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with their downloads, one never knows. I got some terrible sounding high definition and they stated, they only sold them they could not vouch for how they were truly done. I did get a refund on a couple they admitted were terrible, like Charlie Brown, but they still sell it, even though they admit that the recording is questionable. So to say they don't have much confidence from me is an understatement.
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scam.
.
these people have the money to do so and will hopefully encourage the existing and new vendors to supply high quality music data streams and eventually allow for competition to temper pricing.
i supported SACD in the early days with purchases and consequently i have quite a few. it wasn't completely successful i believe, due to SONY's lack of support on their end. the merchants were confronted with a challenge that was insurmountable.
had sony just made ALL their releases in hybrid sacd, the record stores could have had a separate sacd section and still put their regular stock in alphabetical order. more of them would have made their way into consumer's hands and the players would have been made more available due to demand. or not.
...regards...tr
nt
I love the music of ... ... Gustav Mahler
Big J
"... only a very few individuals understand as yet that personal salvation is a contradiction in terms."
Are rolling in dough. Sales through the roof.
HDtracks? Not sure. I think the gimmick might have worn off and people have realized paying almost twenty bucks for a download when cd's are dirt cheap might not be their best option.
"We are all in God's hands... and God is a malign thug."
-Mark Twain
d
nt
all the best,
mrh
Once you realize the difference is in the mastering and not the resolution and then go back to your original 1973 copy and think "wow, I think I like this better" you kinda lose interest in 18-20 buck downloads.
Edits: 11/22/14
I think the mastering is more important than the resolution, but better resolution is marginally, well, better. I have some well mastered CDs that sound terrific and many of my hi-res albums sound very good, too.
I do take exception with the prices being charged for downloads. The manufacture, stocking, and distribution costs are waaaaayyy less for non-physical media. That should be reflected in the pricing and it's not.
And one other thing, according to the (generally ignored) law, it is not legal for one to sell their downloaded files. Once you've paid for it, it's your forever, you are not technically allowed to recoup any of your original purchase price. That sucks.
With all of these qualifiers, downloads should be 40% - 50% the price of physical media. The fact that they aren't is, IMHO, gouging on the part of the vendors...
-RW-
I am not sure that you are right about gouging.
I'd like to think that if there were gouging going on, as a record-label owner, I would join in on the fun and get rich quick. However, I have not done so, because there is no guarantee I would not lose money on the deal!
For me to place my recordings with HDTracks or one of their competitors, I would have to have Bob Ludwig make hi-res transfers from the analog master tapes and then author download files. Because most of my analog tapes are from the era that now requires archival restoration (baking before playback), there is extra cost and extra risk. So we are now up to spending about $3000 before we sell one download.
Then, because JMR is neither Universal Music nor a division of Universal Music, I cannot go directly to HDTracks, they want to deal with a content aggregator (in effect a wholesaler or distributor) like Naxos or CDBaby. So now we have a middleman taking his share, which means that just like in the good old days, everyone else in total grosses more than I do, yet I paid the startup costs and I have to pay copyright and artist royalties.
Yes, of course, HDTracks has startup costs and salaries and overhead and pays advertising, etc. Which means that the system trades off efficiency for choice.
So HDTracks collects revenue and pays costs and sends a good deal to a middleman who handles payments and they pay me and then I try to recoup risky startup costs and pay royalties.
The biggest costs in the record business are distribution and promotion. Non-physical product saves you a couple of dollars in manufacturing and a little bit in shipping, but in most cases those savings have to be plowed back into new mastering expenses.
Now, of course, downloads or Tea for the Tillerman and Thriller are certain to make money. But I am sure that HDTracks would say that the "easy" profits on those files are what enables them to spend the labor cost to create product web pages for obscure classical and jazz titles that will sell very slowly.
So, from my perspective of more than 30 years involvement in the biz and 20 years with my own money-pit label, I don't see gouging, I see the same old inefficient system as before.
Anyway, except for audiophiles, I think that for many listeners, on-demand (for-pay) streaming will turn out to be a better deal than owning downloaded files.
As a hardcore classical listener, would I rather pay $20 for ownership of ONE Mahler symphony download, or, for one month's streaming where I can get to know two hundred twenty-nine different (229!) Mahler symphony performances? And if I fall completely in love with one, I can buy the CD or SACD.
There are perhaps only 50 classical recordings (out of many hundreds) that I'd really passionately care about having in the best possible sound, and perhaps 50 pop/rock and 50 jazz. For the rest, streaming works for me.
