Thought I'd share a rekindled enthusiasm for hi-res tracks. I have bought a couple of albums and songs from HD Tracks, and though ok not bad. I have also recently upgraded my spotify account to the mid levele whatever they call it so that I got rid of the ads, and also because the free version caps the number of times you can play a track to 5, not cool. So, I have been using it a lot more, particularly because I can find lots of old stuff that I wouldnt buy, and also new stuff for the same reason that I might want to buy (The Magnolia Electric Co. for exmaple, but I digress...)
It got to a point where I had started to ignore the HDTracks newsletters, despite the recent catalogue additions of more mainstrean artists, when at the weekend we eneded up comaring te Spotify version of Rumours to the CDA version on my laptop (still using J River MC15 and the dacmagic) and my girlfriend noticed a big difference without being prompted. To be honest, most of the time I am blown away by the sound of spotify tracks, so was beginning to think that my hearing was starting to deteriorate. I remembered that HDtracks had just issued Rumours on a 24 bit version, so in a wine fuelled frenzy I downloaded it. 5 hours later thanks to painfully slow BB we di a comparison, and frankly I fell off my chair. The difference was huge, much more so than the jump frm mp3 to CDA. I can only conclude that the hi res version is remastered, with the band coming back and re-recording it! Unfortunately its the only album that I have in all three formats, but I suspect that there is something else different to the hi res version, as it really is so much clearer.....
It got to a point where I had started to ignore the HDTracks newsletters, despite the recent catalogue additions of more mainstrean artists, when at the weekend we eneded up comaring te Spotify version of Rumours to the CDA version on my laptop (still using J River MC15 and the dacmagic) and my girlfriend noticed a big difference without being prompted. To be honest, most of the time I am blown away by the sound of spotify tracks, so was beginning to think that my hearing was starting to deteriorate. I remembered that HDtracks had just issued Rumours on a 24 bit version, so in a wine fuelled frenzy I downloaded it. 5 hours later thanks to painfully slow BB we di a comparison, and frankly I fell off my chair. The difference was huge, much more so than the jump frm mp3 to CDA. I can only conclude that the hi res version is remastered, with the band coming back and re-recording it! Unfortunately its the only album that I have in all three formats, but I suspect that there is something else different to the hi res version, as it really is so much clearer.....