iTunes to start selling hi rez files!

[firedog]

You keep repeating this, but it would be nice to provide a single example. I have many counter-examples. But I guess this is the wishful thinking reality-free thread.

 

Here's one: John Coltrane: A Love Supreme. They gave me a free replacement album for my fake hi-res copy when I asked them about it. The version on the site now is a different mastering from the one that was shown to be fake hi-res. Bill, I posted about this one previously, I don't really think it is necessary for you to add insults to your query.

 

As far as other examples, I don't remember off hand b/c the Coltrane has been the only one I've bought that was fake hi-res. Search the site and you'll find several albums mentioned that were removed and/or replaced after buyer complaints.

 

On the other hand you keep repeating at every opportunity your accusations about HDT, without mentioning that the recent examples and present examples on the site are almost non-existent. Fake albums get taken down after complaints. Sometimes they are replaced by "real" hi-res, sometimes not. Fake hi-res material that was there 2-3 years ago and has been removed is irrelevant today. The Beck album is a bad/complicated example, don't need to go into it here.

 

HDT is certainly no worse in this regard than other hi-res sites. I personally have shown that Qobuz has hundreds of classical titles that are taken from upsampled 44.1 and labeled as 24/96. They've been made aware of the issue (even officially by the label involved) and haven't taken care of it. So if you want to make this issue your cause, put your comments in context.

[firedog]

Boy if HD Tracks actually has files that are not as represented, I would hope that the files are replaced and previous buys notificed and upgraded. I do think the CSN first album is as represented. And many files seem to me to be conversions straight from DVD-Audio or SACD.

 

AFAIK, HDT has taken down fake hi-res when made aware of it. They claim they now check (contract out to check) for fake hi-res. But labels can disguise the fakes and a simple Audacity check isn't enough to reveal it in that case. It appears that HDT only does a simple check that checks the bit and sample rate of the files, nothing more.

 

My big criticism of HDT in this is that they DON'T have a policy of informing previous buyers when an album is shown to be fake. In the case of the Coltrane, I noticed the album had been added back to the HDT catalog after not being there for quite some time. I wrote and asked them about it, giving the order number of my original order. They replied that the new version was a different mastering and gave me a link to download it for free. But if I hadn't written them, they wouldn't have notified me.

 

Labels have frequently taken material not in high res and made upsampled "hi-res" DVDs or SACDs from them. In many cases these then are supplied to the hi-res download sites. So it's good to check on the recording/release history of an album before you buy the hi-res. 24 bit recording wasn't widespread till the mid 90's I think, and high sample rate recording (above 44.1) is still not a standard. In the early days of digital recording there wasn't any recording in hi-res, so none of those albums can be sold as legitimate hi-res. Stuff recorded in analog can obviously be converted to hi-res digital and legitimately be sold as hi-res.

[HumanMedia]

There were about four ECM titles that HDtracks pulled because they appeared to be 16bit up converts. I believe one of those has returned in ECM's 2013-2014 remastering.

 

Re Loudness war - of course Apple have nothing to do with this. Back in the late 1980's it was apparently demands from the radio stations, which doesn't make sense as the radio stations used analog limiters on everything anyway. It became very easy to do digitally with cheap software that arrived in the 1990's. What also skyrocketed in the 1990s was the licensing of musak to shopping malls, including teams of people that would visit malls and individual shops to police them from illegally playing music (and offer licensing deals to shops to play the music). Most shops don't have playback equipment with limiters, so I believe that this emerging market was a major factor in what pushed for more compression (you can't have music jumping up and down in the elevator can you? - compress everything!). The lawyers-come-managers of the media companies wanted a single homogenous product that they could sell to all markets without making special versions.

 

Another note, Apples requirements list for authors submitting digital audio is that they prefer non-brickwalled content and suggest using more headroom. Why? - because it makes it easier for their MP3 compression software with work on non-brickwalled material.