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Manlio
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Quote Manlio Replybullet Topic: FSI Italian courses purchased: seller warning
    Posted: 25 October 2008 at 8:58pm
Since (1) the upload of the audio files for the Italian Programmed Course Vol. 1 appears to be "stalled indefinitely" (like all else; no status updates have occurred since March last year - or even longer ago) and since (2) no response has been received, after many weeks, from the creator of this website (I hope that he is "still around" and at good health) in answer to an e-mail where assistance with the "digitization" was offered, I last evening purchased both the Italian F.A.S.T. course and Italian Programmed Vol. 1, from

www.FSI-Italian.com

After paying 97 dollars (plus an additional 25 dollars of VAT, that foreign customers like myself actually should NOT pay, and which is NOT mentioned until you see the final screen from Clickbank where you authorize the purchase), you get a download of MP3:s and PDF:s. Even though other companies charge more - but give you physical copies of both text and recordings, on CD or DVD - it is still very expensive considering what you get.

True, these courses are hard to find, these days, but the PDF:s are of low resolution - almost too low for the F.A.S.T. course to make a printout feasible - and the MP3:s for the Programmed Course, in particular, sound like they were "recorded underwater", indicating a severe error made in analog-to-digital conversion, in compression of the sound files etc.

The sound distortion is actually so extreme that it makes some of the files barely possible to use for learning purposes. This is in some contrast with the following, that you read before paying and making the download:

"This is the exact same FSI Programmatic Italian course  sold on websites such as  MultiLingualBooks.com for $245.00. Ooops . . . there is one major difference.
The original FSI Programmatic Italian lessons were created before the age of digital technology. So the sound quality of the original FSI Programmatic Italian lessons wasn’t the greatest. But we have taken the original FSI Programmatic Italian One into a state-of-the-art New York City recording studio and we “re-mastered” the original recordings – We have “re-mastered” them  with digital sound quality. We did all this so that you can have the best sound quality possible." (Italics and boldface added by me.)

I strongly doubt that there was anything wrong with the original recordings, I doubt that the quality of the tapes provided by MultiLingualBooks.com should be even worse than that for what I today purchased, and it is simply a lie that good recordings were not made before the era of digital recordings. (The Programmed Course appeared in 1976.) The garbage that you hear is simply the result of a very, very poor transfer, folllowed by even worse digital "mastering". No serious recording studio or even an amateur sound engineer would want their names mentioned in association with these horrible audio files.

The sound is only slightly better with the F.A.S.T. course, which appeared in 1992 - when digital recordings were certainly available. I have no idea if the F.A.S.T. course was recorded digitally, but the recent date of 1992 again indicates that liberties have been taken rather generously about being truthful in the quote above.

Also, two of the files are so badly corrupted that VLC allows for playback only of the first 30 seconds of so, with an actual duration of about 30 minutes. Since the file sizes in these cases are less than 1 MB, the problem should have been spotted by the company immediately; the fact that is was not indicates a carelessness that is consistent with the general impression.

I give one final example of that carelessness, which perhaps is the worst and most important:

After making the purchase, two things happen: (1) You are redirected to a webpage where you can download the files (one by one, which takes a long while; you have to download close to a hundred files with almost 2 GB of data; a single RAR-file etc. should have been offered instead) and (2) you also receive an e-mail with a link to a page where you can make the downloads. The link in the e-mail is incorrect - which means that if you shut down the browser after paying, perhaps you will never get those downloads! You will then have wasted your money for nothing. (Actually, there is a further error. You get login-details after making the purchase on a preliminary screen, that you never need later.)

I will provide the company with my opinions soon; all we can do is hope that it will result in an improved product. I will post information here regarding any improvements that come to my knowledge regarding the issues mentioned above.

Summary: If you really, really need these courses, then pay. But now you know what you get and you know how to avoid not getting the downloads after paying.

P.S. Feedback regarding my English is always appreciated, so that I can improve upon it.


Edited by Manlio - 26 October 2008 at 3:30pm
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Manlio
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Quote Manlio Replybullet Posted: 26 October 2008 at 3:33pm
An e-mail has been received from the company which states that improvements can be expected, in response to my e-mail. As promised, I will keep everyone informed about pertinent changes that come to my knowledge.
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DemiPuppet
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Quote DemiPuppet Replybullet Posted: 26 October 2008 at 4:40pm
Note that at least in the US a person can buy the Barron's books version of the Italian Programmed course with soft-cover book and 15 CD audio disks for $65.66 from Amazon.com (search for "Mastering Italian: with 15 Compact Discs (Audio CD)". I'm told this is the same as the FSI course with some slight additions.

Multilingual Books has "Fast Italian" in an MP3 version for $75.


 
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