High Quality Music Downloads

[Jason36]

Hmm well I must say...this isnt all its cracked up to be and I'm beginning to wish I hadnt sold my CD Player.

The amount of CD Quality music available is pretty dam poor from a download point of view......I found a list of what are supposed to be Hi Res Download sites from another site and having looked into these......I would say 95% of them are purely Classical or Opera!!!! Tough Luck if you dont like these Genre's then is it?

Personally I cant see the point of the B&W site...as far as I can see they dont provide downloads to buy.

The only other site I have found is a french one...which has a great selection of CD quality (44.1kHz 16bit) music to download...but not if you live in the UK...again I assume this is for some bizarre law re downloading music in the UK.....no work around like HD Tracks either.

So pretty much you are left with HD Tracks and taking pot luck that you are downloading what they say you are downloading.

So for me it looks like I will stick to buying CD's ripping them into itunes and then selling them on Ebay.

High Quality Music Downloading for the individual who wants decent SQ has a long long long way to go before it's worthwhile or any good in my opinion!!!!

 

[The_Lhc]

Two thoughts:

1) You didn't check this out BEFORE selling your CD player?

2) Just buy CDs and rip them, for now, it's the easiest way of doing it.

 

[Joe Cox]

We've always got the hi-res audio on iTunes rumours...

 

[John Duncan]

So for me it looks like I will stick to buying CD's ripping them into itunes and then selling them on Ebay.

Or, for those hard-to-find tracks, just steal them from HMV?

 

[Jason36]

Two thoughts:

1) You didn't check this out BEFORE selling your CD player?

2) Just buy CDs and rip them, for now, it's the easiest way of doing it.

Well it wasnt the reason for selling the CD player to be honest........my post was just a rant about the lack of Hi Res music out there (well if you live in the UK anyway)........I just cant understad why majority of music available in a high res format is Classical or Opera?? Its a very niche market.....although obviously a large one to make it worth the while.

All of my CD's are ripped to ALAC in iTunes and then they are on my laptop for use in the office and iPod for use at home....I mainly use spotify new stuff now....but just thought it would be nice to be able to download a CD quality album if I wanted it badly enough...without the hassle of another CD in the collecton or having to sell it on a well know auction site.

Seems like that will be the best option going forward though at least for the forseable future.

 

[Bodfish]

Well for B&W you have to subscribe to the Society Of Sound and pay an annual fee to access the content but the breadth available is pretty good - definately not just Opera and Classical.

 

[iemslie]

The situation isn't too great. It's a classic case of the industry not being in tune with the consumer I'm afraid.

Getting ahold of legitimate good quality digital releases is not exactly easy and god help you if your looking for a legitimate high resolution version. Sure HD tracks have a reasonable offering, but lets say you wanted Rolling Stone mags top 20 albums, how would you fare there? Not too well I suspect. Meanwhile dodgy copies of each are widely available online and many high res too.

I guess once the industry wakes up all they'll do is moan about how the 'pirates' are ruining the music business (again!). Hmmm.

Anyways, I'd suggest that anyone who wants decent digital files just buy the CD and rip on the PC for now.

High resolution files require a bit more effort, but a 1/2 decent TT, a suitable sound card and the right software produces pretty impressive results IMO.

 

[The_Lhc]

Bear in mind if you sell a cd you can't legally keep any rips you've made.

 

[Anonymous]

So far, only Linn Records is worthwhile for me. I've followed some links to a dozen or so sites last week, but most were either classical-only, US-only or sacd-only.

Their site really could do with a wishlist feature though

 

[MajorFubar]

So for me it looks like I will stick to buying CD's ripping them into itunes and then selling them on Ebay.

hopefully that was tongue-in-cheek because it's illegal, and is the one reason why I have resisted wasting six months of my life ripping my CDs.

 

[Overdose]

Ripping the music and selling on the CDs is definitely illegal, even when the CDs are kept, the situation is I think, the same.

However, I would view ripping your music library as an investment in convenience as opposed to a waste of time.

 

[eggontoast]

Ripping the music and selling on the CDs is definitely illegal, even when the CDs are kept, the situation is I think, the same.

