Just Some Notes ...
ABOUT ME.
I'm an old school trader. By that I mean I used to snail-mail trade back in the day, when CD audios were slowly becoming the norm, cassette audios could still be found, and VHS videos were more prevalent. When DVD videos were just barely coming on the scene. That transition between analog and digital formats.
I first began trading around the end of 2002, and took a long hiatus between 2007-2015.
In that time period, I lost a lot of stuff. Since I began trading again, I've been working on replacing my old collection.
This is the second trading website I've built. My original does still exist on the internet, but I haven't been able to access it to edit it in more than 15 years.
I currently work in healthcare, and I work VERY LONG HOURS. Between 12-14 hour days. I disclose this because as is often the case, I am too busy, or too tired, to bother with trading for much these days. I've been on what seems to be a semi-hiatus since late 2020. While it is possible I will answer an email if it intrigues me enough, there's no guarantee I will, and I will be upfront about that.
Sometime in late 2020, I did suffer another loss of trade materials due to my own stupidity when I had limited storage space for my videos. While the audio loss is negligible, the video loss extended further.
I still remember how it felt to dip my toes into trading, the early days when my collection took off by a matter of chance. I do have a soft spot for helping out new traders, but I'm growing weary of the games that are played.
This page can serve as a guide to the "newbie" trader, to help you navigate some of the things I may mention in my descriptions on my list.
ALL RECORDINGS:
Most recordings are NOT fully reviewed. All recordings are at least PARTIALLY reviewed, or I don't list them.
If you need to know something specific, please ask and I will review further.
More description obviously means I listened to more of a recording.
All recordings will come with a text file labeled either "info" or "Cast List" (or something along those lines).
Any information I have available is in that file.
VIDEOS:
All are in VOB format unless otherwise specified.
Small files are not guaranteed by my lack of mentioning whether they are there or not. If Smalls are important to you, please ask me to check first, and I will gladly do so.
AUDIOS:
Come in a variety of formats, MP3, WMA, FLAC, M4A, WAV.
All audios are tracked unless I specify One Track Per Act/Show. Any audios that specify "TRACKED" at the beginning of the description are audios I tracked myself, and most copies floating around are likely untracked.
GRADES are subjective.
Please understand that a recording from anything past 2005 is going to be held to a much higher standard, due to expanding technology.
1995-2005 is considered a grey area in my grading, and is held to a sliding scale (the technology was available for awesome quality, but was highly expensive, thus not utilized as often. Also, more tapers used analog still than digital formats.)
I go a lot easier on anything prior to 1995.
Imitation is the highest form of flattery!
Feel free to use pertinent parts of my descriptions, but please don't take credit for work you did not do,
-- IE: Master credit, Tracking credit, Transfer credit.
-- But feel free to quote "Taper says", "Tracker says", "Transfer master says", etc., to denote that someone else did the work.
Glossary of notes
Beside a cast member's name:
SB or S/B = Standby
ALT = Alternate
US or U/S = Understudy
TRACKED - I have tracked this from an untracked copy. Typically will mean most copies were not tracked.
MASTER - typically something I've taped myself, unless it says ...
"So-and-so's master" - Which is more typical with newer recordings where credit is given more readily.
CASSETTE TRANSFER - I transferred this from cassette myself - years ago, mind you.
(I don't do this any more however as I no longer have equipment to do so.)
SOUNDBOARD - a recording taken from the theatre's sound system. Typically these leak out thanks to wonderful performers. These will usually be clearer than any other recording. These typically lack audience noise (other than applause, which is muted.)
(NUMBER) - Example, "London, 1987 (02): This is something I use when I have numerous audios where the date is ambiguous. At the current moment I have three Phantom audios from London, 1987. The number in parenthesis allows me to locate the correct audio during a trade. If for example you wanted London, 1987 (02), the file you download will be POTO London 1987.00.02
MY FILING SYSTEM:
All recordings you download will be labeled in the following format:
SHOW NAME / Location / Year.Month.Day
TOURS will be labeled as such, IE: POTO US Tour YYYY.MM.DD
Any ambiguous dates will have 00's where a month or day would be.
