One more thing. Why is there no loss protection or re-download option for purchased tracks. I am an Audible subscriber (which is a great service, by the way), and all my downloads are kept in an area called "My Library". I don't have to keep my archived books on my hard drive. I can re-download them anytime I like. I never have to worry about losing my investment in audio books. It is a great system and I wonder why iTMS does not employ such a system. That would eliminate one of the major hassles and concerns of using iTMS.
Question. How will iTMS ever improve in sound quality?
Yes, to improve sound-quality they would have to re-encode all those tracks from the original source. I don't think it is *that* expensive/time-consuming in the big scheme of things. I know that CDBaby has all it's albums backed up as .flac files so it can transcode them easily to whatever format is needed by online stores. Getting them from the CD to .flac was the hard bit. I imagine the big players have similar systems in place for digitising their content.
I would think the number one consideration is the iPod because that is what the iTMS is really selling, so space and size will always be important particularly in the way it impacts battery life. There is a lossless Mpeg 4 audio encoder being developed but it wont be ready for about a year, and even when it is finished I can't see Apple liking the extra complexity of having two versions of a song in iTunes on your computer (one for portable listening) or selling two different bitrates in iTMS.
Also the listening tests that the AAC developers carried out showed what they would probably call 'CD-quality' (not a term I like personally) at 128kbps. In fact you could probably say that AAC was designed for 128kbps, just as newer AAC techs like AAC-HE are designed for around the 64kbps range so it's probably not correct to describe 128kbps per second as a "low" bitrate in AAC terms.
Nero claims transparency for its AAC encoder at 180-210kbps VBR which isn't any better than LAME -aps despite the inherent advantages of AAC so you can see that there has been less focus on tweaking the high end.
I personally can't really see Apple ever increasing the bitrate, though never is a long time. Also that doesn't mean the quality won't improve. According to one of the engineers working on Apple's AAC the last few releases have contained no work aimed at improving quality and yet Apple's implementation is still considered the best at 128kbps (even allowing for competitors that use VBR). Probably the biggest threat is the other stores playing the numbers game and it turning out like Intel vs. Motorola all over again.
Nope Eugene. To me a promise is a promise and when I promised never to voice an opinion again about iTMS that doesn't accord with everybody else's, that's precisely what I meant. However, as I see the next charge will be that I'm opting out because I don't have a response, I'll explain my reasons for refusing to continue to play the game.
Firstly, I'm finding it a bit trying and difficult to argue with several people at once who are making a variety of different points. I find it too hard to know which one to focus on especially when you don't agree between yourselves on every point. For example, back on page one, a_greer says previews are to distinguish between the same song recorded by different artists but later on the same page you seem to argue that they are designed to allow you to try before you buy.
Secondly, you make comments like this
Quote:
Contrary to whatever your belief may be, the buying public barely complains about paying up to $20 for a CD.
and this
Quote:
I used p2p to try music before deciding to buy it. In fact, before I discovered MP3s, Scour.net and Napster, I owned 3 CDs total. Now I have several hundred at least. But yes, I was not adverse to buying music before, just like most other p2p users.
Which sound an awful lot like "your opinion" based on "your mindset". And then in your very next post, dismiss my comments with
Quote:
Circle of friends. You obviously belong to one mindset, so your friends are likely of the same mindset.
Thirdly, in regard to some issues, for instance characteristics of file sharers, as far as I can tell we're actually pretty much in agreement and yet you've still replied as if there's some sort of challenge going on. I've read back through this thread several times to see if I can pick up on something I've missed. But I'm still left with the feeling you either haven't read parts of my posts carefully or you've misunderstood my meaning. And yet it seems pretty clear to me and I can't think of a way to make it clearer.
Fourthly, both you and others have failed as far as I'm concerned to present your case particularly well and have chosen to hide behind weak arguments that are guaranteed to lead nowhere. The most glaring example being this one from hmurchison
Quote:
Your comments to the effect of " I don't much care for the deal even at $9.99 which is why I haven't bought any music from iTMS to date." renders you're conclusion moot. You've admitted that you don't use the service so basically your the last person that people who use iTMS will depend on for salient information. You view that iTMS is a novelty which will diminish over time is fair but have never tried the service so you only offer weak supposition and conjecture. Try the service...see how it moves you and then make a conclusion.
