Steve Hackett 24 Bit Studio Master Downloads Available

[moriarty]

[class="Apple-style-span"]Ex-Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett is now offering 24 Bit Stdio Master Downloads via his new webstore at http://hackettsongs.sandbag.uk.com[/class]
[class="Apple-style-span"]The initial releases include Steve's latest studio release Out Of The Tunnel's Mouth, his beautiful acoustic album Tribute and a new concert recording Live Rails. Many more titles are due soon.[/class][class="Apple-style-span"]
[/class][class="Apple-style-span"]Full albums are available as 256 kbps MP3, 16 Bit CD Quality and 24 Bit Studio Master Quality (where applicable). Several of Steve's albums are also available on heavyweight vinyl.[/class]

 

[basshound]

Not sure I agree with the blatant plug for Mr. Hacketts site even though I am a fan but it shows what can be done. Why don`t the likes of Apple and Amazon offer this choice of quality with their downloads? Surely this is the future,lossless better than CD quality.

 

[survivor]

Great guitarist. One or two heavyweight vinyl albums sounds rather tempting!

 

[moriarty]

"Why don`t the likes of Apple and Amazon offer this choice of quality with their downloads? Surely this is the future,lossless better than CD quality."

Sadly iTunes and Amazon only seem interested in quantity not quality : (

Good quality downloads can sound fantastic, but at present we seem limited to specialist online stores and artist's own websites.

 

[Helmut80]

basshound:Not sure I agree with the blatant plug for Mr. Hacketts site even though I am a fan but it shows what can be done. Why don`t the likes of Apple and Amazon offer this choice of quality with their downloads? Surely this is the future,lossless better than CD quality.

because 98% of users are happy with MP3 quality.

 

[AlmaataKZ]

Helmut80:

basshound:Not sure I agree with the blatant plug for Mr. Hacketts site even though I am a fan but it shows what can be done. Why don`t the likes of Apple and Amazon offer this choice of quality with their downloads? Surely this is the future,lossless better than CD quality.

because 98% of users are happy with MP3 quality.

It is mainstream publications like WHF (especially WHF as it is THE mainstream publication) that can and should help to change this situation.

e.g. Amateur Photographer is spearheading a campaign for photogrpahers rights in public places - and it did have positive impact.

WHF is in the best position to point out (lossless) quality more explicitly to the general public and this can start changing things and who knows there may be a move to quality by the consumers and the industry.

 

[Helmut80]

AlmaataKZ:
Helmut80:

basshound:Not sure I agree with the blatant plug for Mr. Hacketts site even though I am a fan but it shows what can be done. Why don`t the likes of Apple and Amazon offer this choice of quality with their downloads? Surely this is the future,lossless better than CD quality.

because 98% of users are happy with MP3 quality.

It is mainstream publications like WHF (especially WHF as it is THE mainstream publication) that can and should help to change this situation.

e.g. Amateur Photographer is spearheading a campaign for photogrpahers rights in public places - and it did have positive impact.

WHF is in the best position to point out (lossless) quality more explicitly to the general public and this can start changing things and who knows there may be a move to quality by the consumers and the industry.

Agreed. I think there is a lot that can be done, I think the trouble is just that Apple dominate the digital music market to such an extent that it will be much harder to do, as long as people still happily purchase MP3s. It's the other way around with TVs strangely enough, all of a sudden 3D is a MUST HAVE feature. I wonder what Blu-Ray market share is these days? Because the HD revolution seems to be moving much quicker than high quality music.

 

[Lee H]

It may be THE mainstream publication, but a circulation of say 50-60 thousand per month pales next to the 17-18 million downloads every day from iTunes. This is a case of the majority winning out

 

[Paul.]

The rapidly growing market for flash memory (and limited manufacturing) keeps the costs of memory relatively high. The market has shown they want thin convereged devices not thick hard disk mp3 players and seperate phones. When it is cost effective to buy a 128gb iPhone or Android etc, we can think about higher quality music.

The second point, Apple etc only take roughly half of their 30% cut in itunes in profit due to the massive cost of running server farms. Why would they want to quadruple the size of their server farms to make happy the small number of audiophiles who want lossless files?

 

[The_Lhc]

AlmaataKZ:WHF is in the best position to point out (lossless) quality more explicitly to the general public and this can start changing things and who knows there may be a move to quality by the consumers and the industry.

Whilst I'd support such a move, the only problem I can see is that, as large as WHF's readership is, it's only a minute fraction of the "general public", so the magazine can say and do what it likes and in reality the mindset of the public won't change one iota.

The fact is most of the music buying public don't give a stuff about the audio quality, my son-in-law has the largest CD collection I've ever seen, he's a serious music geek but he plays it all on a small Sony all-in-one system that's tucked away in the corner with both speakers sitting next to each other and now doesn't even play the CDs themselves (I know this because they're all boxed up and taking up a spare bedroom at my place) but has a small iPod nano plugged in playing at who knows what kind of bitrate. This is someone who's probably lost more music than I've ever owned but he looks at my system (which is nothing special) and thinks it's all a bit geeky and weird! If you asked him if he cared about lossless quality he'd think you were a bit soft in the head.