Many Progressive tracks are over the 10 minute mark and contain varied moods and themes. Obviously it is not possible to capture all of these in a sample therefore in an attempt to give a flavour of the band most samples are around the 2 minute mark.
To maintain a small (relatively speaking) file size the sound samples are encoded (using SoundForge 4.5) at 18 kbit/s 11,025 Hz Stereo MPEG-Level 3 although still keeping the WAV file extension. These files play in Windows Media Player and WinAmp without any problems. Please remember that due to the low sampling rates that the quality of the sound is nowhere near that of the CDs and there is a fuzziness to the sound. Despite these drawbacks the samples achieve their objective in giving a taste of the bands music. The newer samples are encoded at 24kbit/s (to reflect faster modem speeds) to give a better sound quality although still well below CD quality they also have the mp3 extension.

Note: although the original albums are given many of these tracks are taken from alternative versions that appeared on the Samplers.