Not directed at me in this case but it doesn't leave Mac Voyer with much room to move. Although I thought the counter argument a winner myself.
Finally, and this isn't directed at just you (although I still don't know what that broken record comment meant) but I've had enough of copping everything from this
Quote:
Oh, so the basis of your criticism is that since iTMS isn't the most perfect solution conceivable, it's worthless and it deserves to fail.
Noted.
(what keeping report cards now are we Amorph) to this
Quote:
I think you'll find the argument went downhill when you presented a totally incoherent argument against the iTMS and accused anyone who disagreed with you of being an Apple bigot
Frankly, people who try to put words in my mouth or who try to tell me what I should think just piss me off. Although, I guess to stupider.....like a fox's credit, he did dish it out to alcimedes eventually. But then it would have started to look a little odd if he hadn't.
Quote:
That is such a *ridiculous* statement.
So you've never bought anything but the highest quality item available, regardless of any other factor? No wonder you've not bought many CDs lately.
To state that you've never paid any money (never mind a premium, which you could probably argue iTMS is charging) for convenience, availability, time-savings or choice at the expense of audio quality puts you firmly in the ranting audiophile category.
But I don't think you mind being put in that box and at least you haven't tried to claim that the average person cares about audio 'quality' as much as you. In fact you probably look down on people without the taste, sophistication, and $10,000 stereo necessary to realise that all psycho-acoustically compressed music sounds like 'crap'.
Still looks like I might have copped another back-handed swipe in there again. I never realized I had such an ability to piss people off without even trying.
Oh and before you give me the "too thin skinned" treatment, I'm perfectly confident of my ability to crush balls from a very great distance but I prefer not to because I know I'm pretty uncouth and unattractive when doing it and I figure I should behave better in polite company.
And the bottom line is it's not actually important to me whether you agree with me or not.
To state that you've never paid any money (never mind a premium, which you could probably argue iTMS is charging) for convenience, availability, time-savings or choice at the expense of audio quality puts you firmly in the ranting audiophile category.
no, it puts me squarely in the camp of "if i pay money for music, i'm not going to do it for inferior quality". if i want convenience, availability, time-savings or choice, iTMS is not the best choice any way. P2P is.
more songs, more versions, better quality, more choice. the only thing the iTMS would have in it's favor on that list is time-savings. of course, that only applies for the songs that the iTMS actually has. every other category goes to P2P. (other than legality)
as for iTMS quality, at high volumes, the distortion is more noticeable. bass distortion is obvious. where an uncompressed file will have tight hits, low encoded files sound sloppy. same thing happens on the high end.
it's the same thing where some people are happy with VCD's, other people want DVD quality. i'm sure as hell not going to pay more for a VCD over a DVD though.
no, it puts me squarely in the camp of "if i pay money for music, i'm not going to do it for inferior quality".
...
if i want convenience, availability, time-savings or choice, iTMS is not the best choice any way. P2P is.
more songs, more versions, better quality, more choice. the only thing the iTMS would have in it's favor on that list is time-savings. of course, that only applies for the songs that the iTMS actually has. every other category goes to P2P. (other than legality)
Yeah, that's what I said. You've decided that 'uncompressed' CD audio is good enough for you even though it's not the best quality available and that all 'compressed' music necessarily sounds 'crap/inferior' and therefore you won't pay money for it at all, an extremely black and white view.
It's interesting that you say (sort of vaguely) that you'd buy DVDs rather than VCDs depending on the price. So despite both being compressed in the exact same way as AAC and MP3 (and therefore automatically being 'crap/inferior') you find them both worth paying for.
The only time you'd rule out the VCD is if there was a DVD cheaper or at the same price. This is a much less extreme stance, but totally ignores all the differences between a physical CD and a track by track download which don't exist when comparing DVD and VCD. I assume you'd happily buy a downloadable VCD file if you only wanted one particular episode of a series that would cost you 99c rather than pay $10-15 for the entire series on a physical DVD.
...
On the almost totally seperate topic of iTMS vs. P2P, you must be using different P2P apps/networks from me. I find locating relatively rare music a pain in the bum. Overall, I'd say P2P currently loses on convenience, legality, easy previews, time-saving and paying the artist (though only just in the case of most RIAA bands) and I'd score it a draw for finding rare stuff and actually being able to download it successfully. Whether those add up to 99 cents worth of your time and trouble is obviously debatable and varies on a song by song basis.
