7 ms·

Morse Code in Tubular Bells (2021)

110 points by xanderlewis 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kazinator 2y ago
> Tubular Bells was famously recorded at The Manor Studio I think that's referenced in the 1983 Black Sabbath song "Trashed". It really was a meeting The bottle took a beating The ladies of The Manor <--- Watched me climb into my car and I was going down the track about a hundred and five They had the stop-watch rolling I had the headlights blazing I was really alive And yet my mind was blowing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Again_(Black_Sabbath_album)#Recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Again_(Black_Sabbath_albu... I was listening to this decades ago, and saw the note on the cover that the album was recorded at The Manor, so I put that together.
kazinator 2y ago
Another British morse code in music story: in the title theme of the 1980s sitcom "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em", the rhythm of the notes is a deliberate morse code which spells out the title of the show. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Mothers_Do_%27Ave_%27Em#Theme_tune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Mothers_Do_%27Ave_%27Em#T... What the Wikipedia page doesn't mention this, but I read long ago that the composer of the tune received only a small one-time payment for it and no royalties, despite the popularity of the show.
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  See also the theme music of the television version of 'Inspector Morse', though perhaps that's not very surprising.
  - Jordan_Pelt 2y ago
    ...and the opening of the Rush song YYZ.
  - jdietrich 2y ago
    Offensively pedantic trivia: the theme is supposed to spell out "MORSE", but actually spells "TTORSE", due either to a slight timing error or artistic license.
    - xanderlewis 2y ago
      No — you're right!
  - HelloUsername 2y ago
    Also the theme to Mission Impossible. The letters M (⸺ ⸺) and I (– –) in a 5/4 time signature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission:_Impossible_(1966_TV_series)#Music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission:_Impossible_(1966_TV_s...)
- flobosg 2y ago
  A Canadian morse code in music: The intro of Rush’s “YYZ” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YYZ_(song)#Title_and_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YYZ_(song)#Title_and_compositi...
- yoz 2y ago
  The composer you mention was the most prolific and talented creator of BBC TV show themes: Ronnie Hazlehurst. He usually did arrangement and production of the music as well. Other famous themes he created: Are You Being Served?; Last of the Summer Wine; The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin; To the Manor Born; Yes, Minister (and Yes, Prime Minister); Blankety Blank; and The Generation Game. See his Wikipedia page for the full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Hazlehurst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Hazlehurst AFAIK, the main reason that he received no royalties is because BBC programmes generated no income. The BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, generates revenue through selling and licensing content, but that was created in the 1990s. I don't know whether the royalties situation has changed, but I doubt it. So Hazlehurst wasn't well paid, nor were the recordings well funded. This is another great example of constraints triggering innovation: the theme for Are You Being Served? memorably uses the sounds of coins and cash registers, which was Hazlehurst's solution to not being able to afford proper percussion. If you have two spare minutes now, watch Matt Berry's lovely tribute to Ronnie Hazlehurst, from Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ui1rdhQljU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ui1rdhQljU
ahazred8ta 2y ago
A nearby VLF station was transmitting its 'GBR' callsign.
ryandrake 2y ago
The article is about a studio device unintentionally picking up Morse code during recording. But that's not the only intersection between Mike Oldfield and Morse code. Oldfield also deliberately (and quite obviously, if you're listening for it) inserted into one of his later albums: a not-so-nice Morse code message[1] to Virgin Records founder Richard Branson, with whom he was at the time fighting over how he was being treated by the label and lack of promotion. At around the 48 minute mark of Amarok, you can hear a synthesizer loudly tap out "F U C K O F F R B" in the recording. 1: https://www.mikeoldfield.org/amarok https://www.mikeoldfield.org/amarok
- jerf 2y ago
