Deutsche Grammophon as hires download

Posted by: jfritzen on 29 October 2010

To those of you who are interested in the progress of hires music:

hdtracks.com are currently offering 4 Deutsche Grammophon titles as 24/96 download. Perhaps DG are only testing the water, but nevertheless I think this is a remarkable development.

Up to now I never thought the big classical labels would even consider to make hires music available via download, and I never had hope to listen to the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonic in high resolution on a digital streamer in the near future. Fortunately it seems I'm wrong.

Kind regards,
Jochen

Posted on: 29 October 2010 by bhaagensen

quote:
Originally posted by jfritzen:
Up to now I never thought the big classical labels would even consider to make hires music available via download, and I never had hope to listen to the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonic in high resolution on a digital streamer in the near future. Fortunately it seems I'm wrong.

Great news indeed. Although in my view, an expected development - I find it strange that DG are not offering these for sale (or are they?) in their own digital music store - which already contains quite a selection in full-res [RedBook] quality? A bit strange?

Posted on: 29 October 2010 by jfritzen

No, the hires versions are not available in DGs own webshop (only 16/44, MP3 and disc media), which indeed is strange. Perhaps it would have meant too much trouble to add and advertise another type of album format on their webshop for just these 4 test albums.

Posted on: 30 October 2010 by Aleg

I would also check if the HiRes files do indeed contain frequencies above 22 kHz.

There has been (at least one) incident where it turned out that the tracks offered on HDTracks as HighRes turned out to be just an upsampled CD with no frequencies above 22 kHz. Might have just an unlucky incident, though.

-
aleg

Posted on: 30 October 2010 by bhaagensen

At least the Mahler-album seems to be using the entire 96kHz and 24 bits. Though the spectrum is a bit strange I haven't looked into much details.

FYI it also appears to be sourced from the SACD-version.

Posted on: 30 October 2010 by Aleg

quote:
Originally posted by bhaagensen:
At least the Mahler-album seems to be using the entire 96kHz and 24 bits. Though the spectrum is a bit strange I haven't looked into much details.

FYI it also appears to be sourced from the SACD-version.

That looks promising then

Posted on: 30 October 2010 by jfritzen

quote:
Originally posted by bhaagensen:
At least the Mahler-album seems to be using the entire 96kHz and 24 bits. Though the spectrum is a bit strange I haven't looked into much details.

FYI it also appears to be sourced from the SACD-version.

I had a look at the Netrebko files using Audacity. The frequency spectrum extends to 44khz and there is a ramp in the upper spectrum rising from -88db at 25khz to -54db at 44khz. I guess this might come from DSD noise shaping? So probably the files are really from SACD too.

How did you measure the effective bit depth?

Posted on: 30 October 2010 by jlarsson

No wonder these so called "hires" downloads fail to impress.

Posted on: 30 October 2010 by okli

out of curiosity - is hdtracks already opened for non US customers? my last attempt about a month ago failed at check out with "please read our FAQs, why hdtracks is open to US customers only" :-(

Posted on: 30 October 2010 by Geoff P

quote:
Originally posted by okli:
out of curiosity - is hdtracks already opened for non US customers? my last attempt about a month ago failed at check out with "please read our FAQs, why hdtracks is open to US customers only" :-(

AH... but if you pay by PayPal they don't care where you live. I buy downloads from them here in the Netherlands that way with no problem.

Posted on: 30 October 2010 by Aleg

quote:
Originally posted by Geoff P:
quote:
Originally posted by okli:
out of curiosity - is hdtracks already opened for non US customers? my last attempt about a month ago failed at check out with "please read our FAQs, why hdtracks is open to US customers only" :-(
AH... but if you pay by PayPal they don't care where you live. I buy downloads from them here in the Netherlands that way with no problem.

Right, for me it works as well. I believe I never even entered my address and pay with PayPall.
Never had any problems this way.

-
aleg

Posted on: 31 October 2010 by okli

quote:
Originally posted by Aleg:
quote:
Originally posted by Geoff P:
quote:
Originally posted by okli:
out of curiosity - is hdtracks already opened for non US customers? my last attempt about a month ago failed at check out with "please read our FAQs, why hdtracks is open to US customers only" :-(
AH... but if you pay by PayPal they don't care where you live. I buy downloads from them here in the Netherlands that way with no problem.

Right, for me it works as well. I believe I never even entered my address and pay with PayPall.
Never had any problems this way.

-
aleg

will give it a try tomorrow - I thought they are checking the IP, but if this simple trick works... lol, I know what's coming next... Thanks for the hint :-)

Posted on: 31 October 2010 by Aleg

quote:
Originally posted by okli:
quote:
Originally posted by Aleg:
quote:
Originally posted by Geoff P:
quote:
Originally posted by okli:
out of curiosity - is hdtracks already opened for non US customers? my last attempt about a month ago failed at check out with "please read our FAQs, why hdtracks is open to US customers only" :-(
AH... but if you pay by PayPal they don't care where you live. I buy downloads from them here in the Netherlands that way with no problem.

Right, for me it works as well. I believe I never even entered my address and pay with PayPall.
Never had any problems this way.

-
aleg

will give it a try tomorrow - I thought they are checking the IP, but if this simple trick works... lol, I know what's coming next... Thanks for the hint :-)

I just checked my account.

It has just my email address and password.
All name and address fields are just filled with dashes and I "left" the country field on USA.

Payments I just do with PayPal.

-
aleg