I'm fairly sure that iTMS is the best way to confirm the title and artist of a song when someone says "what's that one that goes blah de blah", 10 seconds later ... "you mean this one", "yeah that's it". Oh also, not being bombarded with incestous porn is a benefit in some circumstances.
...
So to sum up, I think the iTMS, like Cassettes, Minidiscs (yes,I know they didn't catch on in the US), CD singles, Box Sets, Limited edition 24-karat gold CDs, and even P2P bootlegging, has a found a niche in the music industry. I'm not demanding anyone buy all their music from iTMS any more than I think you should all buy limited edition box sets or stop buying CD singles because you can get the entire album for a few bucks more and the remixes are always rubbish.
I *would* ask that anyone offering their armchair CEO opinions on iTMS give me more than "I don't like it" or "I won't use it" because, although you're entitled to your own subjective opinion, you're not convincing me that iTMS is a flop because the audiophile-I-only-just-accepted-CDs-but-prefer-SACD-or-DVD-Audio market and the penniless-student-with-free-high-speed-broadband-and -time-on-their-hands market aren't flocking to buy from it.
Maybe some of you are too tired to read stupider...likeafox's post. I'll paraphrase it for you guys. "Stop being ridiculous. If what you value is anything different from what I value, you are wrong."
You've decided that 'uncompressed' CD audio is good enough for you even though it's not the best quality available and that all 'compressed' music necessarily sounds 'crap/inferior' and therefore you won't pay money for it at all
no, what i've said is that the iTMS level of compression (128kbit) sounds like crap and i won't pay for it.
at 256k most stuff sounds just fine to me, and you don't get the massive distortions.
128kbit is poor quality, plain and simple. anything better than laptop style speakers make that obvious. someone who's half deaf could blind test 128kbit and 256kbit and tell you which is which. to me that's an indicator that 128kbit is obviously inferior and unacceptable.
"Stop being ridiculous. If what you value is anything different from what I value, you are wrong."
I think you must be tired, or you suck at paraphrasing. Try: "Stop being ridiculous. If you think that what you value is the only thing important for the commercial success of a product or service, you are wrong."
If what *I* valued decided whether the iTMS succeeded then it would fail, as I prefer losslessly encoded audio so that I can transcode it into different formats, which iTMS doesn't provide. Why are *you* so special that your custom can make or break a service?
massive distortions ... 128kbit is poor quality, plain and simple ... anything better than laptop style speakers make that obvious ... someone who's half deaf could blind test 128kbit and 256kbit and tell you which is which ... obviously inferior and unacceptable.
Now this stuff I have a particular beef with. I'm glad you've clarified exactly what bitrates you find 'crap' but anyone who makes wild accusations about compressed audio and justifies it with a comment about owning expensive stereo equipment or being a musician/recording engineer immediately trips my audiophile BS meter.
According to this summary of this report the BBC, NHK and MIT Media lab have done extensive listening tests and disagree with your conclusions. Obviously their results can't invalidate your claims about your own hearing and subjective response, but I think they clearly blow your generalisations about other people's reactions out the water.
Quote:
Is the performance of the coding of AAC codecs at the tested bitrate distinguishable from the original signal?
Sections 10.7 and 11 show that there is a statistical difference between the source and coded items, both overall and for some specific items. However, there were a large number of items for which no difference was recorded."
Is the performance of AAC codecs at the tested bitrate achieving ?indistinguishable quality? in the EBU definition of that phrase?
paraphrasing: yes.
Is the following requirement of ITU-R Recommendation BS.1115 [5] fulfilled? "For emission, the most critical material for the codecs must be such that the degradation may be 'perceptible but not annoying' (grade 4)"
AAC Main Profile at 128 kbps passes this criterion. [The average for AAC Low Complexity at 128kbps i.e. iTMS is slightly below 'perciptable but not annoying' but the confidence interval doesn't go as low as 'slightly annoying']
Looks like you have great hearing, congratulations! But it also looks like you're wrong about everyone else's experiences with AAC.
Actually, I was very ra ra ra about iTMS when it first started up. But I did a complete reversal on a lot of my views and as it happens, Barto was instrumental in making me consider the issue from different perspectives (although he didn't know that until now).
Must be something about his eloquent debating style.