  Looks like Mike Oldfield has it officially up on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rwtfmpeedpA?t=2880 https://youtu.be/rwtfmpeedpA?t=2880 And for your convenience, a Morse code chart for those who wish to follow along: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code#/media/File:International_Morse_Code.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code#/media/File:Interna... Given his musical sound in general and the sound of the rest of the album, it is not something I ever would have thought twice about if I heard it without prompting. Neat story.
hvs 2y ago
"VVV" in Morse code means "attention, incoming message". Cool to see amateur radio and fldigi in a Hacker News article.
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  Yep. I've seen it used in place of 'CQ' when testing propagation conditions to avoid other stations coming back and attempting a contact. It always reminds me of the Doctor Who theme: ...- ...- ...-
- 7402 2y ago
  In ham radio practice, it means "Testing." It's used as a kind of filler and is properly followed By "DE" (from) and one's call sign.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
Radio pickup is a huge problem for audio electronics. I used to live near someone with a CB radio, and the pitch of one of my synths would go up by a semitone when they were transmitting.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  Haha! What kind of synth was it?
- TacticalCoder 2y ago
  [dead]
- 8bitsrule 2y ago
  Long ago I was given an old, surplus 100+watt VHF FM transceiver, hand-held mike with a PTT button. It used tubes, had a metal box so heavy you could stand on it. It was so big we put it on top of the apartment's refrigerator. The lady who lived upstairs in the building owned an electric organ. She usually played it during the day, but on weekends she'd sometimes fire it up to play long and loud ... long after our baby had gone to sleep. One day I noticed that keying the transmitter would cause the organ to make a sound like a pachyderm in agony. Turned out to be the solution to the loud weekend-concert baby-waking problem.
gorgoiler 2y ago
The transmission signal path on the first map also looks an awful lot like the album cover for Tubular Bells: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0d/Mike_oldfield_tubular_bells_album_cover.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0d/Mike_oldfield...
resters 2y ago
the transmission in the recording is actually VVV GBR
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  From the article: > The decoded morse is actually slightly wrong – rather than ‘MVV’ at the start it should be ‘VVV’ but that’s down to FLDigi not being 100% accurate. Anyone who knows morse can confirm what you actually hear is ‘VVV GBR’.
zeropointsh 2y ago
[dead]
dylan604 2y ago
I guess I have to turn in my movie buff card, as I had always just assumed that this music was something composed specifically just for the movie.
- spc476 2y ago
  And it's only the first minute or so of the album was used in the movie. In context the entire track (all 25m30s of it) is not scary at all. Clever use of editing.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    yeah, i can understand why the album was not very popular on its own. everything I just read about it tracks with what I hear.
kristopolous 2y ago
The potentially earliest written model of a telegraph actually involved bells as well. After the anonymous author (C.M) first suggestion of small pieces of paper with letters written on them jumping up, via static electricity to tiny electrified balls as the sender manually electrifies the wires, one for each letter, and then waits a bit to allow the slips of paper to flutter back down one by one as the remote observer diligently records what letters hit their balls in what order, he suggests the following, from Scots Magazine, 1753: "If anybody should think this way tiresome, let him, instead of the balls, suspend a range of bells from the roof, equal in number to the letters the alphabet, gradually decreasing in size from the bell A to Z; and from the horizontal wires let there be another set reaching to the several bells; from the horizontal wire A to the bell A, another from the horizontal wire B to the bell B, etc. Then let him who begins the discourse bring the wires in contact with the barrel, as before; and the electric spark, breaking on bells of different size, will inform his correspondent by the sound what wires have been touched: and thus, by some practice, they may come to understand the language of the chimes in whole words, without being put to the trouble of noting down every letter." The first documented successful message by wire was 20 years later although there was no independent observer. It took about 55 years from the time of this article until one was publicly demonstrated. Many people claimed they were working on it, such as in this 1773 love letter by Genevan Physician named Louis Odier: "I