Black Sabbath - 1971-01-14 - Sheffield, UK (AUD/FLAC)

(Audience FLAC)

Oval Hall, City Hall*
VG+ audience recording
"Sheffield '71" version

Ozzy Osbourne – Vocals
Tony Iommi – Guitar
Geezer Butler – Bass
Bill Ward – Drums

01) War Pigs (07:18)
02) Into The Void (alt. lyrics) (07:14)
03) Iron Man (07:10)
04) Guitar Intro (01:49)
05) Black Sabbath (07:37)
06) After Forever (alt. lyrics) (05:43)
07) Wicked World (12:59)
08) Fairies Wear Boots (06:50)
09) Paranoid (02:45)

Running time: 59:26 min

This recording is famous, especially for including great early live renditions of the rarely recorded tracks "Into The Void" and "After Forever". Thanks to the original uploader! Since some people said that this show was lossy-sourced, I checked and compared aboout 8 versions of it regarding their sound, running times, spectral and frequency images. Thanks to all those who sent me their versions for testing, and of course to those who advised me in lossiness testing! Most of those versions were completely identical. This is one of them. They all originate from the famous "Sheffield '71" bootleg which was sourced directly from the master tape, see quoted info below. Regrettably, I removed the 54 sec. snipped of the 1969 demo song "When I Came Down" that was originally included here as bonus track. Sorry for that, I have no idea why I did it. Maybe somebody else can upload it?

Regarding the often discussed lossiness issue: As I mentioned above, I tested a lot of versions of this show. While there exists a version that is clear lossy-sourced without ambiguity (probably sourced from 128K MP3), this (much wider circulated) version is a more complicate case. To make a long story short: After all the tests I am now sure that this is lossless. Though it was said that it is directly from the master and definitely lossless when it started to circulate, it shows a frequency cut-off that might indicate lossy lineage; however, the cut-off might also just indicate that the source tape didn't include much sound above 15 kHz (due to the specific charecteristics of the tape or the recording device that was used). Since the spectral image (as shown by the software Cool Edit Pro, which does this job much better than Exact Audio Copy) zoomed to 2 seconds shows NONE of the "lego blocks" that are typical for lossy-sourced recordings, and no straight, clear-cut boarder between the black and the blue areas either, some people who are much more experts in these issues than I am concluded that this is lossless.