Audio sessions?

[Steppingfeet]

however, it all is a roundabout plea for "give them what they've earned".

Dear Blargg,

The intent of my post was not to make a plea to "give them what they've earned", but rather to attempt to help you understand where L/L Research is coming from on a matter of policy which is on the books, as it seemed you expressed some distress over the charge for digital downloads.

That you don't understand and/or don't agree is perfectly acceptable. Pleasing everyone is not the aim or goal of L/L Research.

Again I encourage you to feel free not to support this effort with your money and instead enjoy the fruits of Carla and Jim's work from the LLResearch.org website for free. And pay it forward by radiating the deepest realization of the Creator that the material helps you to discover.

i will have to stand by my decision that to charge for the truest medium of the message, the one in which it was given, is not the highest way. the message was not written, it was spoken, through Carla.

Fortunately free will is set up so that each entity is capable of determining for themselves that which is most high. Your interpretation of the high road in comparison to our interpretation is certainly in contrast.

I encourage you to walk your own road, wishing you nothing but love, light, unity, and joy along your journey. May you serve others as you yourself wish to be served.

Love/Light,
GLB

[blargg]

i suggest that perhaps they only need to host one session a week, for a week. the original audio. i believe there are hosts that offer this amount of storage space free of charge. if the allowed bandwidth is exceeded before the week is out, then excellent. you want as many as possible to have the seed, to pass this raw channeling along to even more who might care to hear it.

[Bring4th_Steve]

Blargg, all sessions that make their way into a digital audio format will have come from channeled 'messages' which have already been made freely available to the public in written form. So why are we going in circles?

It sounds like you have a concern with digital audio not being made available by L/L for free. The nominal amount of funds being requested for each session is to cover the cost of keeping the lights on for the organization, and to continue subsidizing the expense of llresearch.org and bring4th.org, which are in a constant state of growth! As you might imagine, the busier a web site becomes, the more money is required to run that site--especially when you begin hosting audio files. So does it not seem fair that even though the written word is freely available to the public, that L/L is trying to generate operating income so it can have a place to host the terabytes of audio that will soon need a place to live?

My impression is that you feel the "highest word" should never be charged for, and I couldn't agree more with you! But it's already free in written form, so the highest word remains free. That can't be argued any longer.

You also seem to feel that those involved with L/L are being compensated in some shape or form for being bearers of digital audio files containing the original messages. Carla or Jim do not get paid to run the organization. Any funds that come in go directly towards operating costs, which are many! Their main concern is keeping the lights on at L/L by counting on donations and publication revenue to continue being able to provide the Confederation material to the masses.

If you can find a way to do all of this for free so that we don't need to ask for donations, then we will be *more* than happy to listen to any ideas! And as much as we love the idea of finding a service to host one audio file at a time, that is not a practical solution for the organization. We have terabytes of data that need a home and we will soon need gigabytes of monthly transfer bandwidth to handle everyone's download requests. Can you recommend some ideas of how we can pay for that massive bandwidth and storage demand without asking for a couple dollars to cover our costs, Blargg?

And as Monica mentioned, while fruit continues to grow on trees for free, we all still have to pay for the fruit because people are involved in the process of harvesting it, cleaning it, transporting it, stocking it in a store, and maintaining it for the public to purchase. Our process is very much the same here, except there's no profit! Any funds received are specifically appointed to cover the process of getting the audio into a form that can be made available to everyone.

Again, I totally respect your feelings for getting the truth for free, and I am 100% behind that idea as well. But please, if you're going to argue, please be realistic by considering what goes into the process of hosting large audio files, and that the price for each file is strictly to cover the process of publication and its ongoing availability.

Cheers,
Steve

i suggest that perhaps they only need to host one session a week, for a week. the original audio. i believe there are hosts that offer this amount of storage space free of charge. if the allowed bandwidth is exceeded before the week is out, then excellent. you want as many as possible to have the seed, to pass this raw channeling along to even more who might care to hear it.

[βαθμιαίος]

I actually kind of agree with blargg here in that I don't really see that much difference between digital text and digital audio, other than in bandwidth. There's arguably more work in a transcription than in an audio file, once the channeling has been done.

I'm not necessarily saying that L/L shouldn't charge for audio files, but perhaps it should also charge for transcripts, or maybe do something like openoffice.org does and have a plea for donations above the link to download the transcript or pdf.

