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I hadn't been there in a long while and stopped in to see what was new. WOW -- there is a ton of new stuff! The Warner Brother's store has one or two hundred really good albums. I downloaded quite a few things and was really, really pleased with the quality of the sound.
The only thing that was a bit underwhelming was a couple of Stones things that were downsampled from DSD. We had a couple of the SACD's when they came out and my memory is that they sounded better than the downloads.
But the PCM stuff sounded incredible. I got some downloads of some vinyl I purchased when it came out, and I think the digital sounds noticeably better. It's like what Neil Young has been saying on the talk shows about Pono -- the feeling and soul is back in the music.
I give a big thumbs up to David Chesky. I think he is doing a great job of making high-resolution digital available to everyone. If you haven't been there for a while, I think you'll be surprised. There is something for everyone there and new titles are going up all the time. A gift certificate wold make a nice holiday gift for any audiophile that has a computer audio setup.
Happy holidays,
Charlie Hansen
Follow Ups:
HDT uses a Java applet for downloading, and applets (at least 32-bit applets, which seems to be pretty much all of them) no longer run on OS X Mountain Lion.
I am running Mountain Lion and have no troubles with using HDT's downloaded. It is very seamless and I just drag the FLAC files in through my PureMusic window into iTunes.
.
If it does not turn a profit for Mac its not needed.
Dynobots Audio
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
I'm on Mac OS X Lion (not Mountain Lion). Downloads via their busted Download Manager does not work. I downloaded the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) as HDtracks points me to.
The HDtracks problem persists as their download manager complains that my password is incorrect. Well, it's the same damned password I used to login and the same damned problem that occurred the last time I tried downloading from HDtracks.
It's not really a "Mac OS X" problem. The problem is HDtracks has failed to thoroughly test their Java based download manager.
Next years goal.
No Mac bashing...;-)
Dynobots Audio
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
.
I've had a similar problem on Windows, but not recently. The issue was related to special characters in the password, some of which required escape sequences. I don't recall the details, as my HDtracks download manager has had the password for some time, but I anticipate a new bout of fighting if I have to reenter it. I suspect this is related to java and java runtime issues and the HDtracks java code. But it wouldn't surprise me if there weren't problems with some other aspects of the Mac platform.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
It may or may not be related to the Java Runtime Environment in my case. I just tried HDtracks on my Windows XP PC which launched a JRE 6 Java Webstart JNLP. It launched (as JRE 7 did on my Mac), yet I get the same error that my password is incorrect.
My password logs me into their site and allows me to purchase but that same password won't allow me to download. Hmm.
I understand the benefit of using a download manager but why not just let me do a simple file download directly from the link? My internet connection is solid and I've downloaded gigabyte files this way. Oh well. I have an email into HDtracks.
There was something strange about the password that I used. It had something to do with the use of multiple backslash characters that I had perversely chosen.
In general, I prefer no download managers, but some sites require you to download multiple files and a download manager is helpful to avoid spending hours babysitting the downloads. My download site uses zip files for complete albums, which avoids this problem, but customers in third world countries with marginal Internet connections still benefit from a download manager, in that these will allow resuming a partially complete downloads, rather than starting over. (This is a defect of browser software which fails to use the HTML 1.1 feature of downloading byte ranges of files.)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
HDtracks emailed me yesterday with the direct links for downloading individual files in the album I purchased.
Moving forward, they suggested that I create a new account with new password, probably because it's easier for them vs. finding the root cause problem and fixing it. That's fine.
And I do not do business there.
I don't need to be pop or classical albums that don't sound any better than cd rips.
"Lock up when you're done and don't touch the piano."
-Dr. Greg House
I have purchased quite a few high resolution downloads from HD Tracks and in general I am pleased. I am especially pleased with the new Binaural + series on the Chesky label of which there are now four titles. Though these are not well known titles the performance and especially the sound quality are exceptional, the proverbial "you are there".
Edits: 12/23/12
I have the Amber Rubarth and the various artists binaural album and I agree. They are amazing sounding. I hope there is some support and that it leads to more releases.
If you have the Amber Rubarth and the various artist title that includes Lenny White I would highly recommend the Wycliffe Gordon both for performance and sound quality. I did just download the David Chesky title from the Binaural + series. It is solo piano rags and while an excellent performance and sound it is not really my "cup of tea".
Thanks for the tip on the Wycliffe Gordon. They have a discount going on this week (code: vip2012)and I will add that to my order. Another non-binaural Chesky title I enjoyed a lot is Jimmy Cobb Jazz In The Key Of Blue.
Since I complained loudly and often about HDTracks in the past, I should give them some props when I have a good experience. The last couple of downloads, Grrrr and American Beauty went very smoothly. Discounts were applied (I use PayPal for purchases) and songs downloaded in a reasonable time without the fits and starts that I have previously experienced. Grrr sounds good and American Beauty sounds really good IMHO.