If the Month is 00's but the "day" is a number, it typically means I have more than one audio of that production/year. (See above.)
Matinee or Evening performances (if there are two recordings made on the same day) will be denoted by an M or E after the day. IE: POTO US Tour 2004.01.11.M / POTO US Tour 2004.01.11.E
MY LINKS:
I use my own links.
For Audios, I use Mediafire.
For Videos, I use Mega. I do have *some* videos on Mediafire, but nearly all my videos are on Mega.
If you have an issue with the site a file is uploaded to already, but don't have a problem with the other site, I am more than happy to upload to the opposite site for you.
I do not reuse links because I feel it's unreliable to be able to keep track of someone else's links.
You may feel free to reuse my links, however please be aware that they do not always remain the same. I am currently re-arranging my Mega accounts to make more sense so a lot of my videos have been moving, thus the links have been moving.
For your own benefit, I suggest downloading a copy for yourself upon receipt of your links. I download everything myself.
I'm an old school trader. By that I mean I used to snail-mail trade back in the day, when CD audios were slowly becoming the norm, cassette audios could still be found, and VHS videos were more prevalent. When DVD videos were just barely coming on the scene. That transition between analog and digital formats.
I first began trading around the end of 2002, and took a long hiatus between 2007-2015.
In that time period, I lost a lot of stuff. Since I began trading again, I've been working on replacing my old collection.
This is the second trading website I've built. My original does still exist on the internet, but I haven't been able to access it to edit it in more than 15 years.
I currently work in healthcare, and I work VERY LONG HOURS. Between 12-14 hour days. I disclose this because as is often the case, I am too busy, or too tired, to bother with trading for much these days. I've been on what seems to be a semi-hiatus since late 2020. While it is possible I will answer an email if it intrigues me enough, there's no guarantee I will, and I will be upfront about that.
Sometime in late 2020, I did suffer another loss of trade materials due to my own stupidity when I had limited storage space for my videos. While the audio loss is negligible, the video loss extended further.
I still remember how it felt to dip my toes into trading, the early days when my collection took off by a matter of chance. I do have a soft spot for helping out new traders, but I'm growing weary of the games that are played.
This page can serve as a guide to the "newbie" trader, to help you navigate some of the things I may mention in my descriptions on my list.
ALL RECORDINGS:
Most recordings are NOT fully reviewed. All recordings are at least PARTIALLY reviewed, or I don't list them.
If you need to know something specific, please ask and I will review further.
More description obviously means I listened to more of a recording.
All recordings will come with a text file labeled either "info" or "Cast List" (or something along those lines).
Any information I have available is in that file.
VIDEOS:
All are in VOB format unless otherwise specified.
Small files are not guaranteed by my lack of mentioning whether they are there or not. If Smalls are important to you, please ask me to check first, and I will gladly do so.
AUDIOS:
Come in a variety of formats, MP3, WMA, FLAC, M4A, WAV.
All audios are tracked unless I specify One Track Per Act/Show. Any audios that specify "TRACKED" at the beginning of the description are audios I tracked myself, and most copies floating around are likely untracked.
GRADES are subjective.
Please understand that a recording from anything past 2005 is going to be held to a much higher standard, due to expanding technology.
1995-2005 is considered a grey area in my grading, and is held to a sliding scale (the technology was available for awesome quality, but was highly expensive, thus not utilized as often. Also, more tapers used analog still than digital formats.)
I go a lot easier on anything prior to 1995.
Imitation is the highest form of flattery!
Feel free to use pertinent parts of my descriptions, but please don't take credit for work you did not do,
-- IE: Master credit, Tracking credit, Transfer credit.
-- But feel free to quote "Taper says", "Tracker says", "Transfer master says", etc., to denote that someone else did the work.
Glossary of notes
Beside a cast member's name:
SB or S/B = Standby
ALT = Alternate
US or U/S = Understudy
TRACKED - I have tracked this from an untracked copy. Typically will mean most copies were not tracked.