shall amuse you, perhaps, in telling you that I have in my head certain experiments by which to enter into conversation with the emperor of Mogol, or of China, the English, the French, or any other people of Europe, in a way that, without inconveniencing yourself, you may intercommunicate all that you wish, at a distance of four or five thousand leagues in less than half an hour! Will that suffice you for glory. There is nothing more real. Whatever be the course of those experiments, they must necessarily lead to some grand discovery; but I have not the courage to undertake them this winter." Communication at a distance was "time machine"/"fountain of youth" technology up until the 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_alphabet was a mystical occult version from the 1600s.
- tdeck 2y ago
  If anyone is really interested in this kind of thing, I recommend picking up a copy of "The Story of Telecommunications" by George P. Oslin, which is full of obscure communication history details like this.
tdeck 2y ago
Here's what I hear: VVV GBR GBR GBR [BT] TL5 T [BT] VVV VVV VVV ... [BT] here indicates a prosign [1] (-...-) this one is a kind of section or message divider. VVV is often sent when testing your equipment, and I think that's what's happening here. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code
stefantalpalaru 2y ago
[dead]
LeoPanthera 2y ago
Morse code is also deliberately in another Mike Oldfield album, Amarok. (Yes, the KDE music player is named after it.) Oldfield was locked into a predatory Virgin Records contract written by Richard Branson (Tubular Bells was the first ever Virgin Records release) and he was increasingly irritated that Virgin was not promoting his albums. He hid a message in Amarok and offered £1000 of his own money to anyone who could find it. The message is "FUCK OFF RB" in morse code. Apparently, no-one claimed the prize.
pjbk 2y ago
Mike Oldfield has stated that the conditions at the Manor were so precarious at the time, he had to learn to use the tape recorder and mixer almost by himself because the engineer was never there. Since there were so many instruments on the recordings and the mixer was not automated, it took several people doing acrobatics to operate the faders and dials real-time to mix down the tracks for the album. Therefore possibly those Morse code signals were picked up because an instrument was not properly gain staged before being recorded.
- LeoPanthera 2y ago
  Given that Tubular Bells is a patchwork of so many different takes, I would suggest that it's a little more likely that the signal was recorded during the final mix down or possibly one of the intermediate bounce stages, since the signal seems to be mostly intact.
  - pjbk 2y ago
    When you are close to a low frequency radio station anything is possible I guess. I used to live less than one mile away from an AM radio station antenna. That doesn't mix up well if you want to become an electronic engineer or compose your own electronic music. ;-) The Telecaster guitar and bass used would be my #1 culprit on introducing noise since pickups are virtually antennas. Mike Oldfield even had added an extra high gain single coil BL pickup to his '66 Tele. If you don't gain stage or ground properly the mics that were used for the acoustic instruments, they could have also captured RF noise easily, even if they had a heavy metal housing that acted like shielding. Some Farfisa organs are also noticeable noisy, although I don't know about their EMI or how banged up was the one used for the album that belonged to David Bedford. The electric piano used was a Rhodes, and those were built like a tank. Finally the tracks were overdubbed over and over. This would in all likelihood have attenuated both the audio and noise, but using a mixer or a tape that is susceptible to interference means that you have more chances of capturing noise at some point in the recording. I guess we will never know for sure. Anyway, it adds to the mystique of the record.
    - 2y ago
kmoser 2y ago
> I used a lossless FLAC copy of the CD album from 2003 to see this. It’s quite possible a lot of this would be missing from lossy copies, such as MP3s, though I haven’t tested that. Aren't music CDs already compressed using lossy compression? A FLAC copy of that uncompressed CD would be one generation away from the original, whereas an MP3 of the rip would be two generation removed from the original (i.e. still lossy, only more so)?
- kazinator 2y ago
  No, compact disc audio is not compressed. It is raw 16-bit samples at a 44.1 kHz rate. However I think compact disc audio is allowed to suffer some degradation from errors. It takes well over 700 MB to store 70 minutes of CD audio. When the same disc is used for data, which has to be reliable, the capacity drops to 650 MB.

