Are HD download sites getting desperate?

Only platinum?  Buy a few more and you will get diamond status.

Do you get 30% off then? ;-)

What's higher up than diamond then?

I think Plutonium is more precious (valuable than diamond per gram) but you have to use it quick 'cause it's degrading all the time :-)

If you are as expensive as HD tracks you will need to give a discount to even compete with the others. I just closed yesterday a contract for Qobuz Sublime giving me streaming in cd quality and 30 to 60 percent discount on a large part of the he downloads. It concretely means that you have quite a lot of HD albums for close to 10 euros.

Yes saw that also Bert, it reminds me a little of those book clubs from a few years ago, pay a monthly fee and choose certain books for free and get new titles half price.

Is it not so cheap (£219.99 per year UK pricing) but it depends I imagine on what is on offer at 30-60% discount, if it is titles not so popular for your own tastes then it might not be such a bargain, it will be interesting to see how that service works for you overall.

HDTracks are a lot cheaper in USA & with all these special offers going on it does appear they are not in a happy place in both locations.   And considering I have only bought from HDT-USA & only about 8 albums,   I was overcome with pride & emotion to find I am now a HDT-UK "Diamond" customer - not.

Qobuz is not far behind, pricing is not right & I can find lower elsewhere,  so I assume they are also not trading so well. 

I invariably go to HighResAudio in Germany & Japan as a first call, they are some notches cheaper, have no special offers & annoying e-mails & they have a good selection of DSD.

I am looking at high res audio, Qobuz and eclassical. eclassical is sometimes interesting as they have a daily offer of 50%, and in addition some other albums at low prices (mainly BIS and Harmoni Mundi classical), high res audio sometimes has interesting 15 Euros albums which are sometimes more expensive on Qobuz. In general Qobuz get's most of my money as they are very often then ones with the best prices. Now with Sublime it becomes even more on no brainer. 

But as mentioned it very much depends on your taste for music. As mine is a lot of jazz and classical I am well served. Progressive rock/pop is not so often on high resolution audio yet.

Another thumbs up for eClassical. Pricing is in dollars and is very keen on the daily and other special offers.

There are certain businesses that acclimate their customers to buying "on sale."  What happens is that customers are so accustomed to sales that they will not buy at 'regular price.'  In fact, the 'regular price' is a price that almost no one pays after a while.  HDTracks is certainly one of these.

It's a common model, and I suspect that their margins, even "on sale," are OK.  

 Whilst waiting to board an AA flight recently, seeing as our tickets said group ! we assume we would be the 3 rd (ish) group to board after 1st and Bus Class. Imagine our surprise when the next groups were 1st and Bus the Gold,Silver, Platinum, Diamond club members, I'm sure there were more, oh and member of the military. I did shout out I had Unobtanium class to no avail.

Yes masses of mail from HD suppliers also.

Kryptonite

I buy quite a bit from HDtracks, but almost always when there's a sale, including new release sales. This works fairly well for me because most of what I buy is recent releases by favorite jazz musicians, which I can wait to appear on HDtracks. Except when they don't because there was a disconnect between the (typically small independent) label and HDtracks. Prices are a bit high, but I enjoy the convenience of not having to order CDs and rip them.

Hi Fernando, it does pay off to shop around. I buy from all sites depending on the specific album and the potentially different discounts. Buying percentage on hdtracks is pretty low while I am also into jazz. So suggest you just check out before you buy. I very often save up to 5 euros per album, by selecting the right site.

cheers,

bert

Thanks, but unfortunately there very few HD download sides that sell to US customers, HDtracks is the only one with decent (if still insufficient) inventory in the US, for instance recent ECM and Blue Note releases. When I got my NAS and started buying HD downloads, search showed a bunch of other sites with interesting inventory, but none would sell to US customers.

Today's code sent to me for 15% is HDMEMORIAL15.

NB this is for HDT dot com.

