HiResSteve

I have been unable to get this working since the upgrade. After reading your post I tried the new settings but all I get is sputtering sounds after 10 seconds of music. I ended up having to restore my older version from a previous install.

There are so many amazing things on Tidal but as you point out, also many things are not there. I agree I would love to see the ECM label titles. I would also like to see more items on the MPS label. They have some titles, but the ones they have are not HiRes so the light never comes on. I have been enjoying things on the ACT label and there is a lot to choose from. Lars Danielsson's albums are amazing. Check out his Liberetto album. Lots of other artists on that label that I need to listen to. I guess my biggest letdown has been albums that are listed but it turns out they are only in low-res format. I was excited to see all Ben Sidran's albums but the early ones are low-res. Oh well, I guess the service is a work in progress. I'm very happy with it nevertheless.

eClassical only shows a few MPS titles. There are 124 MPS titles on HighResAudio in 24/88: HighResAudio Search Agree, the Michael Naura album is excellent. I love the sound of their fusion albums.

All the hires stuff (24/88) from MPS sounds excellent. Pretty much every title they have put out so far is on highresaudio.com. Just search for MPS and you will find about 7 pages worth. So many amazing albums with new additions coming every few weeks or so. If you dig 70s European jazz with a scratchy Fender Rhodes or George Duke, they got it. Enjoying Red Garland - The Quota tonight. What a great album.

Yes, the Analyze function only uses the first 109 seconds, but it is a poor way to look at a file anyway. In Audacity, just use the Spectrogram view to see the full file and all the frequencies. Very similar to the MusicScope's spectrogram but free.

Not sure why you are posting analysis of m4a files, but since that is a lossy process, I wouldn't be surprised if it is truncated. I have the actual The Only Living Boy in New York.flac 24/96 and I can assure you it is high res and has lots of info above 24K including the tape test tones at ~30K.

I believe old Tom was part of the Pono launch and had a signature model when that came out, so I guess it all ties in. I'm glad he's pushing the hires stuff.

You need to know more about the original. Love Over Gold was mastered to digital so all they can do now is transfer that digital to tape, and then record the tape at 24/192. (That process is described/used on several 1980s albums on HDTracks, like the Emmylou Harris 1980s albums.) This process doesn't produce any musical information above 22K, 24K or 25K, or whatever digital resolution was used in the original digital. (ie, 44, 48 or 50 kHz.) If you were to buy the 24-192 of first or second Dire Straits albums which were mastered to tape, you would see info above 20K.

LOL! DR6 for an acoustic blues album. Seriously, what is even going through their minds? How can that possibly even sound enjoyable? Why would someone even do that?

I agree with wwaldmanfan. This really kills the sound. I don't even know why they do this. I was reading an article from MasterDisk about loudness, and the guy was saying things had to sound good on iPods and big Stereos and that "loudness can be done well". Problem is, when they do that peak limiting, it doesn't sound good on either. For the life of me I can't see how that limiting makes it sound "better". I have a Kenny Garrett jazz album where every track looks like the waveform you posted. I can't listen for more than 5 minutes even at low volume. I have even listened to it in the car, and it is just as annoying. I have a feeling the folks from MasterDisk would say your Mark Knopfler example would be a "great sounding album that is loud, dense, exciting, and punchy." I wish there were more artists using Paul McCartney's example where he released Limited and Unlimited versions of his albums.

The article is from NOVEMBER 19, 2013. In it he says "And then in the last few months I saw him (Lou) a few times again, as he returned to the studio to do some extensive remastering work with Vlado." Lou Reed died October 27, 2013. The article is referring to mastering done in 2013, most likely these releases.

This seems to be the work of the artist. Here is a quote from MasterDisk which talks about Lou Reed doing the new masters: Later that afternoon, after Lou left, I popped in to Vlado’s studio. “What happened in here today?” I asked. “Lou’s very happy,” Vlado said. “He said he thought his CDs sounded like shit, and he wanted it done right. We got new transfers off the master tapes, and they sound great. You want to hear an A/B?” Yes I did. Vlado played me “Walk on the Wild Side.” The old CD against the new transfer. And the difference was astounding. The old CD sounded so thin compared to the vastness of the sound in the new transfer. The bass sounded like a BASS. It sounded like a Miles Davis or Mingus record. You could hear fingers on the strings. You could sense the size of the instrument and the size of the room it was in. It had physical force, air and space around it. This new version sounds incredible, beautiful, startling. It choked me up. So far I have not seen anyone else say these sound beautiful.

On a related note, I was listening to the hires download of Lou Donaldson - Lush Life on Bluenote. I thought it sounded a bit different and did some searching. I found this on the ProStudioMasters listing for this download: *The master tape for this session was lost and the subsequent master used for this release was transferred from an original test pressing. HDTracks doesn't make mention of this on their listing of the album.

Plus this: GET AN ADDITIONAL 10% OFF ALREADY REDUCED PRICES ON SELECT VERVE TITLES with code: HDJAZZY10

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I will start looking through them and see what weird stuff I can find.