CDs, downloads, streaming

[kea]

How significant actually are the differences between 16-bit/44.1kHz, 24-bit/44.1kHz, 24-bit/96kHz, 24-bit/192kHz, stereo SACD and DSD? I know there's a pretty big difference between stereo and multichannel from listening to concert diffusions of 8-channel electroacoustic works—not that it helps me much since I have only one pair of speakers >.>—but all of those (if I understand correctly) are stereo formats. (There are multichannel SACDs but again I don't have a SACD player, or know how to rip that layer, if it's even possible)

[Dave2002]

Depends on your hearing and on the equipment you use. Time for JLW to comment I think.

[HighlandDougie]

I know pretty much zilch about the technical aspects of bit rates etc but I know what my ears tell me which is that there is a significant improvement between 16 bit and 24 bit. I'm not so sure about the kHzs - especially if there is a perceptible difference between 96 and 192. The law of diminishing returns - and one's hearing ability - may come into play with that comparison. My "test" recordings are the Sawallisch Schumann symphonies which I have in a variety of formats (LP, CD, 16/44.1 and 24/96). They are demonstrably best in 24/96 format, which is the format with which I am very happy for downloads and for Blu-Ray Audio discs. In respect of the latter, the improvement in sound quality of, say, Kleiber's Brahms 4 as a Blu-Ray over the CD in its DG Originals version is very marked. As far as downloads stored on a hard disk and played through a DAC are concerned (and Jayne has a very classy DAC), the biggest improvement in sound I've made was to install Audirvana Plus on my MacBook(s). An astonishing improvement, worth every penny of the £25 it cost.

[gurnemanz]

Both LP or CD embody the concept of an "album", i.e. about an hour's music put together with some idea of making a coherent sequence. Sgt Pepper is often said to have instigated this. I think the album is still a valid art form, a unit which does not lend itself so well to being a streamed package. One of my latest purchases has just been Anna Prohaska's Behind the Lines - a recital of four centuries of soldiers’ songs for the 1914 anniversary. For me, it would not be as pleasing to own in the form of files on a computer, rather than as an object which you can pick up and hold in your hand and if desired wrap up and give as a present. It also has a good 48 page booklet with info, texts and photos.

Of course, many albums are compilations which could probably just as well be stored as sound files.

[JFLL]

I was just wondering how many people, as I do, burn lossless downloads to CD, or is it totally vieux jeu? Like others here, I do like the physicality of CDs. I download quite a lot of Hyperion recordings, and one of the good things about them is that the booklets and album art come with the download, so it's relatively easy to produce a fair imitation of the real CD, at perhaps two-thirds the price. I say 'the good thing is', but a while ago Hyperion changed the way they made the booklets and album art available for download. Although these apparently replicate the booklets and inlays which come with the CDs, Hyperion now 'doctors' them for online purposes so that the spine-labels no longer appear on the back 'inlay' (in fact it's not really an inlay any more). Also the actual size of the images is no longer, when printed straight out, the size of a CD. All this means that if you want to produce your own CD case using the Hyperion artwork, you have to go in for a lot of fiddly image editing and production of your own spine labels. I emailed Hyperion asking why they couldn't, as they used to, provide exact replicas of the booklets and album art which accompany the discs, but got nowhere. Their view seemed to be that it didn't matter because few people did what I was doing, 'the future is digital' etc. (Illogical, I feel, because they still produce everything in CD format as well as digital, and otherwise the booklets do seem to replicate exactly the printed ones.) Luckily they haven't got round to changing the artwork for old recordings, particularly the Helios offerings. I was disappointed, though, because I'm otherwise a great fan of Hyperion. A straw in the wind?

[Bryn]

How significant actually are the differences between 16-bit/44.1kHz, 24-bit/44.1kHz, 24-bit/96kHz, 24-bit/192kHz, stereo SACD and DSD? I know there's a pretty big difference between stereo and multichannel from listening to concert diffusions of 8-channel electroacoustic works—not that it helps me much since I have only one pair of speakers >.>—but all of those (if I understand correctly) are stereo formats. (There are multichannel SACDs but again I don't have a SACD player, or know how to rip that layer, if it's even possible)

My bête noire regarding sampling rate and quantization (bit depth) is those recorded music issuers who claim such as "96/24" for their CDs and DVDs when that refers only to the original mastering criteria. Mode Records, for instance, though by no means alone, will often claim 96/24 or even 192/24 for CDs, or for DVDs which do not even carry an LPCM option but only lossy Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS. O.k., cleverly devised noise shaping, etc. may have retained some of the benefits of the higher quantization depth, but the higher sampling rate, though it may have aided fidelity during editing, is not what you get on the derived CD.

