I've decided to give HDtracks a try. Since I wan't looking for anything in particular, I started with the top 25 best sellers section. In third position is "Jazz side of the moon, the music of Pink Floyd". Sounds cheesy but the critics on Amazon are good and this youtube sample is not bad at all. Intriguing. This will be the first album I buy on HDtracks.
This is an example of an album available at the highest quality: 192khz/24bit. In this case, you have the choice of three levels of quality (and price):
- 192khz/24bit FLAC files for 26.96$, separate tracks for 2.98$
- 96khz/24bit FLAC files for 17.98$, separate tracks for 2.49$
- Regular CD format 44.1khz/16bit AIFF or FLAC files for 11.98$, separate tracks for 1.49$
The checkout process is painless. You can select to pay by credit card or PayPal. [I choose PayPal]
One the payment is completed, the browser redirects to a page where a Download Manager is automatically downloaded on my computer. It uses Java, so I guess it's the only software requirement. Once started, you need to enter your HDtracks user/password before the download can start.
The download manager has a limited interface, there's not a lot of information available. The size of the download don't even shows.
The download was a whooping 2.46GB, every 192khz FLAC file weight about 300MB. That's a lot of data!
In addition to the audio files, HDtracks provide a PDF of the entire CD booklet and a small JPEG of the album cover.
It's now time to listen. In a follow-up post I'll detail how to listen to 192khz on a Mac computer.
I found your site while I was looking around for ways to buy lossless music online. You've hit the nail on the head! I found lots of useful stuff here - thank you so much!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you, lossless audio is the future. And I also agree that artists deserve support, and even if I can download from filesharing sites and Usenet and whatnot, I'd much rather buy music legally, especially from non-mainstream artists.
I put together a digital music search engine, that searches all the outlets I could find selling lossless or (in a few cases) interesting indie MP3 downloads. They're all legal sites, which (I assume) pay royalties to the artists).
The link to the search engine is http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=014240413029755198024:0lxj6ikvhca - I'd be delighted if you try it out and give me any feedback.
Keep up the good work on this site - I'll subscribe.
Hi Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI just tried your custom Google search and, wow, this is cool. I found the new Braids album in an heartbeat :) I'll gladly put up a post about it in the near future.
And thanks for reading!
I'm glad it works! Let me know if there are any sites I should add.
ReplyDelete