It's not illegal if you keep the cd's, the law was changed in the UK back in March I think.

 

[The_Lhc]

Ripping the music and selling on the CDs is definitely illegal, even when the CDs are kept, the situation is I think, the same.

It's not illegal if you keep the cd's, the law was changed in the UK back in March I think.

Well, the guv'ment said they were considering changing the law, I'm not sure the act has actually been passed yet though.

 

[Jason36]

|( You are quite right it is illegal to rip the CD and then sell said CD......and I wouldnt do that because, its breaking the law

I think I will stick to my original plan and continue to use Spotify for new music and then if I really want the CD will buy it and continue to try and find Hi Res downloads for the music I really want.

The long term plan (well late this year / early next) is to buy a Squeezebox Touch to add into my main system more than likely with a NAS attached. Then I can access all my ripped ALAC and FLAC files and play Spotify through this.

HD Tracks do have some very good albums to download at 96kHz / 24bit and I believe the SB can handle these. It's just a case of making sure the files are what HD Tracks say they are

Anyway Rant over now |( |( and I feel a lot better for my little outburst :rofl:

 

[formbypc]

HD Tracks do have some very good albums to download at 96kHz / 24bit and I believe the SB can handle these. It's just a case of making sure the files are what HD Tracks say they are

If you have a method for figuring this out, would you share it with us?

 

[iemslie]

HD Tracks do have some very good albums to download at 96kHz / 24bit and I believe the SB can handle these. It's just a case of making sure the files are what HD Tracks say they are

If you have a method for figuring this out, would you share it with us?

Have a look at Audacity.

 

[formbypc]

I've got a 24/96 recorder.

If I were to take the standard 16/44 CD of ... Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett, say, and took an analogue feed from the CD player into my 24/96 recorder, making 24/96 AIFF files from this; then converted them to FLAC - do you think anyone be able to tell this apart from the 24/96 FLACs on HDTracks and other sites.....?

 

[Anonymous]

I've got a 24/96 recorder.

If I were to take the standard 16/44 CD of ... Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett, say, and took an analogue feed from the CD player into my 24/96 recorder, making 24/96 AIFF files from this; then converted them to FLAC - do you think anyone be able to tell this apart from the 24/96 FLACs on HDTracks and other sites.....?

I think you are asking slightly the wrong question. The answer to your specific question is yes, your 24/96 version would differ from the 'official' 24/96 version of the track on HDTracks and could be easily spotted by file comparison.

If you meant to ask "would anyone know that this wasn't a genuine 24/96 HD track if it wasn't available for download on HDTracks" then the answer is no, it would be very difficult to say whether your homebrew 24/96 came from the 16/44.1 CD or an analogue master. The D2A / A2D conversion in your proposed method would mask any specific patterns in the 16/44.1 CD - you could always say your 24/96 track came from a different master - apparently a number of HD tracks do.

Thinking of starting a business?

 

[amcluesent]

>it would be very difficult to say whether your homebrew 24/96 came from the 16/44.1 CD or an analogue master<

Would it? The 'brick wall' filter on the CD player should be obvious in a spectrum analysis...

 

[Anonymous]

Ahh, Amcluesent...

In response to your post, It kind of depends. I am not sure whether 24/96 recordings are usually low pass filtering their analogue input at 20KHz or at a higher frequency. It would make sense to keep to 20KHz, then the 96 is just a bit above twice the Nyquist frequency giving everything a bit more headroom.

If they are sticking with 20KHz, then I dont think your CD brick wall would be noticable.

 

[TALON1973]

wouldnt the file size be different ? the ( proper ) hi-def version would take up more space surely ?

 

[Anonymous]

If they are sticking with 20KHz, then I dont think your CD brick wall would be noticable.

Of course, if they are sticking with 20kHz, then there is no point at all in selling a 96kHz medium. Upsampling is a lossless operation, and can easily be performed by the DAC itself, giving the same headroom without the storage/bandwidth doubling.

 

[amcluesent]

A 24/96 digitisation of the output from a good phono pre-amp (a.k.a needle drop) might be trickier to spot, once split up and any clicks removed.