Props to hdtracks

[mep]

I sent an email to HD Tracks to let them know I wasn't happy with the 24/176.4 version of the Rolling Stones Big Hits. I still can't believe the master tapes are really that bad. Compressed as hell and no bass. I received an email back today and they apologized that I wasn't happy and told me to pick out any other title I wanted and they would set it up so I could download it for free. I picked out Ray Charles A Genius Loves Company and downloaded it.

I was very impressed with their customer service and the fact they want me to be a happy customer. Just wanted to pass the word. It's nice to give a company praise.

Mark

 

[RBFC]

They've been good to me, and others I know as well. The Cheskys are stand-up guys, sincerely trying to get good music into the ears of audiophiles. So, how's the Ray Charles?

Lee

 

[mep]

I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. I will report back when I do.

 

[JackD201]

I'm crossing my fingers for that album. It was recorded on Protools HD so you should be hearing pretty much exactly what Ray was hearing. The LP was so-so. Please make the comparison Mark. My server is up finally and this could be its first HDT download.

 

[garylkoh]

GLC was one of the few albums I have where the digital sounded better than LP in my system. I thought that may be I got a dud pressing, but since the CD sounded so good off my music server, I never pursued the analog further. Sounds like may be the LP was badly done. If the high-rez is much better than the CD, it will be a good buy - so I'm also waiting for Mark's opinion.

 

[JackD201]

I totally agree Gary. The CD is better than the LP to my ears as well. Given the year it was recorded it is definitely a 24bit recording. What I don't know is what Sampling Rate the engineers used as it's not stated in the liner/production notes.

 

[RBFC]

Anyone heard the SACD?

http://www.amazon.com/Genius-Loves-...=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1304997604&sr=1-3

Lee

 

[Bruce B]

Anyone heard the SACD?

http://www.amazon.com/Genius-Loves-...=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1304997604&sr=1-3

Lee

we did the transfer

 

[JackD201]

Cool, there's Bruce.

Bruce, what did the masters sent to you come as? DSD or the pre-DSD converted Hi-Rez PCM?

 

[RBFC]

I've got the redbook version ripped to my server. I'll give it a listen tomorrow. A high-res version would certainly be cool.

Lee

 

[Bruce B]

these were DSD files

 

[garylkoh]

Bruce, just curious, have you ever compared something that was originally recorded in PCM, and then converted to DSD, and then back to PCM for HDTracks download? I'm wondering how transparent is that PCM->DSD->PCM conversion.

 

[Bruce B]

Bruce, just curious, have you ever compared something that was originally recorded in PCM, and then converted to DSD, and then back to PCM for HDTracks download? I'm wondering how transparent is that PCM->DSD->PCM conversion.

I usually tell everyone that if you can't play the DSD files, then if they can find the original PCM files that they'd be better off (ie: finding the DVD-A of the album).

 

[Orb]

I sent an email to HD Tracks to let them know I wasn't happy with the 24/176.4 version of the Rolling Stones Big Hits. I still can't believe the master tapes are really that bad. Compressed as hell and no bass. I received an email back today and they apologized that I wasn't happy and told me to pick out any other title I wanted and they would set it up so I could download it for free. I picked out Ray Charles A Genius Loves Company and downloaded it.

I was very impressed with their customer service and the fact they want me to be a happy customer. Just wanted to pass the word. It's nice to give a company praise.

Mark

Mark,
just a headsup for some, in the HifiNews June Investigation they looked at hirez files, one of the lot they downloaded from HDTracks was a different Rolling Stones album - Through the Past Darkly, the result was it is not really hirez.
So not too surprised about Big Hits, also even Linn has had to remove some albums done by others from their own hirez download site.
But as you say HDTracks is pretty upfront with their support and mention this to HifiNews in the investigation piece.

I linked Keith Howards software and mention that article in a different thread and may be worth checking it out as I think it may provide a freeware way of seeing if the music is true hirez/upsampled/etc.
I have not tried the software myself but if bored and have plenty of time may be worth doing, apologies if it is the wrong one.
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?1037-Upsampled-SACD-s&p=48894&viewfull=1#post48894

Still,
in the future I think anyone downloading hirez needs a way to check they are getting value for money, meaning the use of some freeware (possibly Keith Howard's site but hopefully others out there) or Wavelab/Sound Forge/etc to be 100% sure.
Cheers
Orb

 

[Orb]

Bruce, just curious, have you ever compared something that was originally recorded in PCM, and then converted to DSD, and then back to PCM for HDTracks download? I'm wondering how transparent is that PCM->DSD->PCM conversion.

