crazzell

I checked this out, and downloaded Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5; Piano Sonata No.28 in A, Op.101 Hélène Grimaud & Staatskapelle Dresden. The FLAC metadata is minimalist at best (missing track numbers, year and genre). But the sound quality is great! I will probably buy more, but this experiment needs to be expanded vastly. The FLAC encoding is much less CPU intensive than making MP3s, so I don't see the down-side from DG's perspective. The PDF booklet was nice too.

I agree that MP3 music can be enjoyed at 192kbps and better, but that is not the point. If the artists, instruments, producers and recording engineers put more information in there, I want to hear it the way they intended it. The way MP3 encoding works is by perceptual coding, which works by assigning fewer bits of data to the masked elements of a recording than to the 'relevant' ones. The masked elements are ones that, based on a psychoacoustic model, the human brain will be less aware of (we tend to concentrate on whatever seems loudest in a given slice of time and frequency). So in essence, MP3 encoding adaptively allocates precision to those parts of the music the human ear/brain is most likely to care about and renders the rest in as low precision as it can get away with. Why do I have a problem with it? Because it *is* degraded when you listen to it on a good hi-fi system, and because CDs are going away. We are going through another revolution in the way recorded music is distributed to the public and (like the previous one from LP to CD), we are allowing to to rob us of quality in the name of convenience. --crazzell

I want to purchase classical music as downloads. For me, CD is already a compromised format, but I'm willing to live with it if that's all I can get. But MP3s are worse than CDs, even the best encoding and bit rates are a step down from linear PCM 16 bits 44.1kHz. I have purchased about all I want of Linn's catalog and Chesky's too. But the deep, rich catalog of CD music is still largely unavailable to me unless I want to compromise and use 256kbps or 320kbps MP3 files. I notice these are becoming more and more prevalent, with examples such as the Amazon MP3 download store, the Deutsche Grammophon Web Store, The Naxos Classicsonline.com store, which also has Pentatone, BIS and ATMA Classique labels, which are some of my favorites, at least when delivered on SACD or CD. So, what is the big deal about giving us the choice of FLAC/ALAC downloads for a few bucks more? It would solve so many problems, because the labels would be able to pocket a much fatter margin on every album they sell, they can avoid the 'out of print' issue that stymies so many potential purchases of music, and cut out so many environmental costs associated with distributing physical media etc. So what is the problem here? The music industry has a persistent death wish -- that's about the only explanation I can find. It's not that they are hooked on DRM anymore, but they are hooked on compromised sound quality. Am I the only one frustrated by this? --crazzell

I appreciate the promo code, and expect to use it when I get back to the US from my current business trip.<br /> <br /> I am waiting with baited breath to see if HDTracks will really be able to get the Pentatone and Harmonia Mundi catalogs added to the site (last promised date was September 30th). Now, if these get added in 24/96 format, that would generate some real excitement and probably a significant depletion of my bank balance as a result!<br /> <br /> --crazzell

Hi, can someone recommend a box that will allow me to send music from lossless PCM files stored on my laptop hard drive to my Benchmark DAC1 (basic version without USB)? I was thinking of an M-audio transit or Edirol UA-1EX. Is one of these preferred? Is there anything that is a step up from these without going crazy? I was wondering whether to get a 1394/firewire card and use a firewire to SPDIF converter instead? Some say that this is a better approach for low jitter. In any of the above cases, I would be using ASIO or whatever tricks are needed to bypass kmixer. If someone has a tried and trusted recipe, I would be very interested to hear about it. Thanks in advance for any answers. --crazzell