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RE: Any emerging consensus here on download quality?

Posted by Jim Treanor (A) on March 25, 2014 at 10:48:55

In Reply to: Any emerging consensus here on download quality? posted by Harold T. on March 24, 2014 at 11:25:59:

I wouldn't go so far as to say that my best LP's sound smeared by comparison--they don't (e.g., the Analogue Productions LSC LP reissues I've received to date are anything but)--but, overall, I'd rate the sound quality of downloads I've acquired as very good to excellent, and my typical purchases are DSD64 and DSD128, some 24/176 and 24/192 offerings, and a very few 24/88's and 24/96's.

The primary genres downloaded have been classical and jazz, and I've sourced them from Acoustic Sounds, Opus 3, Channel Classics, PentaTone, 2L (DSD128 and DxD samples only), High Definition Tape Transfers, and HD Tracks. Only the latter site's offerings have proved to be variable in quality, a consequence, I suspect, of the questionable provenance of some of the albums. HDTT is an interesting case, in that its products are sourced from commercially-released reel-to-reel analog tapes, but despite the generational distance--whatever it might be--of its masters from the originals, I've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of its DSD releases (case in point, the Morton Gould Interplay concertette, a sound-quality sleeper in the RCA LSC catalog).

As suggested above, the main issue I see with downloads is their source provenance. Acoustic Sounds does a good job of identifying what that is in their DSD download catalog, so you know that the Verve jazz reissues and, surprisingly, The Power of the Orchestra DSD transfers are actually sourced from a 20-bit PCM master, allowing you to make a knowledgeable decision on whether to purchase or not. (I'm not value-judging the releases themselves, simply indicating what is.) Except for HD Tracks--which says it's working on the problem--the other vendors mentioned also, to a greater or lesser degree, do a good job of indicating source provenance.

I suspect that more time will elapse before a real "consensus" emerges (you can see alternate points of view indicative of that right here in this forum), but to my "show-me" ears the download medium has made the sale.



Jim

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