I always assumed you were the "special" one in this forum.
Barto
Surprisingly, as I live in the UK, I actually own that exact (or an incredibly similar) Charlotte Hornets T-Shirt. I don't remember that photo being taken though.
Comments
Originally posted by Mac Voyer
Question. How will iTMS ever improve in sound quality?
Yes, to improve sound-quality they would have to re-encode all those tracks from the original source. I don't think it is *that* expensive/time-consuming in the big scheme of things. I know that CDBaby has all it's albums backed up as .flac files so it can transcode them easily to whatever format is needed by online stores. Getting them from the CD to .flac was the hard bit. I imagine the big players have similar systems in place for digitising their content.
I would think the number one consideration is the iPod because that is what the iTMS is really selling, so space and size will always be important particularly in the way it impacts battery life. There is a lossless Mpeg 4 audio encoder being developed but it wont be ready for about a year, and even when it is finished I can't see Apple liking the extra complexity of having two versions of a song in iTunes on your computer (one for portable listening) or selling two different bitrates in iTMS.
Also the listening tests that the AAC developers carried out showed what they would probably call 'CD-quality' (not a term I like personally) at 128kbps. In fact you could probably say that AAC was designed for 128kbps, just as newer AAC techs like AAC-HE are designed for around the 64kbps range so it's probably not correct to describe 128kbps per second as a "low" bitrate in AAC terms.
Nero claims transparency for its AAC encoder at 180-210kbps VBR which isn't any better than LAME -aps despite the inherent advantages of AAC so you can see that there has been less focus on tweaking the high end.
I personally can't really see Apple ever increasing the bitrate, though never is a long time. Also that doesn't mean the quality won't improve. According to one of the engineers working on Apple's AAC the last few releases have contained no work aimed at improving quality and yet Apple's implementation is still considered the best at 128kbps (even allowing for competitors that use VBR). Probably the biggest threat is the other stores playing the numbers game and it turning out like Intel vs. Motorola all over again.
Originally posted by Eugene
Don't watch. Respond.
Please.
Nope Eugene. To me a promise is a promise and when I promised never to voice an opinion again about iTMS that doesn't accord with everybody else's, that's precisely what I meant. However, as I see the next charge will be that I'm opting out because I don't have a response, I'll explain my reasons for refusing to continue to play the game.
Firstly, I'm finding it a bit trying and difficult to argue with several people at once who are making a variety of different points. I find it too hard to know which one to focus on especially when you don't agree between yourselves on every point. For example, back on page one, a_greer says previews are to distinguish between the same song recorded by different artists but later on the same page you seem to argue that they are designed to allow you to try before you buy.
Secondly, you make comments like this
Contrary to whatever your belief may be, the buying public barely complains about paying up to $20 for a CD.
and this
I used p2p to try music before deciding to buy it. In fact, before I discovered MP3s, Scour.net and Napster, I owned 3 CDs total. Now I have several hundred at least. But yes, I was not adverse to buying music before, just like most other p2p users.
Which sound an awful lot like "your opinion" based on "your mindset". And then in your very next post, dismiss my comments with
Circle of friends. You obviously belong to one mindset, so your friends are likely of the same mindset.
Thirdly, in regard to some issues, for instance characteristics of file sharers, as far as I can tell we're actually pretty much in agreement and yet you've still replied as if there's some sort of challenge going on. I've read back through this thread several times to see if I can pick up on something I've missed. But I'm still left with the feeling you either haven't read parts of my posts carefully or you've misunderstood my meaning. And yet it seems pretty clear to me and I can't think of a way to make it clearer.
Fourthly, both you and others have failed as far as I'm concerned to present your case particularly well and have chosen to hide behind weak arguments that are guaranteed to lead nowhere. The most glaring example being this one from hmurchison
Your comments to the effect of " I don't much care for the deal even at $9.99 which is why I haven't bought any music from iTMS to date." renders you're conclusion moot. You've admitted that you don't use the service so basically your the last person that people who use iTMS will depend on for salient information. You view that iTMS is a novelty which will diminish over time is fair but have never tried the service so you only offer weak supposition and conjecture. Try the service...see how it moves you and then make a conclusion.
Not directed at me in this case but it doesn't leave Mac Voyer with much room to move. Although I thought the counter argument a winner myself.
