I've been a fan of Van Halen since purchasing the cassette of 1984 as a nine year old budding audiophile. The album cover depicting a child with cigarettes was quite controversial back in the day. Soon after immersing myself in all the treasures on the 1984 album I purchased the previous five studio albums completing my collection of Van Halen cassettes. When the Compact Disc versions of the first six albums were released I purchased each one. As a Sophomore in high school I heard Pearl Jam and Nirvana for the first time and my taste in music immediately changed. I subsequently sold all my Van Halen CDs, with the exception of 1984, at the local used record shop. It's hard to believe I collected about a dollar for each of the first five Van Halen CDs, and walked out the door satisfied. The time had finally come to replenish my Van Halen music collection when I noticed HDtracks offering Van Halen's first six studio albums in high resolution at both 24 bit / 96 kHz 
and 24 bit / 192 kHz . I opted for the 24/192 download, containing 8 GB of FLAC files. Thirteen minutes later I had all sixty tracks on my desktop. I started listening to the albums in order of release, Van Halen, Van Halen II, Women And Children First, etc. Soon after the first click of the mouse I was hooked on high resolution Van Halen. The first six albums sound as good or better than any Van Halen release in recent memory. In fact I've had the entire Studio Album collection on repeat for several hours. Maybe I'll watch Fast Times At Ridgemont High tonight so I can see Mike Damone sell Van Halen tickets to two kids for a "sixteen" dollar profit.
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Attention Jack Johnson fans: Jack's debut album has been remastered by Bernie Grundman and made available for download at 16 bit / 48 kHz. I've been a big Jack Johnson fan since the first time I heard his song Flake on the radio in 2002. I've purchased every JJ album since this debut. One thing is certain with Jack Johnson albums. I can put any one of them on repeat and enjoy every single track over and over. There's not an offensive note in the bunch. Based on the limited information available about this remaster it does appear sound quality was a major concern during the whole process. Vinyl lovers will be excited to read the 180 gram remastered release was kept in the analog domain from the tape it was recorded
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In the past when I thought of virtual instruments I thought of MIDI tones emanating from an old cream colored computer's built-in speaker, some terrible synthesized songs from the 1980s, or even some chart-toppers created on a workstation in a bedroom without regard for the actual sound of real instruments. There's certainly nothing wrong with expressing one's musical creativity this way, but I'll pass on spending a buck when the first single is released. That was the past before I heard David Chesky's new creation Urbanicity / Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra / The New York Variations. The album's only real physical instrument is an electric guitar played by the 24 year old rising star Bryan Baker on the Concerto centerpiece. Every other instrument comprising the Urbancity Orchestra of New York is virtual. This may be a hard concept to accept for many audiophiles, but if anyone understands what real instruments sound like it's music impresario and current Composure in Residence at the National Symphony of Taiwan David Chesky. This album is thrilling to listen to on a nice audio system and is available beginning March 17, 2011 from HDtracks.com as a 24 bit / 48 kHz FLAC download. Computer Audiophile readers will be pleased to know HDtracks has provided them a 50% off code.
2010 is over and it’s time to look back and reminisce about what makes this hobby so wonderful. Music. Without music our well designed and frequently very expensive components would be nothing but paperweights and room heaters. Over the last twelve months I’ve purchased more music than any previous year. An increasing percentage of this music was high resolution and downloaded legally via the Internet. Along with more high resolution material came an increased demand for storage. I was forced to increase the size of my Network Attached Storage (NAS) unit from five to ten terabytes. That said the vast majority of the music I purchased in 2010 was on plain old Redbook 16 bit / 44.1 kHz Compact Discs. What follows is my top fifteen of 2010. A list of albums that lit up the hard drives here at Computer Audiophile. Some of these selections were released in 2010 while others were new to me in 2010 or simply albums that I couldn’t stop playing throughout 2010.
The long wait is almost over. In less than two weeks The Beatles Remasters will be available to all of us "regular guys." Fortunately TONE Audio has people on its staff who are not "regular guys" and who receive things like the Neil Young Bluray box and the Beatles remasters long before they hit the streets. This afternoon TONE published a really thorough review of Please Please Me: The Beatles Remasters that I think everyone will be interested in reading. Before I read the review I was certain that the stereo version of the box was the one for me. Now I am leaning toward the mono version. I just hope I don't have a week moment and overuse the Amazon 1-Click ordering button to order both the stereo and mono versions. Read more for a link to the review.
Some Computer Audiophile readers have been familiar with Kent Poon of Design w Sound for quite a while. To be honest I had heard of him and had browsed his website here and there, but I didn't really understand what he did or what his site was all about. If I had done a little research at the time I would have realized Kent Poon is a is a highly esteemed producer and mastering engineer. Kent is at the top of the industry in Asia and has a very impressive resume. In fact he is one of the youngest full members of the Audio Engineering Society (AES). I met Kent this year at CES and I've been extremely impressed with him and his work ever since. I am very pleased to introduce the rest of the Computer Audiophile readers to Kent Poon and his latest piece of work Audiophile Jazz Prologue III.
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