HDTracks raises prices - again

[magiccarpetride]

Recorded and mastered in high resolution digital is different from an analog recording which is converted to high resolution digital and then digitally mastered in high resolution digital.

For example the Rolling Stones Abcko recordings are analog recordings which have been converted from the original analog masters (of so you are told) in high resolution digital masters. It is these files that HDTracks is selling. Nothing wrong with that provided that the hi-rez digital files have in fact been sourced from the original analog masters.

I think the basic problem with the legal download sites is that they are basing their business model and hence their price structure on the old physical media model. For the average person who doesn't completely understand things digital (which would be somewhere around 99.9999999% of all those gray haired audiophiles out there - it would be a solid 100% expect for myself and perhaps a few other people on this forum) they think that the physical pricing model applies to things digital.

However the distribution system for digital files is completely different than the distribution system for physical media and the many of us are well aware of this and feel that the pricing structure should be revised. I'm not saying that the files should be given away only that the current pricing structure is out of whack with the realities of the digital distribution system.

Throw in the fact, that as Mnyb correctly pointed out, there are other means of obtaining the same files at a much lower cost and HDTracks relatively high prices are seen in a very harsh light. And by the way, while hi-rez recordings from HDTracks and other sites (e.g. Linn) may not have reached the torrent market I have seen them available via other means. What puzzles me is that the approach being taken by many of these legal download sites and the record companies appears to run counter to the old supply and demand model.

Let me explain:

A limitless supply of a commodity would normally mean a low or falling price. It is only when demand outstrips supply that the price should go up. And yet the record companies' response to the their commodity (digital music files) being widely and cheaply available (torrents, news groups, Rapidshare, copies and rips of CDs) has been to continually raise their prices. Obviously the laws of supply and demand are only followed when they result in higher, not lower, prices.

I don't have the answer but I do know that until these greedy S.O.B.s come to their senses regarding their failing business model things are not going to improve nor are the prices going to come down to a point where many of us would be happy with them. In the meantime illegal downloading will continue unabated.

For all intents and purposes, I think we're still in an early Stone Age when it comes to producing, distributing, and consuming music as digitized stream of bits and bytes. I completely agree with your assessment that these greedy unscrupulous purveyors of 'high definition' digitized music are stupidly and blindly copying the old, traditional model based on concrete, tangible objects, such as LPs and cassettes and CDs and DVDs and blu-rays.

However, the free ride days are rapidly coming to an end. Still, music business is not the only area hit hard by the abruptly changing terrain. Journalism, and all other forms of publishing, are equally being undermined by this subversive development that is supported by the maturing of the world wide web technology.

No one knows where the chips will fall once the dust settles. One thing is for sure -- businesses such as HDTracks etc. will soon be extinct, as they won't be in the position to compete on the open market. Those prices, quoted above, are absolutely unsustainable.

Especially now when we're learning that 2011 is the first ever year when, for the first time, baby boomer generation is getting outnumbered by the younger generations who have money to burn.

[ralphpnj]

Especially now when we're learning that 2011 is the first ever year when, for the first time, baby boomer generation is getting outnumbered by the younger generations who have money to burn.

And a younger generation that has no nostalgia for 40 year old recordings which can be easily converted into cash cows by a mere wave of a wand and chanting the magic words "digitally remastered". Add to that the fact most of this younger generation has grown up in world where all types of content, such as music, video and words (online newspapers, news sites, etc.), are either free or very inexpensive. Of these things I'm fairly certain since I'm the father of a two members of this younger generation.

As a once famous baby boomer once said "The times they are a changing".

[RonM]

As a once famous baby boomer once said "The times they are a changing".

ONCE famous?!

R.

[ralphpnj]

ONCE famous?!

R.

A complete unknown:

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-14/e...?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ

[Mnyb]

Nostalgia is ok. I'm not a young person either

Lets not forget the not so unimportant fact, that the recording/production itself, how it is done twarts all mere technicalities.
So one will prefere a somewhat fuzzy fluttery noisy master of a very well balanced and well done record
Over a perfecttly 24/192 recorded failure any time. I'll take the good recording on cassete over 24/192 it will still be better.

Some of my best sounding CD's do origin from analog tapes, but thats not why they sound good.

I'm no expert on analog tape machines but things did not exactly stand still a machine from the 60's or a later model is probably a world apart.
And they add a lot of things to the sound, so yes I would gently disagre, they are bottlenecks, you can prove that by listening to a CD of analog origin.
They have shortcommings, some origins in speed imperfections it is a mechanical thing with motors and little wheels and stuff and mostly the nature of magnetic " stuff " saturdation and hysteres etc.
They employ bias and whole bag off tricks to coax that magnetic tape in to resembling something linear this is not something magnetic systems naturally wants to do. The amount of engineering is amazing it can make me nostalgic

But the net effect is very benign on acoustical music like classic or jazz as this often recorded in one session without overdubs, so you dont loose that much.

Heard of the term " generation loss" copy analog tape back and forth a couple of times and it quickly
loses in ultimate sq .
Profesional machines are very good but each analog copy loses something.

Thats exactly how analog multitrack recording was done, the mixing session ultimately involves a lot off copying tape back and forth when mixing or aplying effects .
That is the history of rock and pop recording analog tape machinery had to reach a certain quality level before Beatles "seargent pepper" was possible to do technically.

These losses are not benign at all.

You can read of mastering engineers actually using analog tape as a " sound effect" softening the sound of some recordings trough a tape machine then digitising it again ? That was for normal CD releases ?

So i do have to gently disagree here, the analog origin is a bottleneck even to a CD much more soo to a so called hirez recording.