110 points by xanderlewis 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

> Tubular Bells was famously recorded at The Manor Studio I think that's referenced in the 1983 Black Sabbath song "Trashed". It really was a meeting The bottle took a beating The ladies of The Manor <--- Watched me climb into my car and I was going down the track about a hundred and five They had the stop-watch rolling I had the headlights blazing I was really alive And yet my mind was blowing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Again_(Black_Sabbath_album)#Recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Again_(Black_Sabbath_albu... I was listening to this decades ago, and saw the note on the cover that the album was recorded at The Manor, so I put that together.

kazinator 2y ago

Another British morse code in music story: in the title theme of the 1980s sitcom "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em", the rhythm of the notes is a deliberate morse code which spells out the title of the show. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Mothers_Do_%27Ave_%27Em#Theme_tune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Mothers_Do_%27Ave_%27Em#T... What the Wikipedia page doesn't mention this, but I read long ago that the composer of the tune received only a small one-time payment for it and no royalties, despite the popularity of the show.

xanderlewis 2y ago
See also the theme music of the television version of 'Inspector Morse', though perhaps that's not very surprising.
- Jordan_Pelt 2y ago
  ...and the opening of the Rush song YYZ.
- jdietrich 2y ago
  Offensively pedantic trivia: the theme is supposed to spell out "MORSE", but actually spells "TTORSE", due either to a slight timing error or artistic license.
  - xanderlewis 2y ago
    No — you're right!
- HelloUsername 2y ago
  Also the theme to Mission Impossible. The letters M (⸺ ⸺) and I (– –) in a 5/4 time signature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission:_Impossible_(1966_TV_series)#Music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission:_Impossible_(1966_TV_s...)
flobosg 2y ago
A Canadian morse code in music: The intro of Rush’s “YYZ” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YYZ_(song)#Title_and_composition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YYZ_(song)#Title_and_compositi...
yoz 2y ago
The composer you mention was the most prolific and talented creator of BBC TV show themes: Ronnie Hazlehurst. He usually did arrangement and production of the music as well. Other famous themes he created: Are You Being Served?; Last of the Summer Wine; The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin; To the Manor Born; Yes, Minister (and Yes, Prime Minister); Blankety Blank; and The Generation Game. See his Wikipedia page for the full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Hazlehurst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Hazlehurst AFAIK, the main reason that he received no royalties is because BBC programmes generated no income. The BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, generates revenue through selling and licensing content, but that was created in the 1990s. I don't know whether the royalties situation has changed, but I doubt it. So Hazlehurst wasn't well paid, nor were the recordings well funded. This is another great example of constraints triggering innovation: the theme for Are You Being Served? memorably uses the sounds of coins and cash registers, which was Hazlehurst's solution to not being able to afford proper percussion. If you have two spare minutes now, watch Matt Berry's lovely tribute to Ronnie Hazlehurst, from Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ui1rdhQljU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ui1rdhQljU

ahazred8ta 2y ago

A nearby VLF station was transmitting its 'GBR' callsign.

ryandrake 2y ago

The article is about a studio device unintentionally picking up Morse code during recording. But that's not the only intersection between Mike Oldfield and Morse code. Oldfield also deliberately (and quite obviously, if you're listening for it) inserted into one of his later albums: a not-so-nice Morse code message[1] to Virgin Records founder Richard Branson, with whom he was at the time fighting over how he was being treated by the label and lack of promotion. At around the 48 minute mark of Amarok, you can hear a synthesizer loudly tap out "F U C K O F F R B" in the recording. 1: https://www.mikeoldfield.org/amarok https://www.mikeoldfield.org/amarok

jerf 2y ago
Looks like Mike Oldfield has it officially up on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rwtfmpeedpA?t=2880 https://youtu.be/rwtfmpeedpA?t=2880 And for your convenience, a Morse code chart for those who wish to follow along: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code#/media/File:International_Morse_Code.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code#/media/File:Interna... Given his musical sound in general and the sound of the rest of the album, it is not something I ever would have thought twice about if I heard it without prompting. Neat story.

