I know we ( our ears) are spoiled these days....

Ive been going through quite a few pre 2002 live sets, like 1990s to about 2001. I have to say, alot have pretty awful sound quality with some exceptions. Of course alot were recorded on cassette or bootlegged.

Most everything from Digweed's kiss100/transitions, show and the ones some of the folks here have painstakingly ripped from old media and maybe cleaned them up a bit are amongst the better ones. Those sound just fine but alot of stuff I probably couldnt even tolerate how it would sound compared to newer sets. Also makes you really appreciate the commerically released mix cds that came out then.

You´re right! I like the commercial releases due to their good audio quality. I remember back in those days, most sets were in mp3 at 128kbps, and that´s a crappy sound quality. With the evolution of internet bandwide and storage capacity, you can easily upload your sets in wav or flac quality. Even if you compare commercial releases from 1998-2003 with the actual ones, you´ll hear big audio differences.

Yep 128kbps mp3 were "acceptable" at the time but really arent very easy to enjoy. I guess this was part of the thinking behind Sasha and John doing the first Renaissance mix album and other subsequent mix cd series. Everything was mostly shitty quality bootlegged tapes up to that point, and then later low quality mp3. I do remember around 2002, most sets from then on were usually better quality and at least 192kbps. That was far better. I wonder if portable recording tech also had improved around then.

I am so glad now we are getting 320kbps, wav or flac sets. Huge difference. And big thanks to those who were able to convert some of those old tapes and DATs to 320kbps and be able to really enjoy it the best we can.

Go back and listen to records from 20-25 years ago, a lot of them sound like ass now. Mastering has come a long way as well.