MASTER - typically something I've taped myself, unless it says ...
"So-and-so's master" - Which is more typical with newer recordings where credit is given more readily.
CASSETTE TRANSFER - I transferred this from cassette myself - years ago, mind you.
(I don't do this any more however as I no longer have equipment to do so.)
SOUNDBOARD - a recording taken from the theatre's sound system. Typically these leak out thanks to wonderful performers. These will usually be clearer than any other recording. These typically lack audience noise (other than applause, which is muted.)
(NUMBER) - Example, "London, 1987 (02): This is something I use when I have numerous audios where the date is ambiguous. At the current moment I have three Phantom audios from London, 1987. The number in parenthesis allows me to locate the correct audio during a trade. If for example you wanted London, 1987 (02), the file you download will be POTO London 1987.00.02
MY FILING SYSTEM:
All recordings you download will be labeled in the following format:
SHOW NAME / Location / Year.Month.Day
TOURS will be labeled as such, IE: POTO US Tour YYYY.MM.DD
Any ambiguous dates will have 00's where a month or day would be.
If the Month is 00's but the "day" is a number, it typically means I have more than one audio of that production/year. (See above.)
Matinee or Evening performances (if there are two recordings made on the same day) will be denoted by an M or E after the day. IE: POTO US Tour 2004.01.11.M / POTO US Tour 2004.01.11.E
MY LINKS:
I use my own links.
For Audios, I use Mediafire.
For Videos, I use Mega. I do have *some* videos on Mediafire, but nearly all my videos are on Mega.
If you have an issue with the site a file is uploaded to already, but don't have a problem with the other site, I am more than happy to upload to the opposite site for you.
I do not reuse links because I feel it's unreliable to be able to keep track of someone else's links.
You may feel free to reuse my links, however please be aware that they do not always remain the same. I am currently re-arranging my Mega accounts to make more sense so a lot of my videos have been moving, thus the links have been moving.
For your own benefit, I suggest downloading a copy for yourself upon receipt of your links. I download everything myself.
FAQ
What does it mean when there's a question mark next to a date or a cast member's name?
I really really really shouldn't need to answer this but ...
Next to a date it means I have reason to believe the date is inacurate. This could happen for a lot of reasons. It most often happens when I see the same audio under more than one date ... and this typically happens with the older audios. Back when I first became an active trader over 20 years ago, many of the earliest POTO audios had ambiguous dates. It really did get to the point where I almost always want to question anyone who has a complete date on anything prior to 1995 or so. Also, there were a few 'lost' audios that surfaced around that time period (and as I can see by looking at other traders lists, there are even more 'lost' early audios turning up. Either that or there's a few seriously sloppy traders who are making up dates somewhere.) Anyway, me questioning it doesn't mean it's WRONG per say. Just that I have doubts unless I back up a claim as to why SOMETHING is wrong (this is most likely to happen on US Tour audios between 2002-2006 or so when I was VERY active and VERY much a 3NT junkie. As in I saw it myself 22 times in that short period. As in I followed the schedule and asked for audios before they got to the stops. Yeah, I know ...)
Next to a cast member means I have reason to believe it might be someone else.
In place of a cast member's name means I really have no clue who is singing (I actually had an audio where Raoul was labeled as one person who I'd seen onstage so often I couldn't mistake the voice ... so I *knew* it wasn't who it was labeled, but never did find out who else it could have been.)
I can't speak for now, but I came across traders back in the early 2000's who were very sloppy about both cast member info and date and location info. If I could still remember all those names, they'd be listed on my traders to avoid page.
What is a "Master"?
You'll see me use this term in a few different ways.
The "master" copy is the original tape of any performance.
The "Master" (person) is the taper themselves.
If one of the first words in my description is "Master" then it's signifying something I taped.
What is Generation Loss?
This is a term you'll see me use for 'older' shows - typically for me, the older Phantom Of The Opera recordings.
