New Reference Recordings HRx Releases

[astrotoy]

RR is up to 9 releases on HRx, with two new ones offered last Monday. I ordered them and have been listening to both. They are RR-117 Lincolnshire Posy and RR-119 West of the Sun with Joel Fan. THe Licolnshire Posy has spectacular sonics - with the famous RR bass drum that shakes the house. Fun music- by Percy Grainger. "Molly on the Shore" is a demo piece. The Joel Fan album has exciting performances and very real piano sound - another HRx winner.

 

[audiozorro]

I saw the new releases from Reference Recordings but I was not happy to find no demo tracks of the Lincolnshire Posy album. One of the great benefits of computer audio is the ability to preview (listen to) and buy musical selections on line.

 

When an online music seller doesn't offer the ability to listen to music excerpts from album tracks I often wonder if I will like the album. I'm sure the RR album sonics are the finest but I'm not sure if the album will meet my musical tastes. I bought several recommended Telarc classical music SACDs a few months ago that were only $5 or $6 each. After listening to them I felt that half were exquisite and the other half I am almost ready to just give away.

 

IMO one of the key factors in the decline of album sales is that too many album releases only have 1 or 2 tracks worth listening to. This is generally not a problem with classical music or jazz, but it is very true for popular music. That's one of the reasons that online sales for music track downloads are so popular - the modern equivalent of buying a 45 record instead of wasting your money on the LP.

 

[astrotoy]

Thanks. I just checked on HDTracks and they have samples of all the RR HRx recordings to preview. You can also buy individual tracks, but they are not at 176/44. At the Computer Audiophile Symposium this past weekend, I had a chance to talk to Marcia Martin, VP at Reference Recordings (and Keith Johnson's spouse). She told me that all of the HRx issues except the Arnold Overtures and Exotic Dances were originally mastered at 176/24 and we are getting copies of the original wav file masters. The Arnold and Exotic Dances were done before RR went to 176. The 176/24 files were made from the analogue master tapes the Keith Johnson did. BTW, those were the two recordings that were chosen by Tape Project to release in their first series of 15 ips 2 track tapes, using the same master analog tapes (I am a subscriber to those also). Marcia also said that the reason that HDTracks has both 88/24 and 96/24 issues from RR is that originally the HDTracks equipment could not play 88/24, so they had RR downsample their 176/24 masters to 96/24. RR told them that 88/24 would sound better, since it is an integral downsampling - 2 to 1. Now that HDTracks can do 88/24, RR is providing 88/24 those for the new issues.