[martin_opera]

Ah Apple. You love them and you despise them in equal measure. Building a classical library in itunes has involved a number of workarounds. The concept of a "song" a particular issue. But after feeling quite pleased with my itunes library has anyone else noticed on the new itunes 12 that album titles can no longer be followed by a space to differentiate them. I have six recordings of Figaro and have for years tagged my itunes library to accommodate more than one version of a piece by following each of the album titles with an additional "invisible to the naked eye - space" Nozze di Figaro, Nozze di Figaro[space], Nozze di Figaro[space space] and so on. Putting Figaro [Bohm], Figaro [Klemperer], Figaro [Jacobs] after each is a pain and what about Figaro [Davis] when he has recorded two versions!

Aside from pointing out that I am in danger of sounding like the Barber of Seville (!) has anyone got any bright ideas?

[Dave2002]

Aside from pointing out that I am in danger of sounding like the Barber of Seville (!) has anyone got any bright ideas?

There are some other similar systems which perhaps use slightly different cataloguing. I don't know how easy it is to export an iTunes database and reformat it for one of the other systems - to save having to re-enter the whole shebang. Some of these DBs use XML, so in some cases it might not be too difficult to convert using a system such as XSLT or XPath and a modicum of coding, and import into a new system.

I looked at this a few years ago, but have not revisited it since. It might be less effort to try to find a work around within the capabilities of iTunes. Stan Brown at Oak Road systems might be able to help - though I have mentioned this before - http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/

[Don Petter]

Ah Apple. You love them and you despise them in equal measure. Building a classical library in itunes has involved a number of workarounds. The concept of a "song" a particular issue. But after feeling quite pleased with my itunes library has anyone else noticed on the new itunes 12 that album titles can no longer be followed by a space to differentiate them. I have six recordings of Figaro and have for years tagged my itunes library to accommodate more than one version of a piece by following each of the album titles with an additional "invisible to the naked eye - space" Nozze di Figaro, Nozze di Figaro[space], Nozze di Figaro[space space] and so on. Putting Figaro [Bohm], Figaro [Klemperer], Figaro [Jacobs] after each is a pain and what about Figaro [Davis] when he has recorded two versions!

Aside from pointing out that I am in danger of sounding like the Barber of Seville (!) has anyone got any bright ideas?

Could you not use:

Nozze di Figaro B
Nozze di Figaro K
Nozze di Figaro J
Nozze di Figaro D1
Nozze di Figaro D2

or does it have to be invisible?

[kea]

Ah Apple. You love them and you despise them in equal measure. Building a classical library in itunes has involved a number of workarounds. The concept of a "song" a particular issue. But after feeling quite pleased with my itunes library has anyone else noticed on the new itunes 12 that album titles can no longer be followed by a space to differentiate them. I have six recordings of Figaro and have for years tagged my itunes library to accommodate more than one version of a piece by following each of the album titles with an additional "invisible to the naked eye - space" Nozze di Figaro, Nozze di Figaro[space], Nozze di Figaro[space space] and so on. Putting Figaro [Bohm], Figaro [Klemperer], Figaro [Jacobs] after each is a pain and what about Figaro [Davis] when he has recorded two versions!

Aside from pointing out that I am in danger of sounding like the Barber of Seville (!) has anyone got any bright ideas?

If it helps at all, when I have multiple versions of the same piece I'll give them the same title but put the performers in the Album Artist field (which overrides the Artist field, where I keep the composer's name, for sorting purposes). Thus it would be easy to find, e.g. the Jacobs Figaro by typing "Jacobs Figaro" in the search field, and in list or grid views it would appear under Jacobs's name rather than Mozart's. And if you have two different performances of a work by the same artist you could probably differentiate them further with the Year field though I haven't tried this myself.

I haven't upgraded to 12 though. (Also, with an iTunes library in excess of 800 GB, I rarely use anything but the search function or "smart" playlists to find things, nowadays.)

