HiRes Wings

Thanks for the tip Mr. Underhill.

Bought the US version - downloading it now.

A reasonable price for the high res version (I of course went for the unlimited one). It would be
good if other artists/labels followed suit. I for one would buy lots!

Peter

Wings?

You can't polish a turd.

1973 ?! that'll be hi-res tape hisss and hi -res wow and flutter then! (not to mention nearly 40 years of print through, oxide degradation, tape stretch ...)

Nonsense, the best music I have (SQ wise) comes from mastertapes from 1957 - 1959.

Aleg - I wouldn't dispute that there are many wonderful recordings from that era; I just think it's a bit disingenuous calling them 'HiRes' - to me that means the source should be hi-res digital too.  And many tapes of that age have degraded significantly so won't sound as good as they did when they were made.

LikesMusic

I'm always in favour of having/keeping the original recording in analogue format, and all recordings start in analogue format, even be it in the microphone before storing on a digital recorder.

Digital conversion is just an approximation of the analogue signal and IMHO depends very much on the technology available at that moment.

In my circle of friends there is a small & parttime record producer and he held and managed the analogue tape recordings of performances by one of my befriended concert pianists.
At one time he thought it wise to convert all master tapes to 44.1kHz/16bit digital format for archival purposes. At that time this was the best technology available and was thought to be best/sufficient for archival purposes to saveguard those recordings for the future. The original analogue master tapes were destroyed .

Now quite a few years further down the line we know better than to archive in 44.1kHz/16bit format. But still I think this will remain true at any time. There will always be some better digital method in the future that give a better approximation of the analogue signal (but it will never be exactly the analogue signal).

Careful handling and consciously maintaining the integrity of the tape material will give you IMHO the best source material. When processed by a very good mastering engineer this gives you a terrific musical experience.

-
aleg

Got this from HD Tracks some weeks ago. Not my favourite album, not even in my top 50. But there is such a shortage of stuff that even remotely interests me. Anyone who has obtained it will know how spectacularly good it sounds. Notwithstanding the quality of the source material (read sound rather than artistic)  it gives me optimism that come the day when my favourite stuff trickles through I'm in for a treat. Among artists who I would love to investigate/own in 24Bit, Steve Hackett has been the first to blink. I don't have a poorly recorded Hackett album, I don't know if one exists. Looks promising.

This is like being in my 20s again (but less skint).  We were told that certain albums would never appear on CD.  We were force fed contemporary dross in "high resolution, perfect sound forever" and told to learn to like the future and forget about the past. We were sold CDs that were recordings of vinyl. I have a copy of ELO's Face The Music on CD where the needle is heard to land in the groove - you'd think they could have edited that out. And I used to own many CDs of favourite vinyl albums that were just dire sounding. But over time they have for the most part been replaced with some good and some superb CDs of albums that I was told would never be available, and CDs that sounded awful first time round. It's not going to be any different this time round or next time, or the time after that, by which time I'll probably be deaf or dead in any case.

Well written response Aleg.


Harry, I did look at buying this from HD Tracks, did they also offer it in two different flavours, limited and unlimited?

M

Yes. I bought the latter. Now I come to think about it I couldn't say what the difference is! But I'm sure I knew at the time. It's excellent. I just wish I liked the album more. A couple of visitors have sampled it and gone through the predictable born again experience, but at the risk of being a snob it's true to say that most people do with 16bit unless they own a top flight music system. Which most don't.

I never owned a Wings album until I got a free copy of the CD remaster courtesy of The Times last year. After the purchase of my Userve recently I bought the HiRes download from HD Tracks. The difference in SQ is simpy amazing on my system. Just a pity there are no other albums available in this format for my taste in music.

Yeah, tell me about it....

I had the opposite experience comparing my CD rip of Bach's Violino Concertos from Hilary Hahn against the HDTracks hires download - I simply can't hear any difference apart of some replay gain applied. So, its either fake hires, I'm deaf or I need better system. On the opposite, the sound from the "Heartplay" hires download from Naim label is stunning (as is the proud price of 25 EUR, but...) - so it seems that hires is not always equal to hires.