Before we had all this stuff on DVD or CD, and were able to trade easily over the internet, traders used VHS and cassette tapes, and snail-mailed everything. In fact, VHS tapes were still popular when I started trading in the early 2000's. Cassette audios were still available, but were being phased out by those of us who had computer knowledge. Slowly around the middle of that decade, DVD videos started becoming the norm, and many of us also started transferring the VHS tapes onto digital formats. But with that began the search for earlier generation tapes.
Generation loss happened with analog media. Every time a tape is copied is a 'generation' off of the master copy. While the first few copies were likely very close to the original, as time goes by and more generations are made, 'loss' starts to happen.
In videos, this is often signified by blurriness, worsening of spot washout, darker quality to the video, and color bleeding. Eventually, this will also lead into color loss, lines across the screen. Some of these were also exacerbated by the fact that not all traders were scrupulous in preparation of their recordings - such as failure to use new media (taping over an old tape), failing to tape in SP mode (EP would mean more able to fit on a tape, but at the loss of quality.
In audios, this is sometimes harder to quantify. Mostly because it's harder to know if an audio that is mono was taped that way or not ... if sound overload had anything to do with the tapers position in the audience ... things like that. Warping of the sound is almost always a generation loss issue. There are others that I'll touch on later. And just like videos, there were traders who used methods that hastened generation loss in audios. See below for an example ...
What is "HSD"?
"HSD" is short for High Speed Dubbing. I will sometimes say an older (pre-2000 typically) audio is a victim of HSD.
For those of you who have never copied a cassette tape ...
Back in the day of dual deck tape recorders, there was a setting called high speed dubbing. Now, I'm thinking that everyone has heard of Alvin and the Chipmunks? Well, when you would put your audio into deck A, and your blank into deck B, and select HSD, then start recording, you'd hear the playback during the record as though Alvin and his brothers were singing your favorite musical.
It was convenient. You could copy more shows in less time.
It was also idiotic. What (I hope) they didn't know in the earliest days, but what became apparant over time, is that when you would HSD enough times, generation loss on an audio would happen faster. This would manifest in a few ways - an audio either sounding at a faster or slower tempo than it should have, warping of the sound, the audio getting 'quieter' with each generation ... I could keep going. By 2000, almost every trader who had a rules list would mention that any cassettes could NOT be high speed dubbed ... and that if you suspected your copy was somewhere along the way you'd better say something!
What are "3 second pauses"
... I'm putting this one in even if I'm not sure I'll be using it. Since I plan on this go around mostly doing online trading. This is another throwback from the days of snail-mail trades, but it was a CD thing. I don't know if burning programs still do this (I haven't burned a disk in a few years now ...) but once upon a time most burning programs if you put a bunch of MP3's onto a disk would insert a pause between the tracks. Yes, a 3 second pause. Now, if you were burning a mix of songs for your car's cd player this wouldn't be much of a hassle, but when you're putting a sung-through show onto a CD and there are these pause between the tracks ... well ... it could be disconcerting.
Again, I don't even know if today's online audios have this problem or not ... since I haven't gotten friendly enough with my new computer's software to listen to a full audio without clicking on each individual track ..........
What does it mean when there's a question mark next to a date or a cast member's name?
I really really really shouldn't need to answer this but ...
Next to a date it means I have reason to believe the date is inacurate. This could happen for a lot of reasons. It most often happens when I see the same audio under more than one date ... and this typically happens with the older audios. Back when I first became an active trader over 20 years ago, many of the earliest POTO audios had ambiguous dates. It really did get to the point where I almost always want to question anyone who has a complete date on anything prior to 1995 or so. Also, there were a few 'lost' audios that surfaced around that time period (and as I can see by looking at other traders lists, there are even more 'lost' early audios turning up. Either that or there's a few seriously sloppy traders who are making up dates somewhere.) Anyway, me questioning it doesn't mean it's WRONG per say. Just that I have doubts unless I back up a claim as to why SOMETHING is wrong (this is most likely to happen on US Tour audios between 2002-2006 or so when I was VERY active and VERY much a 3NT junkie. As in I saw it myself 22 times in that short period. As in I followed the schedule and asked for audios before they got to the stops. Yeah, I know ...)