Seems pretty transparent for Linn, who originally had a native DSD studio setup but found this too cumbersome and limited in terms of studio mixing as they ended up converting the DSD to PCM for editing and back to DSD, these days they now record in hirez PCM and convert to DSD at the end.
Wonder if more studios take the latter approach as well these days.
From Keith Howard's investigation piece, it seems a possible modern issue is how PCM files are upsampled (when not actually hirez to begin with) as he found issues relating to this for the files he purchased as part of his hirez investigation, interestingly the files he purchased were chosen as he already had the DSD so could do a comparison.
Please not that this does not mean all files are done badly/upsampled/etc and is not a reflection of Bruce/Pugett Sound Studios/etc, just some companies seem to do this poorly and do not even have hirez PCM to begin with.

Cheers
Orb

 

[garylkoh]

Please not that this does not mean all files are done badly/upsampled/etc and is not a reflection of Bruce/Pugett Sound Studios/etc, just some companies seem to do this poorly and do not even have hirez PCM to begin with.

Cheers
Orb

Thanks, Orb. That was the purpose of my question. What if the original file was, say, 24bits/48kHz and then upsampled to DSD for a SACD. Then, they send the SACD to Bruce (who does the best job that he can) and then they sell it on HDTracks at 24/96 PCM.

When I started out with the computer music server, I when the upsampling route. Almost every upsampling algorithm I tried sounded different. I ended up using a 2-pass look-ahead algorithm that cannot be run in real time. Even different dither to go from 16bits to 24bits sounded different.

Vince is very vocal on this board about not upsampling, and because of my experience, I was also did not support upsampling. However, lately I found a Foobar upsampling plugin that sounded great going from 44.1 to 88.1 and I've been using it on all my redbook files.

May be Amir or Vincent can jump in here and give us some guidance?

 

[Vincent Kars]

Up-sampling is a bit of a mysterious thing.
Obvious what is (possibly) lost in the down-sampling to redbook is lost.
Just like expanding MP3 to raw PCM (or convert it back to WAV) won't retrieve the lost info.
Doubling the samples and playing at double rate won't add any information.
Different interpolation algorithms do make a difference.

What I can conjecture up is that some DACs do change their sonic signature with the sampling rate.
The Benchmark DAC1 resamples all inputs to 110 simply because the designers found this yields best performance.
A DAC might do up-sampling in hardware, some up-sample everything to 192.
As re-sampling is not trivial, doing the up-sampling external on a PC might yield different results because of using different algorithms or a higher precision (quantisation error).
What strikes me is that a lot of DSP e.g. in active speakers is done at 48 kHz.
Obvious DSP chips do have their limitations in speed and precision.
Maybe the PC with all is power and precision (128 bit float) is a better platform

It is thinkable that doing a sample rate conversion outside the DAC does have its impact on sound quality.

The famous 2 (Euro) cents I'm afraid.

 

[Orb]

Thanks, Orb. That was the purpose of my question. What if the original file was, say, 24bits/48kHz and then upsampled to DSD for a SACD. Then, they send the SACD to Bruce (who does the best job that he can) and then they sell it on HDTracks at 24/96 PCM.

When I started out with the computer music server, I when the upsampling route. Almost every upsampling algorithm I tried sounded different. I ended up using a 2-pass look-ahead algorithm that cannot be run in real time. Even different dither to go from 16bits to 24bits sounded different.

Vince is very vocal on this board about not upsampling, and because of my experience, I was also did not support upsampling. However, lately I found a Foobar upsampling plugin that sounded great going from 44.1 to 88.1 and I've been using it on all my redbook files.

May be Amir or Vincent can jump in here and give us some guidance?

Ah yeah, I get where your coming from and this was covered nicely in the June Hi-fi News investigation, shame Keith Howard does not publish these articles on his site.
Well the main problem with upsampling tracks and storing them as actual 96khz as an example is that you will have very low level related data when compared to their actual SACD version (if well done).
Also when done poorly you can end up creating situation such as inadequately filtered image data or odd features between 20khz and 25khz relating to the low pass filter/upsampling.

If interested in hirez material, June HifiNews definitely worth a read, as a bonus they also do further testing of USB jitter theory-practice and come up with additional test process.

