Quality Rating

• Audio:

• Below are the rough workings behind the sound quality rating system on the website. I try to be as accurate and consistent as I can. That said, quality ratings are my own opinions on the recordings and shouldn't be considered as any final judgements:

• A : This is reserved almost exclusively for tv and radio broadcasts. Recordings given this rating are as good as studio recordings and a pleasure to listen to.

• B: This is the standard for the best audience recordings. Recordings given this rating are very good to listen to taking into account that a little reverb may be present.

• C: This is for average audience recordings. These are still listenable but will have some defect in the sound such as hiss, vibrations, static or being muffled.

• D: These are poor quality audience recordings. By this stage listening to the recording is a bit of a chore. The recordings will be filled with screeches, hissing, muffled sounds and anything else imaginable.

• E: A motorbike engine on full rev sounds more like a rock concert than anything that achieves this ranking.

• Video:

• I attempt to provide screenshots for all videos detailed on the site. Screenshots are only a rough guide to the actual video quality. Sometimes they are a little blurred and the image compression reduces the sharpness a bit but on the whole they are a decent representation of the image. Video quality is rated out of 10, the breakdown is roughly as follows:

• 10/10: excellent quality - usually from master vhs tapes or digital tv to dvd recordings.

• 7/10+ : very good quality - almost as good as a master recording, a common standard

• 5/10+ : good quality - still very watchable with good image

• 3/10+ : average quality - not particularly watchable, more for the completists

• 0/10+ : poor quality - terrible image on-screen; don't watch it!