Next to a cast member means I have reason to believe it might be someone else.
In place of a cast member's name means I really have no clue who is singing (I actually had an audio where Raoul was labeled as one person who I'd seen onstage so often I couldn't mistake the voice ... so I *knew* it wasn't who it was labeled, but never did find out who else it could have been.)
I can't speak for now, but I came across traders back in the early 2000's who were very sloppy about both cast member info and date and location info. If I could still remember all those names, they'd be listed on my traders to avoid page.
What is a "Master"?
You'll see me use this term in a few different ways.
The "master" copy is the original tape of any performance.
The "Master" (person) is the taper themselves.
If one of the first words in my description is "Master" then it's signifying something I taped.
What is Generation Loss?
This is a term you'll see me use for 'older' shows - typically for me, the older Phantom Of The Opera recordings.
Before we had all this stuff on DVD or CD, and were able to trade easily over the internet, traders used VHS and cassette tapes, and snail-mailed everything. In fact, VHS tapes were still popular when I started trading in the early 2000's. Cassette audios were still available, but were being phased out by those of us who had computer knowledge. Slowly around the middle of that decade, DVD videos started becoming the norm, and many of us also started transferring the VHS tapes onto digital formats. But with that began the search for earlier generation tapes.
Generation loss happened with analog media. Every time a tape is copied is a 'generation' off of the master copy. While the first few copies were likely very close to the original, as time goes by and more generations are made, 'loss' starts to happen.
In videos, this is often signified by blurriness, worsening of spot washout, darker quality to the video, and color bleeding. Eventually, this will also lead into color loss, lines across the screen. Some of these were also exacerbated by the fact that not all traders were scrupulous in preparation of their recordings - such as failure to use new media (taping over an old tape), failing to tape in SP mode (EP would mean more able to fit on a tape, but at the loss of quality.
In audios, this is sometimes harder to quantify. Mostly because it's harder to know if an audio that is mono was taped that way or not ... if sound overload had anything to do with the tapers position in the audience ... things like that. Warping of the sound is almost always a generation loss issue. There are others that I'll touch on later. And just like videos, there were traders who used methods that hastened generation loss in audios. See below for an example ...
What is "HSD"?
"HSD" is short for High Speed Dubbing. I will sometimes say an older (pre-2000 typically) audio is a victim of HSD.
For those of you who have never copied a cassette tape ...
Back in the day of dual deck tape recorders, there was a setting called high speed dubbing. Now, I'm thinking that everyone has heard of Alvin and the Chipmunks? Well, when you would put your audio into deck A, and your blank into deck B, and select HSD, then start recording, you'd hear the playback during the record as though Alvin and his brothers were singing your favorite musical.
It was convenient. You could copy more shows in less time.
It was also idiotic. What (I hope) they didn't know in the earliest days, but what became apparant over time, is that when you would HSD enough times, generation loss on an audio would happen faster. This would manifest in a few ways - an audio either sounding at a faster or slower tempo than it should have, warping of the sound, the audio getting 'quieter' with each generation ... I could keep going. By 2000, almost every trader who had a rules list would mention that any cassettes could NOT be high speed dubbed ... and that if you suspected your copy was somewhere along the way you'd better say something!
What are "3 second pauses"
... I'm putting this one in even if I'm not sure I'll be using it. Since I plan on this go around mostly doing online trading. This is another throwback from the days of snail-mail trades, but it was a CD thing. I don't know if burning programs still do this (I haven't burned a disk in a few years now ...) but once upon a time most burning programs if you put a bunch of MP3's onto a disk would insert a pause between the tracks. Yes, a 3 second pause. Now, if you were burning a mix of songs for your car's cd player this wouldn't be much of a hassle, but when you're putting a sung-through show onto a CD and there are these pause between the tracks ... well ... it could be disconcerting.
Again, I don't even know if today's online audios have this problem or not ... since I haven't gotten friendly enough with my new computer's software to listen to a full audio without clicking on each individual track ..........