As for the spam from them, it is better this holiday season than most from whom I have purchase online recently. (Kohl's seems to be the absolute worst., I should have just gone to the store!)
As a general rule, how much better do folks find an HD download sound compared to a ripped CD?
I have a decent number of albums from HDTracks (never had a problem using PayPal). Overall, the sound quality appears good but a direct comparison between the 24/192 version of Phish's Juanta and a ripped CD of the same album sounded surprisingly similar. Differences were subtle and not worth the extra cost IMHO. This has me wondering if the other 24/88 or 96 or 192 downloads are really much better than a ripped CD?
Hmm... I hope they aren't just resampling the 16 bit files to 192 etc. We all know how many dodgy copies of DVDs were sold as originals. Unless someone buys the hires and does a high quality A/B it won't come up.
I am more bothered by looser company iTunes, that pushes crap crap mp3 quality out at CD price. WTF can't THEY offer hi-res??? Because they don't want to pay for the storage and bandwidth that's why. Corporate greed, that's what that is.
My view, is as technology advances, i.e. high res, blue ray, HD video etc, it should be offered at a reasonable, fair price, not yet another price hike to the ripped off consumer like us.
Last rant: I am in the 40-50 somethings that actually are buying music music, not only the original albums in 1990, but then CD, and now HD. The 20 somethings are nicking it all....
Live long and listen!
Does that not describe EVERYTHING the Stones have done?
But as to HDT, I've been mostly happy with them and continue to buy from them despite a couple of dubious titles. I was one of the suckers that ponied up for Brothers in Arms when HDT announced it, ignorant that the original recording was the among the first digital ever (at 16/44). Shows you how good my ears are - I think my vinyl copy of BIA is among the best recordings I owned. Anywho, HDT did refund my money for that one (but never offered a credible story as to how they came to market that fraudulent "hi-res" title). More recently, I bought Graceland which sounds pretty good despite appearing to not be a genuine hi-res title.
On the other hand, I've bought some truly great sounding (with verifiable hi-res pedigree) titles from HDT such as the first CSN album, Alison Krauss, and Ani DiFranco.YMMV.
The last couple times I tried to take advantage of their sales, the HDtracks website payment system wouldn't accept the Promo Code combined with a credit card payment. It may work with PayPal but I don't use PayPal.
My experience at HDTracks has been less than stellar so I avoid them. I suppose the payment system works fine for normal non-promo purchases but if they're going to send me Promo offers that don't work, it just pisses me off and drives me away.
My last successful purchase on HDtracks was probably a good 4 years ago... no promo, just a regular purchase. My most recent attempts have been in the past few months, unsuccessfully with promo codes that they emailed, & credit card.
Can you imagine the frustration of trying to download, contacting tech support, it still not working, and having to request that they refund my credit card? I don't need that kind of time wasting service !
Can you give us a rundown of some of the titles you have purchased recently
and if possible how they compared to the most recent CD version?
Thanks.
HDtracks downloads that impress - all 24/96 FLACs:
Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life - easily as good as the Speakers Corner pressing, and in some ways better
Stevie Wonder - Innervisions - also outstanding; I prefer it to the Classic Records reissue
Beach Boys Pet Sounds - excellent
Chucho Valdez - Chucho's Steps - outstanding
Crosby Stills & Nash - original album great remastering by Stanley Johnson
Ella - Things Ain't What They Used to Be - great recording though notably bass-shy, like the Reprise original
Eric Clapton - 461 Ocean Blvd - stunningly good remastering
Grateful Dead - American Beauty & Workingman's Dead - both very good
Joan Sutherland - The Art of the Prima Donna - gorgeous, luscious, far better than vinyl copies I have had
k. d. lang - Invincible Summer
Kenny Neal - Hooked on Your Love
Lucky Peterson - Lucky Strikes & Triple Play
Traffic - John Barleycorn Must Die
Yes - Fragile
And from the golden ears of Ivor Tiefenbrun, all great recordings, and good or great perfs:
Mahler 6 - Duisberger Phil/Darlington
Arne - Artaxerxes; Classical Opera Company/Ian Page
Bach - St. Matthews Passion; Dunedin Consort
Dvorak Conc. for Piano & Orch G minor - Block/Duisburg/Darlington
Just one stinker: Garrick Ohlsson playing the Chopin Polonaises, downloaded from the Hyperion site; wretched transfer, ultra-lean, distant, flat as a pancake, gritty, marginally unlistenable. All the worse when you listen to the CD issue from the same sessions, which is excellent. (His box set of the complete Chopin is breathtaking.)
WW
New Orthophonic High Fidelity
The Stevie Wonder, Traffic, and CSN titles are very good. So is Pet Sounds.