Finally, and this isn't directed at just you (although I still don't know what that broken record comment meant) but I've had enough of copping everything from this
Oh, so the basis of your criticism is that since iTMS isn't the most perfect solution conceivable, it's worthless and it deserves to fail.
Noted.
(what keeping report cards now are we Amorph) to this
I think you'll find the argument went downhill when you presented a totally incoherent argument against the iTMS and accused anyone who disagreed with you of being an Apple bigot
Frankly, people who try to put words in my mouth or who try to tell me what I should think just piss me off. Although, I guess to stupider.....like a fox's credit, he did dish it out to alcimedes eventually. But then it would have started to look a little odd if he hadn't.
That is such a *ridiculous* statement.
So you've never bought anything but the highest quality item available, regardless of any other factor? No wonder you've not bought many CDs lately.
To state that you've never paid any money (never mind a premium, which you could probably argue iTMS is charging) for convenience, availability, time-savings or choice at the expense of audio quality puts you firmly in the ranting audiophile category.
But I don't think you mind being put in that box and at least you haven't tried to claim that the average person cares about audio 'quality' as much as you. In fact you probably look down on people without the taste, sophistication, and $10,000 stereo necessary to realise that all psycho-acoustically compressed music sounds like 'crap'.
Still looks like I might have copped another back-handed swipe in there again. I never realized I had such an ability to piss people off without even trying.
Oh and before you give me the "too thin skinned" treatment, I'm perfectly confident of my ability to crush balls from a very great distance but I prefer not to because I know I'm pretty uncouth and unattractive when doing it and I figure I should behave better in polite company.
And the bottom line is it's not actually important to me whether you agree with me or not.
To state that you've never paid any money (never mind a premium, which you could probably argue iTMS is charging) for convenience, availability, time-savings or choice at the expense of audio quality puts you firmly in the ranting audiophile category.
no, it puts me squarely in the camp of "if i pay money for music, i'm not going to do it for inferior quality". if i want convenience, availability, time-savings or choice, iTMS is not the best choice any way. P2P is.
more songs, more versions, better quality, more choice. the only thing the iTMS would have in it's favor on that list is time-savings. of course, that only applies for the songs that the iTMS actually has. every other category goes to P2P. (other than legality)
as for iTMS quality, at high volumes, the distortion is more noticeable. bass distortion is obvious. where an uncompressed file will have tight hits, low encoded files sound sloppy. same thing happens on the high end.
it's the same thing where some people are happy with VCD's, other people want DVD quality. i'm sure as hell not going to pay more for a VCD over a DVD though.
Originally posted by alcimedes
no, it puts me squarely in the camp of "if i pay money for music, i'm not going to do it for inferior quality".
...
if i want convenience, availability, time-savings or choice, iTMS is not the best choice any way. P2P is.
more songs, more versions, better quality, more choice. the only thing the iTMS would have in it's favor on that list is time-savings. of course, that only applies for the songs that the iTMS actually has. every other category goes to P2P. (other than legality)
Yeah, that's what I said. You've decided that 'uncompressed' CD audio is good enough for you even though it's not the best quality available and that all 'compressed' music necessarily sounds 'crap/inferior' and therefore you won't pay money for it at all, an extremely black and white view.
It's interesting that you say (sort of vaguely) that you'd buy DVDs rather than VCDs depending on the price. So despite both being compressed in the exact same way as AAC and MP3 (and therefore automatically being 'crap/inferior') you find them both worth paying for.
The only time you'd rule out the VCD is if there was a DVD cheaper or at the same price. This is a much less extreme stance, but totally ignores all the differences between a physical CD and a track by track download which don't exist when comparing DVD and VCD. I assume you'd happily buy a downloadable VCD file if you only wanted one particular episode of a series that would cost you 99c rather than pay $10-15 for the entire series on a physical DVD.
...
On the almost totally seperate topic of iTMS vs. P2P, you must be using different P2P apps/networks from me. I find locating relatively rare music a pain in the bum. Overall, I'd say P2P currently loses on convenience, legality, easy previews, time-saving and paying the artist (though only just in the case of most RIAA bands) and I'd score it a draw for finding rare stuff and actually being able to download it successfully. Whether those add up to 99 cents worth of your time and trouble is obviously debatable and varies on a song by song basis.
