Buy CD or high res download?

[philpot1001]

Normally I'm an out and out CD / vynyl purchaser however I've noticed you can purchase high res downloads supposedly better than CD quality! Has anyone used these? What's the over riding opinion? I think it would have to be pretty conclusive for me to err away from buying a physical product as I like collecting too

 

[record_spot]

Normally I'm an out and out CD / vynyl purchaser however I've noticed you can purchase high res downloads supposedly better than CD quality! Has anyone used these? What's the over riding opinion? I think it would have to be pretty conclusive for me to err away from buying a physical product as I like collecting too

Depends on the mastering for me. Chances are it'd need to be special. Some issues have been known over the validity of some releases, but otherwise, they're an alternative option that might be worth considering. Cost, however can be a factor.

 

[tino]

If the CD is much cheaper, buy the CD. The large price difference is more significant than the very small quality difference. Also owning a physical copy means you can resell it, give it away, dispose of it as you please, unlike some downloads.

 

[steve_1979]

Some hi-rez downloads use differently master versions of the music which can sound different to the CD version.

 

[MajorFubar]

Some hi-rez downloads use differently master versions of the music which can sound different to the CD version.

+1 This. If for a second we ignore digital watermarking which blights some [legal] HD downloads, the only audible differences you will EVER hear between a HD download and CD will be if the two come from different masters. This however is fairly common, particularly with digital transcriptions from old analogue masters, ie more or less everything pre-1980 and most titles pre-1990. For a start I've totally lost track of how many different masters of Rumours I've heard, and that's just on digital media like CDs, DVD-A and various remasters thereof.

 

[Thompsonuxb]

Buy the CD.....

Support the CD format. Own it!

 

[iMark]

Buy the CD.....

Support the CD format. Own it!

If you buy a download, you own the track. You can even burn your own discs with tracks you've downloaded.

 

[BigH]

I tried some Hi Res and could not tell the difference. But some are masterted differently, so I would check, Hoffman forum is quite useful for finding out best versions. Generally I would buy the cd, then you can rip it if you want to play it via computer.

 

[LDTM]

It seems that a lot of companies are starting to look at hi-resolution audio. There are arguments to be made on the grounds of convenience and 'perhaps' sonic advantages - although I would argue that the quality of the mastering and recording itself offers far more emotive influence than simply the bit-rate.The cynic in me also contends that part of the reason for such recent developments is that it reduces manufacturing overheads and hence is more profitable. That of course is pure conjecture, but there you are.

I for one will be sticking to CDs. You have the right to make digital copies, you have the physical media should anything untoward happen to your hardware, and a great big wall full of CDs is far more complement-inducing than a long list of filenames. Next question. *biggrin*

 

[kmlav]

I would say a bit of both.

Right now there is not a huge amount of Studio Master content out there and most of the material is at CD quality so normally I would buy the CD then rip it to my NAS and put it in a box as a back up.

 

[Thompsonuxb]

Buy the CD.....

Support the CD format. Own it!

If you buy a download, you own the track. You can even burn your own discs with tracks you've downloaded.

Don't soft company's still 'own' the music.

Better to own a hard copy and copy to disc or soft over the other way around.

 

[Laurens_B]

Buy the CD.....

Support the CD format. Own it!

If you buy a download, you own the track. You can even burn your own discs with tracks you've downloaded.

Don't soft company's still 'own' the music.

Better to own a hard copy and copy to disc or soft over the other way around.

Depends who you buy from. iTunes is allegedly a bit awkward. But that had to do with accounts of deceased people.

A couple of years ago I downloaded quite a few albums from B&W Ministery of Sound (freebe voucher that came with a Peter Gabriel album) and I don't know of any restrictions. I can burn them on a disc, save them in the cloud, convert them to a different bitrate...

I think you mean Society of Sound? Its a really good concept! For the people that are unfamiliar with it; for 40 euros (pounds?) a year you get access to a back catalogue with around 20-25 albums in high quality, and two new albums every month. Its really good value IMO. Introduced me to some new styles, and all the masterings are awesome.

 

[BigH]

Buy the CD.....

Support the CD format. Own it!

