Comments on: Should we be collecting Audiophile Releases?

By: Oliver Chesler

Oliver Chesler — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:55:42 +0000

I didn’t think this post would get so many replies. I think it shows we all wish that all music be available in some high quality format.

By: Raytrace

Raytrace — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:55:25 +0000

or 8 Tracks :p

nah I could never see vinyl making a big comeback myself unfortunately. I really do think its the best though certainly the smoothest sounding and most toney/musical. The 180gm Black Sabbath album I have is incredible – the harmonica on the Wizard the wahish effects on the bass and the sound of pretty much all transients sound VASTLY superior on my Clearaudio turntable compared to my CD player (which is not a POS, its an Arcam SOLO).

By: Cornerman

Cornerman — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:52:04 +0000

Exactly Raytrace, as long as they keep selling low cost average quality mp3 files which cost next to nothing in storage and transfer to the customer in comparison to high quality they won’t bother.

Simple Business, unfortunatly. Personally i hope that Vinyl makes a true comeback.

By: soundspirit

soundspirit — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:33:06 +0000

Just remembered one thing… SACD discs has 2 layers:one is regular cd(so you can play it with any cd player) and other layer for sacd players.

By: Raytrace

Raytrace — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:31:06 +0000

yes Cornerman that is a good point (and a very worrying one) – the companies probably won’t bother with high quality as long as most people are ok with low to medium quality stuff. We’ve seen before that convenience wins over for most people – the microcassette sounded like absolute shit (even in the Super Avilyn or Metal formats) compared to vinyl and they were produced and sold for ages.

By: Cornerman

Cornerman — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 07:52:51 +0000

For some reason i will still be collecting vinyl. Although i buy some mp3′s from online stores , i like the physical product.

But the sound quality of downloads should be improved anyway. :-)

On the other hand, most people don’t hear the difference. So for the extra costs te larger formats bring along most companies will postpone this as long as there is no real market demand.

By: soundspirit

soundspirit — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:57:17 +0000

Oliver, you can listen to sacd in your car, but you need a proper player. I don’t like digital distribution because of it’s cost. You pay the same price, but you don’t get box with artwork and for better quality you pay more(internet bandwidth is cheap like hell).

Compact Disc
€ 18,00
Studio Master
FLAC 24bit 88.2kHz 1,129.0MB € 27,00
Studio Master
WMA 24bit 88.2kHz 1,118.5MB € 27,00
CD Quality
FLAC 16bit 44.1kHz 278.6MB € 14,00
CD Quality
WMA 16bit 44.1kHz 274.1MB € 14,00
MP3
MP3 320k 44.1kHz 153.8MB € 12,00

Total nonsense….

By: Kent Sandvik

Kent Sandvik — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:19:26 +0000

For cost and profit reasons electronic formats are the future, whether we want something physical or not (too expensive to manifacture, ship and especially take shell space in stores.)

So.

eMusic should stop its insane 192VBR format and move to at least 256kpbs MP3s.

There might be ways to provide even better audio quality with AAC and MP3s by various operations that might be disabled or tweaked, for example the low-band automatic filtering. We just need a new name for this higher quality AAC or MP3 format. The size might go up 50% but that’s fine in this age of broadband everywhere.

By: jonathan

jonathan — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:44:35 +0000

I could never hear the difference, until i actually listened to mp3′s for their quality for a college project – the difference between 96k 24bit wav and 128k 44.1k mp3 is phenomenal especially when you do the phase reversal and listen to the audio thats left behind =|

By: Raytrace

Raytrace — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:06:21 +0000

[EDIT] above I meant that linnrecords veers towards the usual audiophile material, as bleep.com is Warp Records, it doesnt really apply to them :)[/EDIT]