Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Warner Music threatens to unleash high resolution music on public in 2012...

from the Audiophiliac blog by Steve Gutenberg :

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-20062544-47.html

Things are looking up for HDtracks.com ... :-)

The Pink Floyd 2011 remasters of 'Dark Side of the Moon', 'Wish You Were Here' and 'The Wall' will include, with the expensive multi-disc sets, a Blu-ray disc with hi-res versions of the albums in Stereo and 5.1.

I do hope that other record companies follow the lead of Tom Petty's Blu-ray audio discs of 'Damn the Torpedoes' and 'Mojo' - it could be the saviour of the business and take us forward rather than backwards. The failure of competing technologies ten years ago led to lower quality - with many CD remasters subject to 'the loudness wars'.

Unfortunately at nearly �100 each I shall not be able to afford to buy my umpteenth versions of the Floyd albums - but would be interested to hear if the standard CD remasters are better-sounding than the MFSL gold discs.

I have them on pre-order, but I won't be able to compare The Wall to my MSFL copy as it's still sealed...

I wonder how the 'new' version of DSOTM will compare to the 'other' DVDA version that most of us found.

I do also wonder what sonic treatments the CD's have had though. Too many remastered CDs have just been cranked up in the loudness to my ears. I'm going to hate buying the 14 CD set (again) to find out they have messed them up.

Will have to have a think about whether to get the full-monty sets as well.

I'm not particularly interested in the remasters, for the reasons stated; it's the bonus material that looks particularly yummy to me. I have much of the material on bootleg recordings so it will be nice to get official releases of the rarities.

I really doubt that any of the WB/Atlantic HD initiative will appear in physical media since they feel that the incompatibility/confusion of SACD and DVD-A was the reason these media failed. (We can, and have, argued about that culpability before but that is not relevant here.) The effort will be directed to the download market which relieves the label of the overhead of production/inventory/distribution of physical media and allows the HD material to be marketed and distributed through the same channels as regular downloads. Note that Linn Records was one of the sponsors of the HD "summit."

A good time was had by all. Good food. Interesting music demos. Active discussion.

Kal

Warner released one of the best handfuls of classical DVD-As, including the Barenboim Beethoven cycle. If they are for sale online as multichannel FLACs, that could only be a good thing.

Then we can put them on our Soolooses and play multichannel FLAC through it at last. Can't we?

(@Mark_H: I know you are talking about the specific Pink Floyd case, but having heard the Kempe Strauss on EMI (from analogue masters), I _am_ interested in hires remasterings of 1st class analogue recordings, in general. That particulary DVD-A sounds amazingly transparent on my system.)

Is there a non-US equivalent of HD Tracks as while I can register with them, they will not sell to a non-US resident/credit card holder? There does not appear to be one site that is as comprehensive in its catalog?
Cheers,
Ado

Not currently as Sooloos only supports FLAC 2.0 I've been campaigning to get FLAC 5.1 (and 7.1) support via the ID40 card (even if this has to a new card say an ID41).

Technically there is no problem as FLAC can handle any PCM bit resolution from 4 to 32 bits per sample, any sampling rate from 1 Hz to 655,350 Hz in 1 Hz increments, and any number of channels from 1 to 8. Channels can be grouped in cases like stereo and 5.1 channel surround to take advantage of inter-channel correlations to increase compression.

It only requires Meridian's will to implement it.

Regards,
Carl

Ado, HD Tracks accepts PayPal from non-US residents. Just select it at checkout.


Cheers Tintin

I was being ironic, but thanks for the excellent summary!

Carl, Please keep campaigning. As I have said before my check book remains ready for the FLAC 5.1 Sooloos via the ID40 or ID41.

Gary