Digitital recording have it's own set of problems, but dont lose track of why it was invented it solves countless old problems recording engineers have figthed against for generations before that.

Lets not forget that tape age, depending on storage conditions and chemical properties ot the tape itself, some tapes literaly crumple to dust 40 years later ? That is a sad thing, but a fact.
So yes a well preserved LP can be the best avaible master of some music.

OT ripping LP and upploading it has becomme a hobby on it's own , so some previusly unaviable stuff is there now, but as usual it's mostly cr*p so I have not investigated it to much.

[michael123]

Since when has 40 year old analogue tape been 24/192?

Much of the HDTracks catalogue is similarly ancient and suspect - they are selling very little that has been recorded and mastered in hi-res digital.

If they were transferring from the analog..
Quite frequently they use DSD material (which was also upsampled in the past), and merely convert to PCM (a lossy process!), applying some more filtering, etc..

There is nothing in DSD that requires more than 60Khz sampling rate.. Over 25Khz there is a catastrophic amount of noise...

[JezA]

The HDTracks Rolling Stones material comes from DSD remasters done around 2002 by ABCKO and Bob Ludwig which were then released on dual format CD/SACD.

"Many years of research went into locating the original mono and stereo analog tapes that would be used in ABKCO's Rolling Stones Remastered Series. That research revealed a treasure trove of first generation tapes - true stereo masters from The Stones' 1964 Chess Studios sessions including the unedited version of "2120 South Michigan Avenue," Beggar's Banquet at its correct speed and Let It Bleed with splicing that indicates that the original intention was to leave little spacing between each cut.

For the analog to digital transfers, vintage reel-to-reel tape machines were utilized - a modified Ampex 351 with original tube electronics (full track mono and two track stereo) and an Ampex ATR-102 modified with Aria Discrete Class-A Electronics (full track mono and two track stereo). A Sonoma DSD digital audio workstation was the chosen high resolution format and Meitner Design ADC8 and DAC8 MKlV converters were used for the conversion process. Cables used were the cryogenically frozen type supplied to us by Gus Skinas of Super Audio Center. Gus also provided much guidance to Jody Klein, Steve Rosenthal and myself for our first time use of DSD technology. For this HD Tracks release, the Bob Ludwig mastered DSD files were converted to both 176.4kHz and 88.2kHz high resolution PCM with Weiss Saracon conversion software."

- Teri Landi, Archivist and Engineer, ABKCO Music & Records

[michael123]

The HDTracks Rolling Stones material comes from DSD remasters done around 2002 by ABCKO and Bob Ludwig which were then released on dual format CD/SACD.

"Many years of research went into locating the original mono and stereo analog tapes that would be used in ABKCO's Rolling Stones Remastered Series. That research revealed a treasure trove of first generation tapes - true stereo masters from The Stones' 1964 Chess Studios sessions including the unedited version of "2120 South Michigan Avenue," Beggar's Banquet at its correct speed and Let It Bleed with splicing that indicates that the original intention was to leave little spacing between each cut.

For the analog to digital transfers, vintage reel-to-reel tape machines were utilized - a modified Ampex 351 with original tube electronics (full track mono and two track stereo) and an Ampex ATR-102 modified with Aria Discrete Class-A Electronics (full track mono and two track stereo). A Sonoma DSD digital audio workstation was the chosen high resolution format and Meitner Design ADC8 and DAC8 MKlV converters were used for the conversion process. Cables used were the cryogenically frozen type supplied to us by Gus Skinas of Super Audio Center. Gus also provided much guidance to Jody Klein, Steve Rosenthal and myself for our first time use of DSD technology. For this HD Tracks release, the Bob Ludwig mastered DSD files were converted to both 176.4kHz and 88.2kHz high resolution PCM with Weiss Saracon conversion software."

- Teri Landi, Archivist and Engineer, ABKCO Music & Records

Yeah, exactly.
That's what I meant above..
It is like recompressing JPEG into PNG

I know Saracon software, no more difficult to operate then FLAC and much simpler than Sox ;-)

176/24 is pure marketing scam in this case, do not buy it

High chances that SACD on the same Meitner's EMM player will sound superior..

[adamdea]

"Unreal: I have more versions of the early Rolling Stones - original pressings, audiophile vinyl, SACD, you name it - than I dare count, but these high-res downloads sound the best. In your face, like a good Stone should."
- Ken Kessler, Hi-Fi News & Record Review

[quoted from HD tracks email]. Now if the 24 bit PCM versions are simply transcoded from the DSD layer of the SACD....

Incidentally i could not follow from the account earlier why it followed that they had not done a new DSD master for the PCM downloads.

[magiccarpetride]

So i do have to gently disagree here, the analog origin is a bottleneck even to a CD much more soo to a so called hirez recording.

I have yet to hear a digital recording (high definition or regular red book) that would sound as close to real life as Nina Simone's "Little Girl Blue" (http://www.amazon.com/Little-Girl-Bl...264276&sr=8-18). Keep in mind that this album was recorded 54 years ago (1957!)

So assuming that in the intervening 50 years, before the original master tape was digitized, there's been a lot of erosion that this tape, being basically a magnetic medium, tends to suffer from, one can only wonder how crisp and lifelike that tape actually sounded the day it was used to capture the god-like playing and singing by the one and only Ms Nina Simone!

If you play this CD, and then right after that play the flagship Chesky Records high definition "Best of Chesky Vocals" (which purports to showcase the best possible way of capturing vocals), you'll hear how incredibly inferior Chesky's anal (that's not short for 'analog') high definition tracks sound.

What's up with that?