Thanks for the input kryan.

And, thanks for the question pescholl. I'm sure others had the same thing on their mind. With all the low quality download sites out there many people are skeptical of all things that claim to be high quality or HD etc... Fortunately kryan gave us the specifics and I can vouch for the accuracy of those details.

When I get more time I can upload a screenshot from iTunes that displays the bit rate, Khz rate etc...

Thanks for the info concerning Music Giants

Philip

I am assuming that Music Giants licenses the music from the Label owners who then supply MG with the 24/88 and 24/96 files.

I purchased my first MG Super HD album, "A Boy Named Charlie Brown".
Last night I used Adobe Audition 1.5 to convert the 24/88 WMA files to 24/88 WAV. I then up-sampled them to 24/96 WAV. I used the free program Lplex to author an audio-only DVD output as an ISO file. This weekend I will burn it to a DVD and listen to it on my Yamaha DVD player over my Def Tech speakers.

If it sounds as good as my other DVDs I made from HDTT source files, then this will become my modus operandi for Music Giants Super HD downloads.

Wish me "Good Music",
Philip in east Texas

Well, after burning the files to an audio-DVD (or as some refer to it, DAD), the sound quality is quite impressive. The sound quality is not state-of-the-art, but for a recording made in 1963, it is still very good, very similar to the Charlie Brown Christmas SACD.

I also down-sampled the files to redbook CD quality and burned a CD from them, but I have not listened to it yet.

IMO, the price for these files, $19.99, is worth every penny and I'll continue to purchase Super HD files from MG.

Philip in east Texas

Philip,

I don't think this really proves how good or if the MG files are true.

Really the only true way would be to have the 88.2 file in WAV do a file comparison to the original and look at the spectral content of the output. Maybe a better way would be to get the files from say Linn's site and if MG has the same files we could do a comparison that way. Who knows...

I think Chris we need to ask them what's up and how they are doing this.

Thanks
Gordon

i am the soundczar at musicgiants and i create the WMAL files you have been writing about. We have a proprietary hardware system that allows us to do bit for bit transfers of DVD-A recordings and turn them into WMAL recordings. We have tested this by taking the WMAL file and reversing it back to a PCM file and it matches bit 4 bit to the original. If a DVD-A disks is 6 channels of 96/24 we create a WMAL file that is 96/24

For SACD, we get stream the DSD bits using proprietary gear built for us by a division of Sony into DCS format converters which transfer it to PCM. These files sound extremely close to the SACD disks, even though we all know that there is a big difference between PCM and DSD. Various engineers from the record companies have done comparisons of our files to their masters and all are pleased. Ån SACD disk becomes a 88.2/24 bit WMAL file.

The WMAL encoder we use was customized for our process by MSFT.
fyi,..
SACD machines only will output stereo PCM from thier spdif ports

DVD-A machines only output 48/24 from their spdif ports

We do this in my studio. The direct cost of the equipment we use for this process is over $100,000.

I hope this helps and am happy to answer any questions

Elliot

Chris: i am sure the answer is on the site somewhere, so apologies for not looking. I am very interested as I would love to be able to play my Music Giant Super HD files on iTunes. Is there any concern that quality will be lost in the conversion?

Thanks Chris. The ony twist for me is I am using iTunes on a PC (running XP). So steps 1, 2 and 4 are clear. Will a converted wav file play on my iTunes. Is it necessary for me to covert again from wav to AIFF? If so, is the MAX application something that I will be able to run on a PC? Is it a tool in iTunes?

Conversion steps from your linked thread:
1. Download the lossless wma music
2. Use the Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless to PCM Converter to convert the wma files to wav files. This tool will keep the sample rate and size at 88.2 KHz & 24 bit. Beware it is a command line utility, but the syntax is real easy.
3. (Optional) Move the files to your Mac and use the MAX application to convert wav to aiff. This is necessary to support tags and cover art.
4. Import into iTunes and you done. MusicGiants 24/88.2 music on your Mac!
...
Here is another free
Here is another free converter to convert WMA to WAV for windows http://www.nch.com.au/switch/index.html You can then convert to Apple Lossless within iTunes.

Chris: thanks much. Is the converter a tool within Window Media Player? Just curious about where to go to find it.

Jim

Chris: sorry for being dense. After this tool is installed, how do you access it? Do you simply right click on the file itself and select a the conversion option in the tool window?

Just drag it into your iTunes library (iTunes will offer to convert it for you) or use dBpoweramp.

Baxtus

Hey baxtus - I wish this one was that simple! The reason I'm suggesting this roundabout method is because this is one of the only ways to keep the music at 24/88.2. iTunes will down convert during the import process.

If the wma files are already 16/44.1 then the conversion vance done very easily with many different tools.

I can confirm what Chris just said. Using iTunes, the bit rate dropped from 3000kbps to 1411kbps. I will try to decipher Chris' instructions for the MS conversion tool and see if it works for me.

Chris: I must confess that I am not 100% clear on how to use this tool.

I can't remember. You could try specifying a folder instead of a complete track name. Don't worry you wont break anything :-)

Alright, we'll figure this one out one way or another. Hear is my suggestion. Copy the music you want to convert into a folder called music right on your C drive (c:\music). The copy my exact command. I was able to convert the whole folder at a time. below are my results and what you should see.

run this command without the quotes "wmal2pcm c:\music c:\music"

C:\Program Files\Windows Media Components\Tools\WMAL2PCM>wmal2pcm c:\music c:\music

Converting c:\music\Mangos.wma to c:\music\Mangos.wav
++ Song title: Mangos
++ Author: Sonny Rollins
++ Copyright:
++ Description:
++ Rating:
++ WMA bitstream version: 3
++ sampling rate: ++ # of channels: 2
++ bit-rate: 1152000 bps
++ duration: 331641 ms
++ DRM content: No
Full Read and Decode took 43 s.
Play Time would be 331 s.

Converting c:\music\Mangos.wav to c:\music\Mangos.wav.wav
** The file is not a WMA file.

C:\Program Files\Windows Media Components\Tools\WMAL2PCM>

The entire folder converted fine. Music Giants came through at 24/88.2 and the Linn stuff at 24/96 and they all play fine. Only problem, none of the album info came through and I had to manually input the info into iTunes. any solutions for this? thanks again. and I can confirm no luck with DRM files.

Its worth it. will be glad to help. looking forward to your thoughts on the Swiss firewire DAC.
I wish the download services would provide more file format options to avoid this hassle.

Reading about musicgiant make me very depressed. This is actually one site that have quite a lot of music that I really like. Unfortunately they do not accept international sale/download yet :(
I hope they will one day!