The Clapton and Dead titles are rips from the commercially released DVD-As.
They are remixes.
Still mostly no provenance offered on 99% of titles, however.
Clapton from DVD-A, huh? I'm surprised - it sounds better than that to me.
re: no provenance
So true, and frustrating. Engineers who do great (or not so great) remastering work should be credited, and we paltry few audio hobbyists are interested in how the music came to us. Maybe by next year's AES we can line up some of the great engineers to start making a stink about that.
WW
New Orthophonic High Fidelity
Yep. BTW..the Clapton SACD utterly wipes the floor with the DVD-A.There are many, many SACD and DVD-A rips for sale on HDTracks. The entire Stones Abkco catalog are SACD to PCM rips.
With DVD-A extractor, I rip my own DVD-As to FLAC and save a ton of moolah.
Edits: 12/23/12
I have some 192/24 tracks that are outstanding, but the DSD downloads from my sacds are far better. I don't really know how Empirical Audio is doing these, but wow! I must also note that many things great affect the apparent sound of 192/24 tracks. The use of a charged digital cables, isolation of the dac, and better ac conditioning helped the 192/24 but didn't close the gap with the DSD.
There is no doubt that I will add to my HD files, as all recording are not available on sacds.
I have compared the original DSD with a few different PCM conversions, at both 96/24 and 88/24. These were obtained from several web sites. It all cases the original DSD sounded better. In my estimation, sufficiently better to justify purchase of this format when buying the recording for the first time. I'm not sure that it is sufficiently better, however, to justify repurchase of an album one already has in hi-res PCM, except for demonstration purposes (don't need too many such recordings) or to satisfy one's curiosity.If one is interested in classical music, then eclassical.com is a much better site, IMO. It allows preview of complete recordings to get an idea of the musical and artistic performance. The pricing is reasonable, as well, especially when music is on sale, often at 50% off. Nothing is more annoying to me than blowing a lot of money for a high resolution recording, only to discover that the music or performance is dreck.
If it is sound quality that one is going after, then without doubt, the best sites are Channel Classics and Blue Coast Records, both of which provide DSD downloads of excellent recordings, and if one's taste is so inclined, excellent musical performances as well.
I have no personal use for pop or rock music and find the HDtracks web site and email marketing obnoxious, because they are constantly pushing stuff that I have no interest in.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Edits: 12/23/12
Great site.
"Lock up when you're done and don't touch the piano."
-Dr. Greg House
Yes, I can't filter their numerous spams out. Any ideas?
At the bottom of the emails that I get from HDtracks.com is a box "manage subscriptions". If you click it, it calls up a webpage that supposedly allows you to remove yourself from some or all of their lists.
I would try this first. Give them a while and if you still continue to get spam emails, you will at least get the satisfaction that they are in violation of US law. Let us know if this works.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
There are numerous anti-virus and spam filters available for PCs and most decent email clients also allow you to automatically dump spam into the trash.
However, the best spam filter is to never use your main email address for any commerce. I have a 'special' yahoo email account that I never bother to check because it's the one that gets all the spam from all the merchants that I've dealt with over the years, not to mention all the other merchants that have be given this email address w/o my knowledge.
Same here...
Yahoo mail is a good spam dump
I use Google or a regular basis...it also has an excellent spam filter just in case.
Dynobots Audio
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
it's a little late when they have gotton hold of your other addresses.
I am surprised, I thought you liked Spam! I certainly do...
C'Mon dude, stop your whining already.
is your post
There should be no more whining about spam when ISPs provide customers with the tools to trash them, not to mention the many anti-virus / spam tools available to PC users, and all the email clients that have built-in spam filters.... AND the fact that anyone can have multiple email addresses these days and set a couple up with the sole intention of using them for commerce and 'spam buckets'.
I have about 1/2 a dozen email accounts and a couple that are my 'spam catchers'.
No whining allowed! ;-)
.
I have to agree with you Charlie. The recent offerings have become pretty extensive. As with a number of the guys, I wish there was less compression with some of the releases, but there is a ton of great stuff available. I would like to see more classical releases.The few times I have had issues, HDtracks service took care of things for me.
Edits: 12/23/12
Unfortunately I have! At least one thumb down for hd tracks! American consummers and journalists alike (except for lavrogna) don't know what they are missing. The selection is nowhere near what Qobuz offers, not to mention HD tracks amateurish website & service. The unfortunate part is HD tracks has a monopoly in the US, and with more and more regional limitations on music downloads, most cannot access wonderful music at higher resolution in the US.
Edits: 12/22/12
I cannot screen out multiple email promotions from them, who seem to have ways of getting round spam filters.
It is low on my list for hires downloads.
Spam filter??? Everyone I've ever received has come from newsletters@hdtracks.com. Just set up a simple email rule.
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