If you buy a download, you own the track. You can even burn your own discs with tracks you've downloaded.

Don't soft company's still 'own' the music.

Better to own a hard copy and copy to disc or soft over the other way around.

Depends who you buy from. iTunes is allegedly a bit awkward. But that had to do with accounts of deceased people.

A couple of years ago I downloaded quite a few albums from B&W Ministery of Sound (freebe voucher that came with a Peter Gabriel album) and I don't know of any restrictions. I can burn them on a disc, save them in the cloud, convert them to a different bitrate...

I think you mean Society of Sound? Its a really good concept! For the people that are unfamiliar with it; for 40 euros (pounds?) a year you get access to a back catalogue with around 20-25 albums in high quality, and two new albums every month. Its really good value IMO. Introduced me to some new styles, and all the masterings are awesome.

Its a good concept but the range is very limited, 25 albums is nothing? 2 albums a month, what if you don't like any of them? I may do a trial just to see if there is any difference in the sound quality.

 

[tino]

Buy the CD.....

Support the CD format. Own it!

If you buy a download, you own the track. You can even burn your own discs with tracks you've downloaded.

Perhaps, but reselling, gifting or loaning the music is legally problematic and in many cases prohibited. If you don't like or are fed up with your £15-£20 hi-res album ... you can't sell it on, give it to a friend/relative or donate to charity.

 

[iMark]

Buy the CD.....

Support the CD format. Own it!

If you buy a download, you own the track. You can even burn your own discs with tracks you've downloaded.

Don't soft company's still 'own' the music.

Better to own a hard copy and copy to disc or soft over the other way around.

Depends who you buy from. iTunes is allegedly a bit awkward. But that had to do with accounts of deceased people.

A couple of years ago I downloaded quite a few albums from B&W Society of Sound (freebe voucher that came with a Peter Gabriel album) and I don't know of any restrictions. I can burn them on a disc, save them in the cloud, convert them to a different bitrate...

 

[iMark]

Society of Sound

 

[iMark]

[/quote]

Perhaps, but reselling, gifting or loaning the music is legally problematic and in many cases prohibited. If you don't like or are fed up with your £15-£20 hi-res album ... you can't sell it on, give it to a friend/relative or donate to charity.

[/quote]

Good points! I was talking to a friend the other day about how we used to buy albums as gifts. We no longer do that. Music just seems less valuable than it used to be. I remember real excitement when someone had bought me a great album as a present. With almost every new release available on Spotify there isn't that excitement anymore.

I suppose that if you no longer like your expensive downloads the only thing you can do is delete them from your computer. I suppose the only advantage of downloads really is that if you lose a download, you can redownload the file.

 

[philpot1001]

I would always prefer to buy a physical product, becomes more of a collection, the artwork on the sleeves etc etc.

Seems like all the digitial evolutions of musical storage methods since CD, readily promoted to the masses, degraded quality rather than improved them. To be fair CD quality is probably fine, i think most of my beef with quality issues comes down to terrible recordings.....as highlighted in the other topical post.

 

[MajorFubar]

As for the record companies, I'm not sure which format leaves them better off, or worse off, depending on your view. When you'd got fed up of a CD, tape or record you could give it to your mate or hand it in to a charity shop. That didn't do the record co's any great favours because they'd prefer it everyone bought new copies, but at least they knew you didn't have any simple method of mass-distributing it illegally. With downloads, you can't hand-in unwanted/inherrited downloads at Cancer Research, but what you can do is give ten of your mates bit-perfect copies on any old memory stick, and they can do likewise with ten of their mates at anfinitum, and the thousandth copy will still potentially be a bit-perfect copy of your original, providing no-one's c*cked about with it inbetween time

 

[BigH]

I would always prefer to buy a physical product, becomes more of a collection, the artwork on the sleeves etc etc.

Seems like all the digitial evolutions of musical storage methods since CD, readily promoted to the masses, degraded quality rather than improved them. To be fair CD quality is probably fine, i think most of my beef with quality issues comes down to terrible recordings.....as highlighted in the other topical post.

I think the problem is not the actual recordings but its the mastering, just played Californication, one was the cd version other was the unmastered version and the unmastered is much better, not that its my sort of music.