I'm fairly sure that iTMS is the best way to confirm the title and artist of a song when someone says "what's that one that goes blah de blah", 10 seconds later ... "you mean this one", "yeah that's it". Oh also, not being bombarded with incestous porn is a benefit in some circumstances.
...
So to sum up, I think the iTMS, like Cassettes, Minidiscs (yes,I know they didn't catch on in the US), CD singles, Box Sets, Limited edition 24-karat gold CDs, and even P2P bootlegging, has a found a niche in the music industry. I'm not demanding anyone buy all their music from iTMS any more than I think you should all buy limited edition box sets or stop buying CD singles because you can get the entire album for a few bucks more and the remixes are always rubbish.
I *would* ask that anyone offering their armchair CEO opinions on iTMS give me more than "I don't like it" or "I won't use it" because, although you're entitled to your own subjective opinion, you're not convincing me that iTMS is a flop because the audiophile-I-only-just-accepted-CDs-but-prefer-SACD-or-DVD-Audio market and the penniless-student-with-free-high-speed-broadband-and -time-on-their-hands market aren't flocking to buy from it.
Barto
You've decided that 'uncompressed' CD audio is good enough for you even though it's not the best quality available and that all 'compressed' music necessarily sounds 'crap/inferior' and therefore you won't pay money for it at all
no, what i've said is that the iTMS level of compression (128kbit) sounds like crap and i won't pay for it.
at 256k most stuff sounds just fine to me, and you don't get the massive distortions.
128kbit is poor quality, plain and simple. anything better than laptop style speakers make that obvious. someone who's half deaf could blind test 128kbit and 256kbit and tell you which is which. to me that's an indicator that 128kbit is obviously inferior and unacceptable.
Originally posted by Barto
"Stop being ridiculous. If what you value is anything different from what I value, you are wrong."
I think you must be tired, or you suck at paraphrasing. Try: "Stop being ridiculous. If you think that what you value is the only thing important for the commercial success of a product or service, you are wrong."
If what *I* valued decided whether the iTMS succeeded then it would fail, as I prefer losslessly encoded audio so that I can transcode it into different formats, which iTMS doesn't provide. Why are *you* so special that your custom can make or break a service?
Originally posted by alcimedes
massive distortions ... 128kbit is poor quality, plain and simple ... anything better than laptop style speakers make that obvious ... someone who's half deaf could blind test 128kbit and 256kbit and tell you which is which ... obviously inferior and unacceptable.
Now this stuff I have a particular beef with. I'm glad you've clarified exactly what bitrates you find 'crap' but anyone who makes wild accusations about compressed audio and justifies it with a comment about owning expensive stereo equipment or being a musician/recording engineer immediately trips my audiophile BS meter.
According to this summary of this report the BBC, NHK and MIT Media lab have done extensive listening tests and disagree with your conclusions. Obviously their results can't invalidate your claims about your own hearing and subjective response, but I think they clearly blow your generalisations about other people's reactions out the water.
Is the performance of the coding of AAC codecs at the tested bitrate distinguishable from the original signal?
Sections 10.7 and 11 show that there is a statistical difference between the source and coded items, both overall and for some specific items. However, there were a large number of items for which no difference was recorded."
Is the performance of AAC codecs at the tested bitrate achieving ?indistinguishable quality? in the EBU definition of that phrase?
paraphrasing: yes.
Is the following requirement of ITU-R Recommendation BS.1115 [5] fulfilled? "For emission, the most critical material for the codecs must be such that the degradation may be 'perceptible but not annoying' (grade 4)"
AAC Main Profile at 128 kbps passes this criterion. [The average for AAC Low Complexity at 128kbps i.e. iTMS is slightly below 'perciptable but not annoying' but the confidence interval doesn't go as low as 'slightly annoying']
Looks like you have great hearing, congratulations! But it also looks like you're wrong about everyone else's experiences with AAC.
Originally posted by stupider...likeafox
Why are *you* so special that your custom can make or break a service?
I always assumed you were the "special" one in this forum.
Barto
Must be something about his eloquent debating style.
What a champ.
Originally posted by crazychester
Must be something about his eloquent debating style.
I try my best
Originally posted by Barto
I always assumed you were the "special" one in this forum.
Barto
Surprisingly, as I live in the UK, I actually own that exact (or an incredibly similar) Charlotte Hornets T-Shirt. I don't remember that photo being taken though.