ANyway the problem for the general public is trusting what is really hi-rez stored material to begin with, and this is what caught Linn out who do work with their studio masters in native high rez but then sold a 3rd party release and assumed they did the same process, when in fact they just upsampled and claimed it was hirez, when identified Linn pulled the whole list of the 3rd party music involved.
Same for Bruce I guess, their process I assume from his posting is to work and store files in very high rez PCM in their studio, but then they are limited when it comes to working with 3rd parties and their recordings-masters.

Cheers
Orb

 

[mep]

Some of you asked me for my thoughts on the Ray Charles “Genius Loves Company” hi-rez download from HDtracks. First of all, I don’t own this recording on any other medium so I have nothing to compare it to. All I can do is give you my impressions of how this 24/88 recording sounds on my system.

First of all, this recording is all about vocals, vocals, and more vocals. The quality of the vocals stands out above all else. Sometimes the vocals are close to knock-you-down powerful. Some songs stood out more than others to me as being more overall sonic gems than the others. None are bad sounding so don’t get me wrong. This is the first time I have heard this recording so here are my initial snapshot impressions:

1. Here We Go Again with Norah Jones – This is one of the standout recordings on this album for me. The sound is just wide-open and very dynamic. The song is underpinned with a solid bass line like so many others on this album. The organ sounds really well recorded also. And oh yeah, the vocals. They sound great.

2. Sweet Potato Pie with James Taylor – Again, the vocals are sweet, but the rest of the sound is not up to the quality of the first cut. It sounds more closed in with a loss of dynamics.

3. You Don’t Know Me with Diana Krall – Vocals are good, the bass is ok. I will have to listen to all of these tracks again to gain any further insights. It just doesn’t sound as good as the standout tracks do on this album.

4. Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word – Another song with powerful voices cutting through the mix. The music is so-so, but the vocals are damn good.

5. Fever with Natalie Cole – The second standout recording on this album for me. This recording is dynamically wide open and just jumps. The vocals are strong and sound really natural. The bass is really good and there is a snare drum that really pops when it’s hit. Most enjoyable.

6. Do I Ever Cross Your Mind with Bonnie Raitt – This sounds good, but sounds a little canned compared to Fever. Bonnie Raitt’s voice is still something to hear on this cut though.

7. it Was a Very Good Year with Willie Nelson – Willie sounds like a young Willie on this recording and Ray sounds like an old and weak Ray. The sound on this recording is very nice. I like the acoustic guitar mixed with the orchestral instruments. The voices are spooky real sounding on this cut. This is the third cut on the album that I put an asterisk next to in order to mark it as a standout.

8. Hey Girl with Michael McDonald – Another really nice sounding recording from top to bottom. Michael McDonald’s voice is very powerful during parts of this song. Another vocal showcase.

9. Sinner’s Prayer with B.B. King – One of the finer cuts on the album. Great blues sound. B.B.’s voice and guitar sound beautiful and powerful on this cut. You get to hear B.B.’s guitar playing off a piano and organ. Oh, and the bass is just dandy too.

10. Heaven Help Us All with Gladys Knight – I put an asterisk after this cut as well because it sounds really good. Of course the vocals sound great. The horns sound good as well with the solid bass underpinning. And that bass line is really cool, very melodic. Kind of reminds me of something McCartney might play.

11. Somewhere Over the Rainbow – I thought this cut was going to be corny, but I was wrong. The vocals are big, strong, and powerful. Ray’s voice is so powerful in one spot on this recording I swear it will blow you down if you were standing up.

12. Crazy Love with Van Morrison – What’s not to love with this dynamic duo? The final asterisk that I gave a song on this album. Strong bass line, the piano sounds very good with lots of left hand action underpinning the bass guitar. The bass just pops on this recording. Oh, and did I mention how good the vocals are?

All in all, this was a most enjoyable album that I look forward to sitting down and hearing again. This was my first time to hear it and you are getting my initial snapshot impressions that are subject to change upon further listening. I do feel confident that the songs that I told you I asterisked are the cream of the crop sonically on this album.

 

[caesar]

They've been good to me, and others I know as well. The Cheskys are stand-up guys, sincerely trying to get good music into the ears of audiophiles.

Lee

But the Chesky move may not be 100% altrustic. Studies show that companies that go out of their way to resolve a situation for a customer usually get a much more satisfied customer that repeats his business with the firm. And I am sure they would rather see a good thread than a bad thread.

But it is good to see MEP a happy man.