Digital Earl

I'm looking for decent quality mp3 versions of these radio plays:

First Contact, Exploring Tomorrow, 1957
Second Door, Suspense, 05-06-62
Country of the Blind, Theatre Royal (Theater Royal?), 1950s
Prisoner of the Machines, CBS Radio Mystery Theater, 01-16-80

Download links preferred.

Existing versions that I've found on the net (for example, on the Internet Archive) are pretty awful sounding, so I don't want to post them on my site. Can anyone help? Ty.

Doug Wood

That seems to be an ongoing issue in OTR trading. Some dealers claim to offer "better" files because they are sampled at 128 instead of 64 or lower, but the source they used was 64 or lower, and they just up-converted. If the file they draw from was of marginal quality at any earlier stage, copies made from it will never improve.

(Good luck on your search.)

emruf7

Two versions of "The Second Door" (a 10+ MB and a 20+ MB file) are in a zipped folder downloadable from here:

The download link is: http://sharebee.com/731805c0

Filename: door.zip *

Size: 31.49 MB

Digital Earl

emruf7, so nice of you to post that. Two versions are included, one at 64Kbps and a superior one at 128Kbps --though even the 64Kbps file sounds pretty darn good and far better than anything I've been able to find on the net. Thanks so much! Also, it's a great episode. Recommended by Ray Bradbury, no less, and that's why I was looking for it.

Doug, exactly. Re-encoding an already-compressed mp3 = badness. It can be iffy even if you know what you're doing. I assume that swirly drizzly thin sound you hear in many OTR mp3's is from being carelessly "stepped on" in this way, and perhaps more than once. Yikes.