Do they include some kind of booklet inside?

Have fun!

Interesting Chris;

I'm all for 24-bit high-samples audio, and files on disc is a definite imrovement on DVD-A with its menu-driven rubbish (e.g., 'search backwards operation not permitted by disc'). However, putting these on burned media is a cheap-ass act on the part of RR, one that smacks of the same profiteering as Universal with their 'CDO' format, re-releasing titles on CD-R. Burned media have a definite lifetime -- years at most when well-treated and much less when not. When 'cyclic redundancy' errors start to appear (drive can't read part of file), the disc is useless, and you'll have to buy another. Of course, you can always copy the files to HDD, but the optical media are supposed to be the back-up, not need backing-up.

This sort of practise on the part of the record companies should be discouraged, not trumpeted.

cheers,
Dave

Well, it's an issue that will become more significant as people move toward computer-based storage I think. I posted elsewhere on the site about the dangers of HDD storage without backup, and most would regard this as prudent (e.g., your RAID setup) but, assuming we only have our own music ripped, it's having the stamped CDs that are the real backup. If they're burned media, that security is gone. In truth, it doesn't really matter if RR use Tai Yuden or the cheapest Mitsubishy-wishy-washy discs they can find; a CD is a physically-stamped medium, a CD-R / DVD-R is an organic dye, and one that is vulnerable to damage simply from light, humidity and temperature variations -- it can be rendered useless just sitting on a shelf, untouched. I'm not against these things, I just think people need to be aware of their limitations, and it's questionable for companies like RR to put their product on this sort of medium (although it makes great business sense -- ask Universal).

Downloading is certainly convenient, but anyone who knows someone with a dead ipod (or a working ipod, but with a new computer) will realise the problems associated with downloaded music. I would never buy any compressed stuff from iTunes, but even if I could get it as uncompressed WAVs I would still want the physical copy. It is the latter that you're paying for; if you're happy to pay for the file alone then the DRM people have already got you without even having to cripple the files. Find that the disc you paid for is unreadable one day, and your only recourse is to buy another one.

I would prefer to pay for stamped media than RAID to preserve my music (let's not even get into DVD and Blu-Ray, and Pb's of files). What I see here is the successor to DRM -- ORM: 'optical rights managment'. Sneaky...

Dave

Hi ASB - I usually would not even go down the path of converting to flac because I prefer uncompressed. I'll give this a shot for you and let you know.

Hi Chris,
I got my Discs yesterday and played them via our TRINITY DAC and I can tell you these recordings are really great. I own almost all hi-rez (192kHz/24bit)recordings ever published on this planet and can compare these recordings with other DVD-As. You are right, my first impression was the same you need at least 4dB more on the volume control, but if you look on a peak level meter you will see the most music runs between -50 and -20dBFS with some louder parts of -10dBFS, but there are some very short peaks which go up to -6dBFS. Normally the recording engineer does not go higher than -3dBFS, because you need some headroom for the digital filter. I guess they need the -6dBFS for the HDCD processor.
By the way our DAC do not have any digital or analogue filter, so I can say we play back the music digit for digit as it was recorded. The recommendation to use high-end gear is necessary, because the most DACs lose the room information, if the play silent music and here we are the most time below -20dBFS. This is a real good dynamic range without any compression. I hope they publish other recordings as well and keep the high-rez music alive.

Dietmar