hvs 2y ago

"VVV" in Morse code means "attention, incoming message". Cool to see amateur radio and fldigi in a Hacker News article.

xanderlewis 2y ago
Yep. I've seen it used in place of 'CQ' when testing propagation conditions to avoid other stations coming back and attempting a contact. It always reminds me of the Doctor Who theme: ...- ...- ...-
7402 2y ago
In ham radio practice, it means "Testing." It's used as a kind of filler and is properly followed By "DE" (from) and one's call sign.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

TheOtherHobbes 2y ago

Radio pickup is a huge problem for audio electronics. I used to live near someone with a CB radio, and the pitch of one of my synths would go up by a semitone when they were transmitting.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
xanderlewis 2y ago
Haha! What kind of synth was it?
TacticalCoder 2y ago
[dead]
8bitsrule 2y ago
Long ago I was given an old, surplus 100+watt VHF FM transceiver, hand-held mike with a PTT button. It used tubes, had a metal box so heavy you could stand on it. It was so big we put it on top of the apartment's refrigerator. The lady who lived upstairs in the building owned an electric organ. She usually played it during the day, but on weekends she'd sometimes fire it up to play long and loud ... long after our baby had gone to sleep. One day I noticed that keying the transmitter would cause the organ to make a sound like a pachyderm in agony. Turned out to be the solution to the loud weekend-concert baby-waking problem.

gorgoiler 2y ago

The transmission signal path on the first map also looks an awful lot like the album cover for Tubular Bells: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0d/Mike_oldfield_tubular_bells_album_cover.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0d/Mike_oldfield...

resters 2y ago

the transmission in the recording is actually VVV GBR

xanderlewis 2y ago
From the article: > The decoded morse is actually slightly wrong – rather than ‘MVV’ at the start it should be ‘VVV’ but that’s down to FLDigi not being 100% accurate. Anyone who knows morse can confirm what you actually hear is ‘VVV GBR’.

zeropointsh 2y ago

[dead]

dylan604 2y ago

I guess I have to turn in my movie buff card, as I had always just assumed that this music was something composed specifically just for the movie.

spc476 2y ago
And it's only the first minute or so of the album was used in the movie. In context the entire track (all 25m30s of it) is not scary at all. Clever use of editing.
- dylan604 2y ago
  yeah, i can understand why the album was not very popular on its own. everything I just read about it tracks with what I hear.

kristopolous 2y ago

The potentially earliest written model of a telegraph actually involved bells as well. After the anonymous author (C.M) first suggestion of small pieces of paper with letters written on them jumping up, via static electricity to tiny electrified balls as the sender manually electrifies the wires, one for each letter, and then waits a bit to allow the slips of paper to flutter back down one by one as the remote observer diligently records what letters hit their balls in what order, he suggests the following, from Scots Magazine, 1753: "If anybody should think this way tiresome, let him, instead of the balls, suspend a range of bells from the roof, equal in number to the letters the alphabet, gradually decreasing in size from the bell A to Z; and from the horizontal wires let there be another set reaching to the several bells; from the horizontal wire A to the bell A, another from the horizontal wire B to the bell B, etc. Then let him who begins the discourse bring the wires in contact with the barrel, as before; and the electric spark, breaking on bells of different size, will inform his correspondent by the sound what wires have been touched: and thus, by some practice, they may come to understand the language of the chimes in whole words, without being put to the trouble of noting down every letter." The first documented successful message by wire was 20 years later although there was no independent observer. It took about 55 years from the time of this article until one was publicly demonstrated. Many people claimed they were working on it, such as in this 1773 love letter by Genevan Physician named Louis Odier: "I shall amuse you, perhaps, in telling you that I have in my head certain experiments by which to enter into conversation with the emperor of Mogol, or of China, the English, the French, or any other people of Europe, in a way that, without inconveniencing yourself, you may intercommunicate all that you wish, at a distance of four or five thousand leagues in less than half an hour! Will that suffice you for glory. There is nothing more real. Whatever be the course of those experiments, they must necessarily lead to some grand discovery; but I have not the courage to undertake them this winter." Communication at a distance was "time machine"/"fountain of youth" technology up until the 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_alphabet was a mystical occult version from the 1600s.

