ARTIST: Audioslave TITLE: Be Yourself LABEL: Interscope/Epic GENRE: Alternative BITRATE: 217 kbps PLAYTIME: 0h 04min total RELEASE DATE: RIP DATE: 03-13-2005 Track List: 01. Be Yourself 4:38 Release Notes: Now I know what you're thinking, "this is some kind of joke right, what does Sheepnet know about ripping?" Well, just because some people nuke, that doesn't mean they don't know how to do other things. When we checked out XXL's Audioslave rip it was so obviously not from a cd source. The first clue is within the songs first fifteen seconds. The ripper normalized the crap out of it. If you compare it to our version you can see what I'm talking about. The rest of the song has also been "adjusted" and suffers from the artifacts you get when you've overdriven the audio. You can also compare the two in Encspot and see a quality difference as well. So, of course your follow up question is, "but the XXL rip has a high VBR average". It's not that hard to accomplish if you know how to manipulate the audio file. Ask any group who re-encodes, well re-encodes successfully. You can still spot them if you know what to look for. My guess is that XXL's source was either the mp3/wave that Interscope sent to radio via MPE (Google it if you don't know) or some other non-cd format. Sheepnet just happens to be on Interscope's mailing list (among other labels) so we had a copy of the cd. So, here's a real rip of the new Audioslave track with a scan of the artwork (if you don't see a scan blame the courier). For all of you other groups that try to pre fakes, be warned. We just might "Real" your rips too.