Has anybody asked, if these are really HD-tracks or just pimped up normal rebook?

HD-Tracks has so many albums I doubt the really were recorded in hd.

If you want to know, there is a neat little application called Xivero, which will tell you the truth...

Hi gmischol, I am aware some pimped up 16bits were around a while back so its a valid question. However in my experience with co's like Qobuz & HighResAudio - plus Naim & Linn - my experience is leaning towards a good level of trust.  

Also keep in mind that the digital format they were recorded in is more than likely not the format used for replay. 

Modern recordings are invariably made in very hi-res,  but when buying older recording re-issues in hi-res I look for some info such as who & where was the remastering process done, etc.   easy to find on www.  

I have used a friends Xivero to check sample tracks from all my 24bit albums & all show HF extension beyond 30 up to 48kHz & dynamics around 140dB,  & no shadow of the 21kHz brick wall filter & the converted 16bit noise.

Thanks for mentioning this app, I'm trying it and finding some rather intriguing spectral info about my music collection. 

Just been playing with Xivero, and I found quite a few differences in 88.2-96/24 spectral profiles. Some recordings have significant energy all the way up to the Nyquist bound, but others have a smooth drop-off, with no 21kHz brick wall. Not knowing much about digital recording and mastering, I'm wondering whether there are standards for filtering higher frequencies (as there were for analog recording), or it's just a matter of house style and recording equipment choice? When I see steady energy at higher frequencies I wonder about quantization noise...

Once again, thanks for the recommendation. XiVero's MusicScope is totally worth Eur 24.37 for the unlocked version, and they have a neat tutorial on HD recording and its foibles: https://www.xivero.com/blog/hi...hat-is-the-question/. 

Casually thinking on this, if there was a single or series of high sample rate recordings that were being mixed and mastered , them I would expect much HF energy upto half the sample rate to be present if looking at the sample spectrum, as I would expect to see timing information, and not simply the harmonics of the fundamentals.

If the recording was a mix of standard or 48 kHz sources and mixed and mastered  in high def I would expect to see the high frequency  content fall away as I would expect it to be mostly harmonic related and I doubt the mastering would be injecting much HF noise and would expect it to be filtering with respect to the source sample rates. The timing info would be bound by the source.

Penaps we need a convention like was used in CD for analogue and digital stages (ADD etc)  but have for highdef (Highdef or Standard for the recording, mixing and mastering).Perhaps many highdef re released albums would be SSH or SHH, but a true high def recording would be HHH.

Simon

Some good casual thinking Simon,  & yes I guess we would all agree that some form of convention would be a good thing, but I expect many would add the caveat provided it does not add to the already too high purchase price.

This side branch of the original post thread concerns the scams around hi-res downloads & the use of spectrum analysis tools,  & in my very limited experience they do enable me to identify good bad & dodgy files.  For me it did go some way to answer my concerns,  is the file an upsampled 16bit scam,  or is a reformatted SACD or DVD-A or is it really a genuine remix or remaster with 24bit & high sample rate.

But a high level of expertise is needed with some of the more tricky mixes where HF noise is added to make a 48kHz look like a 96kHz;  so whilst a useful tool, the skill is with the craftsman not the sharpness of the chisel.

My problem is defining what is Hi-Res audio, the words are banded around & are not much more than marketing hype words that do not mean much.  In basic terms HD or HiRes has to be anything that exceeds the ranges of human hearing 20Hz-20kHz & 135dB dynamics.  In my book that means 24bit 48kHz minimum & better still 96kHz.  DSD brings in a whole new game,  but I fear it will remain a niche corner of audio.  

So back to your proposition, we need some sort of standard that brings a level of guaranteed quality & trust to the market.

Excellent and the white paper is VERY interesting.

Has anyone experimented with the AudioRepair programme on standard 16/44 CD rips?

Just got a Qobuz offer of 30-60% off !!

Heck....

Is it store wide or by a discount code? If the latter, what's the code?