tdeck 2y ago
If anyone is really interested in this kind of thing, I recommend picking up a copy of "The Story of Telecommunications" by George P. Oslin, which is full of obscure communication history details like this.

tdeck 2y ago

Here's what I hear: VVV GBR GBR GBR [BT] TL5 T [BT] VVV VVV VVV ... [BT] here indicates a prosign [1] (-...-) this one is a kind of section or message divider. VVV is often sent when testing your equipment, and I think that's what's happening here. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code

stefantalpalaru 2y ago

[dead]

LeoPanthera 2y ago

Morse code is also deliberately in another Mike Oldfield album, Amarok. (Yes, the KDE music player is named after it.) Oldfield was locked into a predatory Virgin Records contract written by Richard Branson (Tubular Bells was the first ever Virgin Records release) and he was increasingly irritated that Virgin was not promoting his albums. He hid a message in Amarok and offered £1000 of his own money to anyone who could find it. The message is "FUCK OFF RB" in morse code. Apparently, no-one claimed the prize.

pjbk 2y ago

Mike Oldfield has stated that the conditions at the Manor were so precarious at the time, he had to learn to use the tape recorder and mixer almost by himself because the engineer was never there. Since there were so many instruments on the recordings and the mixer was not automated, it took several people doing acrobatics to operate the faders and dials real-time to mix down the tracks for the album. Therefore possibly those Morse code signals were picked up because an instrument was not properly gain staged before being recorded.

LeoPanthera 2y ago
Given that Tubular Bells is a patchwork of so many different takes, I would suggest that it's a little more likely that the signal was recorded during the final mix down or possibly one of the intermediate bounce stages, since the signal seems to be mostly intact.
- pjbk 2y ago
  When you are close to a low frequency radio station anything is possible I guess. I used to live less than one mile away from an AM radio station antenna. That doesn't mix up well if you want to become an electronic engineer or compose your own electronic music. ;-) The Telecaster guitar and bass used would be my #1 culprit on introducing noise since pickups are virtually antennas. Mike Oldfield even had added an extra high gain single coil BL pickup to his '66 Tele. If you don't gain stage or ground properly the mics that were used for the acoustic instruments, they could have also captured RF noise easily, even if they had a heavy metal housing that acted like shielding. Some Farfisa organs are also noticeable noisy, although I don't know about their EMI or how banged up was the one used for the album that belonged to David Bedford. The electric piano used was a Rhodes, and those were built like a tank. Finally the tracks were overdubbed over and over. This would in all likelihood have attenuated both the audio and noise, but using a mixer or a tape that is susceptible to interference means that you have more chances of capturing noise at some point in the recording. I guess we will never know for sure. Anyway, it adds to the mystique of the record.
  - 2y ago

kmoser 2y ago

> I used a lossless FLAC copy of the CD album from 2003 to see this. It’s quite possible a lot of this would be missing from lossy copies, such as MP3s, though I haven’t tested that. Aren't music CDs already compressed using lossy compression? A FLAC copy of that uncompressed CD would be one generation away from the original, whereas an MP3 of the rip would be two generation removed from the original (i.e. still lossy, only more so)?

kazinator 2y ago
No, compact disc audio is not compressed. It is raw 16-bit samples at a 44.1 kHz rate. However I think compact disc audio is allowed to suffer some degradation from errors. It takes well over 700 MB to store 70 minutes of CD audio. When the same disc is used for data, which has to be reliable, the capacity drops to 650 MB.