HD TRACKS

phew thanks guys.....was going ballistic

I gave HD Tracks a go this weekend and bought the new Paul Simon album. The website is perhaps not the slickest, download time was pretty long too but I am really impressed with the quality (of the 24 bit HD version). I don't have the CD version to compare but it seemed like a big step up to me. Felt like a big upgrade had happened!

I think I'll be going back, especially if they can offer a section of new releases.

Bruce

I made the mistake of purchasing the Rush - Moving Pictures and the John Mellencamp - Life Death Love and Freedom albums at 96 kHz / 24-bit the day before AXPONA in Atlanta, while every hi-res capable vendor at the show was probably battling for bandwidth as well.

I have NOT uncompressed these out to WAV yet, but I'll probably play with this later tonight.

Do tell please

Looks like HD tracks has hit some licensing trouble.....the PayPal link has gone and they sent me this message yesterday.  They did, however allow me to reload 'Band On The Run' which I downloaded in February but had got corrupted.    Is there anywhere else where HD's can be purchased (legally!)

Thank you for your interest in HDtracks.  Due to licensing, publishing and royalty restrictions and issues that still need to be worked out with all of our partner labels, unfortunately, we are unable to offer our services to international customers at this time.

Of course, we would love to be able to expand our services so that persons outside of the US, such as yourself, who are interested in our services be able to purchase music for us.  We are working hard in order to be able to do so in the near future.  We will let everyone know once this service is available.

We do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and again, thank you for your interest in HDtracks.

Wow what a disappointment. The music industry really is FUBAR. Absolutely incredible.

sorry you live in the UK (for once)

hmmm... there's an article in this months HiFi News that has measurements of HD Tracks 'hi-res' downloads suggesting that there's no hi-res content whatsoever;  HD Tracks were given the opportunity to reply, but declined. But the UK does have an Advertising Standards Authority that requires claims made for products sold online to be substantially true, so perhaps HD Tracks have made a strategic withdrawal from the marketplace.

I don't know if this helps, but I've just bought and am currently downloading Paul Simon. I paid using PayPal.

Graham

Graham,

It's 'reappeared'.....quick before they change their minds..........!!

I have had no problems buying using Paypal: Tommy + some albums from the Rolling Stones back catalogue. They all - including Tommy - sound very good although even hi res cannot salvage all the SQ deficiencies of the very early Stones albums.

On the other had I have just bought most of the Doors catalogue in 44/16 (remastered), and rips of those albums sound fabulous too on both my systems. At least I enjoy the 44/16 files as much as the hi res HD Tracks ... tracks.

Best wishes,

Peter

David,

Why do you say the HFN article is bunk? The graphs clearly show very significant slope-off beyond 20khz in all the cases they highlighted, although it doesn't necessarily mean that the content below 20khz is not high-bit.

Just interested in your view.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

That is not the same as saying that they are not Hi Res. Hi Res does not mean extended dynamic range as far as I understand it but better resolution. Using video as an analogy you can have the same film but clearly there is a difference between a film seen on VHS and Blu Ray.

I can quite clearly here the difference. The Diana Krall recordings are superb and the difference HD tracks brings to the album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is remarkable. Even my wife notices!

Obviously a 24-bit word gives you far greater accuracy since 16-bit is a total of 65536 values whereas 24-bit gives millions. But if you sample at a higher rate than 44.1khz such as 96khz or higher, that's when you have more actual information per time period. In other words, in a second 44.1khz sampling gives you 44,100 slices of information whereas 96khz gives you 96000 and therefore just over twice the resolution. This also means that your jitter errors are also commensurately lower since you have so many more samples per given time period.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

Is HiRes actually HiRes?

There have been a number of good threads on Computer Audiophile, such as this one about a set sold via Linn:

http://www.computeraudiophile....-what-Linn-sold-2496

There are also some good analysies of the offending tracks, and discussions.

The companies, which do include HDTracks, are then challenged.

M

Having bought a couple of albums from HD Tracks, I'm not hugely impressed. My so-called HD 24/96 copy of 'Gaucho' actually doesn't sound as good as the rip of the standard CD I made.

I think I'll stick to standard rips for the time being until there are some more consistent results from the HD stuff. I feel a SACD/DVD-A sense of deja vu...

Quite right Tony, I see you've lost weight btw.

The Gaucho is based on the later remaster and doesn't sound as good as the original CD.  But then I've yet to understand why people get excited about HD tracks when Redbook is seldom mastered to it's potential anyway.

Same with the Rush Moving Pictures - the two channel so called HD doesn't match the MOFI CD or original Canada issue to my ears.  I'd say buyer beware on the HD front.