[martin_opera]

If it helps at all, when I have multiple versions of the same piece I'll give them the same title but put the performers in the Album Artist field (which overrides the Artist field, where I keep the composer's name, for sorting purposes). Thus it would be easy to find, e.g. the Jacobs Figaro by typing "Jacobs Figaro" in the search field, and in list or grid views it would appear under Jacobs's name rather than Mozart's. And if you have two different performances of a work by the same artist you could probably differentiate them further with the Year field though I haven't tried this myself.

I haven't upgraded to 12 though. (Also, with an iTunes library in excess of 800 GB, I rarely use anything but the search function or "smart" playlists to find things, nowadays.)

Thanks for all the suggestions. Using the search function is something I haven't thought of but it would only work well in itunes not on an ipod. I may have to resort to suffixes although it does look a bit messy and I would have thought if the same album had a different album artist itunes would keep it separate. Ho hum. At least it gives me an excuse to spend hours messing with tags whilst listening to the music.

[Dave2002]

Thanks for all the suggestions. Using the search function is something I haven't thought of but it would only work well in itunes not on an ipod. I may have to resort to suffixes although it does look a bit messy and I would have thought if the same album had a different album artist itunes would keep it separate. Ho hum. At least it gives me an excuse to spend hours messing with tags whilst listening to the music.

I didn't know you were looking at iPod use. I'm not sure if it's possible to have different tags for different devices - maybe. I do remember that Stan Brown had optimised his system for iPods at one time.

[jayne lee wilson]

I've always mixed and matched downloads & CDs. Currently I buy the file if 24-bit is available, the CD if it isn't - unless I only want part of the CD, in which case I'll get the lossless files if I can.
CD will be around for a long while yet, though the specialists like HM or Hyperion may move to a made-to-order service. I do feel that, thanks to those specialists, we're in a golden era for new music or new performances of the familiar classics. Great if, like me, you mainly buy New Releases. Streaming holds less interest here; most of it is below 320 kbps, and my current listening tends to be - small hours/dawn, one album at a time, for days at a time (spent a week with Ticciati's Schumann, ditto with the Nezet-Seguin which I'm still fascinated by, curate's-egg or not...). So I want the finest files available to humanity and I want them now!

Many naysayers online on the subject of hi-res audio. I would simply say: stop trying to persuade me that I can't possibly hear... etc etc, and I won't start trying to persuade you that you should...
Most purchasers of hi-res audio files have done some comparison with CD/lossless early on... and feeling that maybe there's something in this 24-bit thing quietly get on with buying and enjoying them. It's unarguable that there is more musical info in a native 24/48/96 etc file, whether you hear it is as ever dependent on ears, rooms and systems. So it's contextual and pragmatic, as well as subjective. But as Dougie implied, the Media Player you use is important. I free-trialled JRiver and Audirvana+, keeping both because JRiver (sonically very open, neutral & detailed) has a vastly superior feature set (took me a week of late nights just to find out where everything is...), but Audirvana (sparse features) has a more beautiful, "silkier" character. Think of these players as equivalent to CD players really; they're a lot cheaper...

(Just listening to Minkowski/BBCSO Schubert 4 via JRiver... quite a bit fuller, darker & deeper than the iTunes version... if you use iTunes you might improve things with the Bitperfect app (£10!)...

Part Two of this later (I hope...)

[Dave2002]

Jane and Dougie

I never quite figured out what software like Audirvana does, but you both recommend it highly, and I think there might be something in it. With a MBP, for example, does this "simply" drive the optical output for feeding into a DAC, or does it output to USB again for feeding into an appropriate DAC. My DAC only does 16 bit via USB I think, but does 24 bit via optical.

Why would Audirvana do any better than, say, iTunes - fed out through the optical/headphone socket to the DAC?

I did try Bit Perfect earlier on, though at the time I didn't think it did much for me, and I think the first few iterations had problems. As you've reminded me, I'll download it on to this MBP, and see if I can tell any difference.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Good points TS. I find it unlikely that Physical Media will completely disappear. However, it won't be for a lack of effort by the Music Companies. it will be interesting to see how this all unfolds.

Sometimes these ploys by the Big Boys can be counterproductive. Rather like the self-service tills at Tesco, that are designed to train people to enable the company to employ fewer till staff. They can cause aggro too.