Word No Sound
Dear Consumer Watchdog,
I am a young (ish) DJ living in Dublin, Ireland. I recently purchased 3 tracks from Argenis Brito’s fine LP on Cadenza at the shambolic but often gem heavy MP3 division of Word and Sound
Sadly, when I went to play these tracks yesterday in my home , I noticed the volume is so low that I have to turn up to at least 11 to get a volume I might class as “hipshaking”. As it is the track was barely audible. When mixing it I often forget to turn the gain down from the depraved position I have to set it to, so when I mix in a track that isn’t encoded craply it then swamps its predecessor with its ridiculously high volume.
As you can see this is annoying, even if this is a particularly geeky post. I’m curious though, I presume the vinyl version isn’t like this? Anyone else buy some of this LP from the Playwordandsound? Having the same problem? I spent 3 euros 90 on crappy files! In Dublin, Europe’s most expensive city, that’s the price of a banana or a packet of a chewing gum.
In all seriousness though, if anyone from WAS is reading then I would like my money back, or some decent versions of the files. Or an explanation. Or a hug.
lfam wrote:
the vinyl sounds great! i downloaded it for free before buying and that rip sounded great as well.
Posted 29 Jun 2007 at 8:22 pm ¶
beingboring wrote:
3.90€ for a banana?!
Posted 30 Jun 2007 at 9:07 am ¶
Kwak wrote:
You bought the mp3’s, so you’re allowed to download them, right? Just like it isn’t illegal for a cd-owner to burn a copy…
Posted 30 Jun 2007 at 9:50 am ¶
Ronan wrote:
Yeah I bought them, it’s an MP3 store.
A banana here is actually 30 cent I think!
Posted 30 Jun 2007 at 9:56 am ¶
jeffery wrote:
The poor engineering and terrible user experience of the WaS site never ceases to amaze. WaS could increase their online business many times over if they just cleaned it up and added a few simple features like multiple simultaneous downloads, album pricing, etc.
If you’re on a Mac, you can use MP3trimmer to adjust the gain on the files without re-encoding. I’m sure some equivalent program exists in the Windows world.
Posted 30 Jun 2007 at 7:32 pm ¶
Ronan wrote:
Yeah you’re absolutely right. They have such a strong collection and a really great stylistic thread runs through it all even though it’s small.
I sometimes wonder if they don’t make it a larger and more well oiled operation as they are a distributor and their customers might not like them being in such obvious competition.
But you’re right, the site is buggy as hell.
This week I found a newly released track by that Mountain People act after clicking a flash ad at the top of the page. I then removed the “Mountain People 19191″ part of the address to reveal 4 or 5 more new releases that weren’t showing on any of the other pages.
Posted 01 Jul 2007 at 9:19 am ¶
kai@wordandsound.net wrote:
Hi Ronan, this is Kai Ceo from Wordandsound. First of all thanks a ton guys for the positive words on our catalogue. Big hugs for this. We work very hard for ensuring it will stay like this or just get even more in depth in the future. I didnt know about the Cadenza Sound problem but I´m fully aware about our shop being terribly incomplete. I´m afraid we have to really excuse for both here. It´s not our style normally to be honest. Regarding Cadenza , pls get in contact with us directly. You´ll be helped!! hendrik@wordandsound.net is allready on the watch for you what might have happened. pls contact him. Second, we´ve been working very hard the last 12 month to build a complete new playwordandsound.net store and we´re almost finished. Folks, pls gives us rough another 3-4 weeks and you will see playwas things sorted!! Cheers and Rspect, Kai
Posted 02 Jul 2007 at 8:28 am ¶
Ronan wrote:
Hi Kai,
Really looking forward to seeing the new site, I always enjoy using playwordandsound mainly cos it’s small and manageable, you can listen to every track.
That’s great there’ll be a new store.
I’ll give Hendrik a mail, thanks a lot for getting back to me.
Posted 02 Jul 2007 at 1:46 pm ¶
cw wrote:
Your speakers go up to 11?
Cool.
Posted 03 Jul 2007 at 9:29 pm ¶
Ronan wrote:
Not really…they barely go up to 2 or 3
Posted 03 Jul 2007 at 9:30 pm ¶
John wrote:
Yeah, I have probs with WAS MP3’s from time to time but they get back to me pretty quick and are super friendly so I hold no grudges
Posted 12 Jul 2007 at 10:51 am ¶
Richard wrote:
buy it on vinyl - you’d never have any problems, but it would be more pricey than 3.90
Posted 14 Jul 2007 at 11:20 pm ¶
Ronan wrote:
two problems, carrying it in to Raidío Na Life every week with two CD-Js, and buying it with my current salary, plus having to buy both tracks on so many 12s that only have one I want
Posted 15 Jul 2007 at 12:46 am ¶
Yengen wrote:
yeah Kai good to see you’re teh ceo and checking what the people on the “tubes” want! Appreciated. As a long-time customer. I like the visual design of your shop it’s really forward-thinking but I agree a lot of links don’t work and it’s hard to find the gems, you should have the homepage changed completely to give more hints a to what’s hot at the moment. As for the sound quality it started out really well but since, like, one year or so I sometimes get odd qualities for some files.
But overall I can’t complain, your website has at least a decent speed and doesn’t rely on phony plugins (not pointing any fingers ehehe).
Looking forward to the improved shop keep the juice flowing!!!
Posted 27 Jul 2007 at 10:51 am ¶