But that is just my crystal-ball gazing.
And if you want to talk about gouging, how about $35 for a remastered LP of an old performance that has paid for itself thousands of times? Pressing a great LP costs about two bucks. The packaging often costs more.
JM
d
You opened my eyes to some issues I had not considered. I do have a question, though. Why is it necessary to have someone like Ludwig re-master for downloads? There is plenty of software out there that can take the original SACD or DVD-A and create download-ready files. And the cost to do so is vanishingly small.
I await your response....
Best Wishes,
-RW-
Hi.
I can only speak for myself. But my situation is the same as the case with many shall we say second-tier analog master tapes.
When I picked up various pieces dropped by North Star and the Herb Belkin-era MFSL to start JMR, I issued Songs My Mother Taught Me in a Bob Ludwig LP remastering. That LP has sold on eBay for as much as $324, sealed... . Once I got conventional record-store distribution, I asked Bob to remaster that tape for CD release. IIRC, that digital transfer was done with Apogee Digital UV-22 22-bit/44.1kHz conversion, which was SOTA at that time. IIRC, the last analog master Bob transferred for me was done at 44.1/24 and then changed down to 16-bit to cut the CD Glass Master.
All my digital recording (except The Bulgarian Job) were high-bit but standard sampling frequency, and the last of those, Bob used the HDCD converter on, more for its downsampling abilities rather then encoding abilities.
So, to make a "no stories, no excuses, SOTA" SACD or DSD download at this point (the business model I have followed is to allow my trading partners only to sell MP3s, in order to protect the US and foreign market for pressed CDs) would in my case and in the case of any project in the same posture require a fresh start on a clean slate. Which would be expensive.
And then, EVERYBODY could hear the garbage truck now buried in the tape noise... .
(It's Monday, and somebody has to amuse me, and, faute de mieux, c'est moi.)
As things drag on (as you will read about with bated breath in Stereophile's February issue) I am growing more and more intolerant of SACDs etc. that are not "all they can be." So, when an international conglomerate sends out an SACD where the transfer was to 24/96 PCM, given that the incremental cost of doing it right compared to not-right is less than feeding shrimp cocktails and wine to 24 hungry music journalists in a nice hotel ballroom, I get annoyed.
BTW, most people never knew or have forgotten that Dietrich Fischer Dieskau tried his hand at conducting, obviously, in the analog tape age, and I thought his Schubert Symphonies were charming. That would be a great project to Kickstart, if someone has the time and patience.
So, long story short, I think that the industry owes the consumer complete transparency and accountability on the provenance of the downloads and SACDs they want us to buy, and I will make as much of a fuss as I can if I catch anyone selling a DSD download that did not start out at least as a DXD recording (given the possibility that a consumer might be able to decode DSD but not DXD natively). From here on out I will declare "DSD Downloads from 24/94 PCM" to be Non Kosher in my little world.
Ciao,
jm
So, long story short, I think that the industry owes the consumer complete transparency and accountability on the provenance of the downloads and SACDs they want us to buy, and I will make as much of a fuss as I can if I catch anyone selling a DSD download that did not start out at least as a DXD recording (given the possibility that a consumer might be able to decode DSD but not DXD natively). From here on out I will declare "DSD Downloads from 24/94 PCM" to be Non Kosher in my little world.
Back in the day, I was happy to purchase SACDs made from hi-res PCM masters. But at the time there was only SACD and DVD-A and I hated the variability of DVD authoring and the annoying menus. But now, there is no good reason to offer downloads in anything other than the same resolution as the digital master, unless that master is above 24/192. No format conversions please, aside from the DXD-> DSD you mentioned.
I'm an HDTracks customer and I have gotten some excellent quality hi-res albums from them. But I have to do a lot of homework to research what I'm buying from their site. For the amount they charge I feel like they should identify the provenance of their downloads and be responsible for better quality control. If you're going to charge a premium price to audiophiles, at least make sure what you're offering is an audiophile product.
jm
I don't get why this is "gouging". I mean, I agree that the prices are higher than I want to pay for these recordings. As you say, physical media can sound awesome, and has other advantages.
But this is not something essential, it's a luxury item. This is not selling water in the desert, nor tripling the price of milk during a blizzard, for example. Nobody makes you buy these.
In short, if they truly are overpriced for the market, well, then they won't sell. Where's the problem?
Cerebrate!
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