years ago.....now it's crap.
They killed it in any way that was good (for independent musicians at least).

tasty tatsyn · Post by **tasty tatsyn** » Sun Apr 16, 2017 8:51 pm

i also think soundcloud has been better then is right now (excluding the graphical aspects)

actually the thing that anoyed me the most was ** this is stupid hahaha** one guy that "kinddd offf liked" one of my tracks but back then soundcloud had one special feature: - The "Drop Here" indicator !?!?? and me making an ambient track with no drops was told the track was nice but... DiDn't have a .... DROP!

ok jokes aside

i once had a pro account and the reason i stopped having it is simple...

you pay around 90 euros a year for the Pro account and you post your music BUT... once you stop paying they hide ALL the tracks you payed for (over the free account limit) and you can't even organize them in a way you chose wich ones to show...they preety much hijack your account and say... here keep paying us or your account is hijacked... that to me makes no sense whatsoever from my simple non capitalistic point of view

you payed more then enough for them to buy a few big Terabytes Hardrives + a few extras and now we're going to (preety much) block your account until you delete 90% of your work and you payed all that for... nothing

according to my view even if you stop subscribing a PRO account those tracks you payed to share shouldn't be hidden. Period.
Block new uploads?... sure but i don't aprove the way it works.... simple

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 1:02 am

Cinebient wrote:Soundcloud was a great platform years ago.....now it's crap.
They killed it in any way that was good (for independent musicians at least).

Fully agreed. I don't know if it was making money then, but i didn't hate it back then. Now i do. I only still use it because of inertia.

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 1:03 am

chaosWyrM wrote:ha! screw 'em.

"SoundCloud’s struggle is taking place while there’s renewed investor interest in streaming music."

well i know sc doesnt realize this...but they arent a streaming music site.

ive said it before and ill say it again...sc shot themselves in the foot when they abandoned their original core customers in some idiotic short sighted attempt at becoming a streaming audio service.

soundcloud is (was) a repository for artists, so they had an easy place to share their work...not a source of entertainment where listeners go to stream content. the attempt to switch from the former to the latter was ill conceived and plain old stupid.

+1000

Fully agreed.

elxsound · Post by **elxsound** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 4:47 am

Jace-BeOS wrote:
chaosWyrM wrote:ha! screw 'em.

"SoundCloud’s struggle is taking place while there’s renewed investor interest in streaming music."

well i know sc doesnt realize this...but they arent a streaming music site.

ive said it before and ill say it again...sc shot themselves in the foot when they abandoned their original core customers in some idiotic short sighted attempt at becoming a streaming audio service.

soundcloud is (was) a repository for artists, so they had an easy place to share their work...not a source of entertainment where listeners go to stream content. the attempt to switch from the former to the latter was ill conceived and plain old stupid.
+1000

Fully agreed.

Agreed, but I believe part of the reason for the change was big record companies threatening lawsuits over the many people sharing copyrighted music.

woggle · Post by **woggle** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 10:27 am

While I was in the country and away from phone / net access Soundcloud sent me a few emails about not being able to renew my account. My account details were fine so it was some error by them. Now they have cut me back from a Pro account to a free one and upgrading has gone from $53 AUS to renew to $83 AUS to upgrade. I try to email them and the address they gave is no longer active - thats from an email sent by them yesterday! I'm really sick of shit tech companies that take money and provide crap service. Soundcloud was better back when it was an artist site rather than a content streaming site. I'll keep my free tracks going but will most likely stop posting music to the net. I make nothing from it although I do make a bit from composition in other ways.

Soundcloud is running out of cash