[Questioner]

I actually kind of agree with blargg here in that I don't really see that much difference between digital text and digital audio...

There are several significant differences.

The texts are already transcribed, indexed, and available at no charge. The work involved in cleaning up the noise and distortion, wow and flutter of the old cassette format is substantial. I've not heard the LLR audio material, but I have heard other cassette recordings from that era. It's a very, very limited audio format.

The microphones, recorders, and tape stock available at the time simply weren't very high quality compared to today's low- to mid-budget recording gear. My weekly music lessons, in elementary school on up, were recorded to what at the time was very high quality compact cassette. So I'm quite familiar with the format. Frankly, the format sucks.

Without spending a couple thousand bucks on something like a Nakamichi deck, and a terrific microphone with a great preamp, compressor and noise gate, the compact cassette is just barely adequate for dictation in ideal office circumstances. And from an audio engineering point of view, the pictures of the Ra channeling room show close to worst-case circumstances for cassette recording.

The cleanup, as I understand it, is simply to make the material comprehensible at all. Some of the audio material might simply be unusable. The ability to do high quality audio cleanup on a consumer-level computer has only recently become practical.

It takes a very great amount of time to learn how to use these audio processing tools, and then it takes a very great amount of additional time to apply the tools to clean up old audio recordings, typically longer than realtime. As the work is all done by volunteers, it may take quite a while to go through it all.

The bandwidth difference for hosting is very substantial, far from trivial. A typed transcript of a person talking takes about 1,000 (one thousand) times less storage and bandwidth capacity than a moderately compressed mp3 file. For an organization operating on a shoestring budget, there is no way to simply pretend that audio should cost as little as text to offer; it doesn't.

The text of the messages is already available. There are those who have heard the audio, and who've been totally forthright and straightforward whenever they discuss the texts. These people say that there is not a significant amount of additional information available from hearing the vocal quality of the channeled messages. The messages are precisely focused on the words used, typically with minimal added nonverbal information from tone of voice, pacing and so forth. I see no reason to doubt those who've provided this information: Don, Carla, Jim, Steve, Monica, Gary, Peregrinus, and yourself.

Remember that in Don's questions to Ra about making transcripts available, Ra was indifferent about promotional efforts. Ra said that the material would attract and find its way to those seeking it, and if even one was helped, that was enough. Ra and Don consistently demonstrated humble concern for minimizing distortions in communication. If the extra tone of voice cues from audio recordings were crucial, wouldn't Ra have discussed that, in the same way that the integrity of the photographs were discussed?

The Ra contact involved a team with Jim's role as human scribe seen as quite important. There's not a way to know, metaphysically, whether having someone else serve as scribe, using thirty year old electronic representations of the event, might not have the same spiritual value for the seeker as the use of what Jim wrote at the time.

Given how rich the texts are, with plenty to learn and understand, I see no reasonable basis for a feeling of being deprived because the raw audio isn't available.

Given the three order of magnitude difference in expense to make audio available, I see no reason to suspect anything inappropriate in the request for donations to cover the added expenses.

Given the totally scandal-free history of this research organization that began operations before I was born, at great personal sacrifice to those involved, I see no reason to suspect them of suddenly changing to money-grubbing materialists simply because they explain the time and money efforts involved in this additional work.

My genuine feeling is that the audio project is undertaken as yet another way to be of service to those seeking to encounter this material, free of any selfish ambitions for those involved.

I continue to have the utmost respect for the integrity of the LLR team. I believe that the B4 official comments here reflect the reality of the situation.

[blargg]

I actually kind of agree with blargg here in that I don't really see that much difference between digital text and digital audio...

There are several significant differences.

The texts are already transcribed, indexed, and available at no charge. The work involved in cleaning up the noise and distortion, wow and flutter of the old cassette format is substantial. I've not heard the LLR audio material, but I have heard other cassette recordings from that era. It's a very, very limited audio format.

The microphones, recorders, and tape stock available at the time simply weren't very high quality compared to today's low- to mid-budget recording gear. My weekly music lessons, in elementary school on up, were recorded to what at the time was very high quality compact cassette. So I'm quite familiar with the format. Frankly, the format sucks.