 

[BigH]

As for the record companies, I'm not sure which format leaves them better off, or worse off, depending on your view. When you'd got fed up of a CD, tape or record you could give it to your mate or hand it in to a charity shop. That didn't do the record co's any great favours because they'd prefer it everyone bought new copies, but at least they knew you didn't have any simple method of mass-distributing it illegally. With downloads, you can't hand-in unwanted/inherrited downloads at Cancer Research, but what you can do is give ten of your mates bit-perfect copies on any old memory stick, and they can do likewise with ten of their mates at anfinitum, and the thousandth copy will still potentially be a bit-perfect copy of your original, providing no-one's c*cked about with it inbetween time

Maybe they should remaster all their albums for decent sound quality with good dynamic range, just think they could reissue them all and make even more money.

 

[MajorFubar]

As for the record companies, I'm not sure which format leaves them better off, or worse off, depending on your view. When you'd got fed up of a CD, tape or record you could give it to your mate or hand it in to a charity shop. That didn't do the record co's any great favours because they'd prefer it everyone bought new copies, but at least they knew you didn't have any simple method of mass-distributing it illegally. With downloads, you can't hand-in unwanted/inherrited downloads at Cancer Research, but what you can do is give ten of your mates bit-perfect copies on any old memory stick, and they can do likewise with ten of their mates at anfinitum, and the thousandth copy will still potentially be a bit-perfect copy of your original, providing no-one's c*cked about with it inbetween time

Maybe they should remaster all their albums for decent sound quality with good dynamic range, just think they could reissue them all and make even more money.

They're doing that, slowly, using the excuse of hi-res audio.

 

[Andrewjvt]

BigH Wrote: its a good concept but the range is very limited, 25 albums is nothing? 2 albums a month, what if you don't like any of them? I may do a trial just to see if there is any difference in the sound quality.

I say: whats the point if nothings available in your taste - when im up and rnning with my hegel ill give it go though

 

[BigH]

As for the record companies, I'm not sure which format leaves them better off, or worse off, depending on your view. When you'd got fed up of a CD, tape or record you could give it to your mate or hand it in to a charity shop. That didn't do the record co's any great favours because they'd prefer it everyone bought new copies, but at least they knew you didn't have any simple method of mass-distributing it illegally. With downloads, you can't hand-in unwanted/inherrited downloads at Cancer Research, but what you can do is give ten of your mates bit-perfect copies on any old memory stick, and they can do likewise with ten of their mates at anfinitum, and the thousandth copy will still potentially be a bit-perfect copy of your original, providing no-one's c*cked about with it inbetween time

Maybe they should remaster all their albums for decent sound quality with good dynamic range, just think they could reissue them all and make even more money.

They're doing that, slowly, using the excuse of hi-res audio.

But are they though, some of those hi-res albums are just the same ratings, even some HDTracks are around DR 4 on DR database, I think a lot of it is a con.

 

[MajorFubar]

As for the record companies, I'm not sure which format leaves them better off, or worse off, depending on your view. When you'd got fed up of a CD, tape or record you could give it to your mate or hand it in to a charity shop. That didn't do the record co's any great favours because they'd prefer it everyone bought new copies, but at least they knew you didn't have any simple method of mass-distributing it illegally. With downloads, you can't hand-in unwanted/inherrited downloads at Cancer Research, but what you can do is give ten of your mates bit-perfect copies on any old memory stick, and they can do likewise with ten of their mates at anfinitum, and the thousandth copy will still potentially be a bit-perfect copy of your original, providing no-one's c*cked about with it inbetween time

Maybe they should remaster all their albums for decent sound quality with good dynamic range, just think they could reissue them all and make even more money.

They're doing that, slowly, using the excuse of hi-res audio.

But are they though, some of those hi-res albums are just the same ratings, even some HDTracks are around DR 4 on DR database, I think a lot of it is a con.

I've perhaps just been lucky. Admittedly I only have one album (Hotel California) but it is comfortably better than my (much older) CD release of the same album, presumably because of either technical advances in ADC conversion, or the extra care taken to master it from high-quality early-gen tapes, or a combination of the two.