Without spending a couple thousand bucks on something like a Nakamichi deck, and a terrific microphone with a great preamp, compressor and noise gate, the compact cassette is just barely adequate for dictation in ideal office circumstances. And from an audio engineering point of view, the pictures of the Ra channeling room show close to worst-case circumstances for cassette recording.

The cleanup, as I understand it, is simply to make the material comprehensible at all. Some of the audio material might simply be unusable. The ability to do high quality audio cleanup on a consumer-level computer has only recently become practical.

It takes a very great amount of time to learn how to use these audio processing tools, and then it takes a very great amount of additional time to apply the tools to clean up old audio recordings, typically longer than realtime. As the work is all done by volunteers, it may take quite a while to go through it all.

The bandwidth difference for hosting is very substantial, far from trivial. A typed transcript of a person talking takes about 1,000 (one thousand) times less storage and bandwidth capacity than a moderately compressed mp3 file. For an organization operating on a shoestring budget, there is no way to simply pretend that audio should cost as little as text to offer; it doesn't.

The text of the messages is already available. There are those who have heard the audio, and who've been totally forthright and straightforward whenever they discuss the texts. These people say that there is not a significant amount of additional information available from hearing the vocal quality of the channeled messages. The messages are precisely focused on the words used, typically with minimal added nonverbal information from tone of voice, pacing and so forth. I see no reason to doubt those who've provided this information: Don, Carla, Jim, Steve, Monica, Gary, Peregrinus, and yourself.

Remember that in Don's questions to Ra about making transcripts available, Ra was indifferent about promotional efforts. Ra said that the material would attract and find its way to those seeking it, and if even one was helped, that was enough. Ra and Don consistently demonstrated humble concern for minimizing distortions in communication. If the extra tone of voice cues from audio recordings were crucial, wouldn't Ra have discussed that, in the same way that the integrity of the photographs were discussed?

The Ra contact involved a team with Jim's role as human scribe seen as quite important. There's not a way to know, metaphysically, whether having someone else serve as scribe, using thirty year old electronic representations of the event, might not have the same spiritual value for the seeker as the use of what Jim wrote at the time.

Given how rich the texts are, with plenty to learn and understand, I see no reasonable basis for a feeling of being deprived because the raw audio isn't available.

Given the three order of magnitude difference in expense to make audio available, I see no reason to suspect anything inappropriate in the request for donations to cover the added expenses.

Given the totally scandal-free history of this research organization that began operations before I was born, at great personal sacrifice to those involved, I see no reason to suspect them of suddenly changing to money-grubbing materialists simply because they explain the time and money efforts involved in this additional work.

My genuine feeling is that the audio project is undertaken as yet another way to be of service to those seeking to encounter this material, free of any selfish ambitions for those involved.

I continue to have the utmost respect for the integrity of the LLR team. I believe that the B4 official comments here reflect the reality of the situation.

That's a good informative post, thank you. I hadn't thought that the audio might be so bad as to be inaudible. However, I'd still like to hear it. I think a lot of people would.

And I disagree on the hosting issue. Perhaps we don't have to host the whole of the Ra transmissions all at once free of charge. That would take a substantial amount of money. But there are hosts that give enough free storage space (albeit usually ad supported) to hold the audio contents of one session. People would like to hear it, I would like to hear it. If there are any sections that are discernible, cut it, host it, let the people hear it. I can find no actual Ra recordings on the internet to hear, and that bugs me.

I wouldn't ask for the people running L/L Research to put a halt on all other operations and devote their own personal money to what I have requested. I never asked for that. But I see no reason why we haven't begun to see sections of original audio put up for the public yet. It would cost little to nothing to do this session by session on a free hosting service. Let whoever wants to hear it download it, and let them rehost it and spread the message.

[Questioner]

That's a good informative post, thank you.

You're welcome.

And I disagree on the hosting issue. Perhaps we don't have to host the whole of the Ra transmissions all at once free of charge. That would take a substantial amount of money. But there are hosts that give enough free storage space (albeit usually ad supported) to hold the audio contents of one session.

Doing that might then lead to the next batch of new members complaining that there must be something to hide, since only one audio is posted at a time. How would you envision handling this?

The ad-supported hosting seems problematic. I imagine that, as a nonprofit source of spiritual information, LLR would have philosophical and perhaps even tax law reasons to not use their sessions as a billboard for someone else's business.

I can find no actual Ra recordings on the internet to hear, and that bugs me.

The discussions of how to clean up the audio only began a few weeks ago. I think there's still not agreement about how to effectively filter out the noise without reducing too much of the speech clarity. Probably experiments still ongoing about what settings give the best results.

I agree that there may be a fair amount of interest and enthusiasm for the audio recordings. Why not let LLR use that interest as a means for fundraising to cover their expenses, since in four decades nobody's gotten rich, or even comfortably well off, from this material yet? It seems that you have a vigorous philosophical opposition to that, but I'm not sure I understand why.

Is the objection to economics in general? Or is money only sinful if connected to a message of love?

Would you have all churches never take an offering, all psychics do free readings all day, all publishers give away their books, musicians never pass the hat? If so, how does that help the people involved to have shelter, heat and food in our current economic system? If not, where do you draw the line, and why would sales of the Ra recordings be on the "wrong" side of the line?

Tomorrow, I'd like to discover what you see as the principles that you think should support the decision making here. I feel that I'm missing something about your point of view.

[blargg]

Would you have all churches never take an offering, all psychics do free readings all day, all publishers give away their books, musicians never pass the hat? If so, how does that help the people involved to have shelter, heat and food in our current economic system? If not, where do you draw the line, and why would sales of the Ra recordings be on the "wrong" side of the line?

Yes But if that were the case, we would likely no longer have a need for the catalysts that this learning experience provides. It would be time to move on to new experiences.

[Lavazza]

Well spoken Gary, all of it. Thank you for your service to us! And thank you also for further illuminating the rather sizable gift that all those who have been involved at L/L have given us.

[βαθμιαίος]

Having done transcriptions, I'd argue that there's a significant amount of work involved there. True, it's already been done, but it was quite a labor of love on the part of many, many volunteers.

Having listened to the Ra audio files, I'd argue that most are actually not that bad, in my opinion, that L/L couldn't just rip them to mp3, post them online, and say here they are.

Again, I'm not saying they should do this but that I don't see that there's a clear reason why the audio files should be treated differently than transcripts or, especially, pdfs of the books. Personally, I think L/L should consider charging for both the pdfs of the books and the audio files.

[Lavazza]

So is the idea to also make Q'uo audio sessions available? That would be invaluable to me since I could then listen to them while I am at work. Not much time to read unfortunately.

Has anyone listened to the 'Sons of the Law of One' podcast featuring Carla / Q'uo? I think the host, Glenn Pendelton did an excellent job editing out the verbal pauses in the channeling, almost cutting the running time in half. But I suppose it also took a long time to do.

here it is: http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podshows/4053596

[Steppingfeet]

So is the idea to also make Q'uo audio sessions available? That would be invaluable to me since I could then listen to them while I am at work. Not much time to read unfortunately.

Hi Lavazza,

Yup, eventually. We are going to start with the Ra Contact sessions, then the material that L/L has traditionally offered on cassette (e.g. "Messages from the UFO", "Joy", "The Journey", etc.), then the Q'uo library... the humongous Q'uo library.

Not sure if we will methodically begin with present channeling and work our way backwards or if we will do something more random, perhaps making individual sessions available on audio by request.

We'll keep everyone posted!

: ) GLB

[blargg]

Thanks for that, Lavazza. It's good to hear an audio session finally. I didn't know they were on the net anywhere.

It'd be nice to hear the unedited audio. I feel like I can best practice my discernment when I hear the original. But it's still good to hear this shortened version.

I found myself wondering, "Well if it is just the culmination of Don and Carla's life philosophy, what a beautiful philosophy it is and how inhumanely well spoken she is." And if that's the case, I still find it something worth living by. An excellent compass.

These are just my own thoughts as I type them.

[Lavazza]

It'd be nice to hear the unedited audio. I feel like I can best practice my discernment when I hear the original. But it's still good to hear this shortened version.

No problem! You're in luck also, for can also go to the BBS radio website and download more Q'uo sessions. I would have mentioned it earlier but I thought you were only interested in Ra sessions (which are not there).

here it is:
http://www.bbsradio.com/host/llresearchq...rchive.php

You will not like to hear that this website also charges a small fee for access to their archives. However, at least when I signed up over a year ago, they provided the option of paying a nominal fee for a certain number of hours' access, in which I had time to download several sessions to listen to later on my ipod.

The audio is unedited as far as I know.