Some Rolling Stones albums on HDTracks

HDTracks appears to be on a roll lately. They just added some Rolling Stones releases to their super high definition catalog. It's available in either 88khz or 176khz (both 24bit). This is a very good news and hopefully we will continue to see new high profile offerings in the future.

Here's what Teri Landi from ABKCO has to say about the remastering:

"Many years of research went into locating the original mono and stereo analog tapes that would be used in ABKCO's Rolling Stones Remastered Series. That research revealed a treasure trove of first generation tapes - true stereo masters from The Stones' 1964 Chess Studios sessions including the unedited version of "2120 South Michigan Avenue," Beggar's Banquet at its correct speed and Let It Bleed with splicing that indicates that the original intention was to leave little spacing between each cut. 

For the analog to digital transfers, vintage reel-to-reel tape machines were utilized - a modified Ampex 351 with original tube electronics (full track mono and two track stereo) and an Ampex ATR-102 modified with Aria Discrete Class-A Electronics (full track mono and two track stereo). A Sonoma DSD digital audio workstation was the chosen high resolution format and Meitner Design ADC8 and DAC8 MKlV converters were used for the conversion process. Cables used were the cryogenically frozen type supplied to us by Gus Skinas of Super Audio Center. Gus also provided much guidance to Jody Klein, Steve Rosenthal and myself for our first time use of DSD technology. For this HD Tracks release, the Bob Ludwig mastered DSD files were converted to both 176.4kHz and 88.2kHz high resolution PCM with Weiss Saracon conversion software."

Right now the following albums are available: The Rolling Stones, The Rolling Stones No 2, 12 x 5, Big Hits and Through The Past Darkly.

Favourites like Let It Bleed and Beggar's Banquet should be available in spring or summer. This is the full list of upcomming releases:

Out Of Our Heads | December's Children | Aftermath (US) | Let It Bleed | Out Of Our Heads (UK) | Aftermath (UK) | Between The Buttons (UK) | Beggar's Banquet | The 60's UK EPs - The Rolling Stones/Five By Five/Got Live | Singles Collection | Between The Buttons (US) | Flowers | Their Satanic Majesties Request | Metamorphosis | Got Live If You Want It! | Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! | Big Hits (UK) | Through The Past, Darkly (Big Hits, Vol 2) (UK) | Hot Rocks | More Hot Rocks | The Rolling Stones (US) | The Rolling Stones Now

The 88khz are 19.98$ and the 176khz are 29.98$. (You can use the coupon code STONES10 for a 10% off)

You might want to read the overview of HDtracks I did back in january.

Will iTunes sell lossless music?

This is a promising article from CNN: Apple in talks to improve sound quality of music downloads.

Apple and other digital music retailers are in discussions with record labels to improve the quality of the song files they sell, executives involved in the talks say.

As a result, online music stores could eventually offer songs that sound truer to their original recordings, perhaps at a premium price.

For example iTunes could offer an audio format in 24bit. iTunes and Macs can play Apple Lossless in 24bit, but the portable devices can't (yet). I also believe the Apple Airport Express downgrade the music from 24bit to 16bit, as mentioned on the Apple discussion forum.

Radiohead – The King of Limbs

A new Radiohead album! This saturday! Well that's a pleasant surprise.

Not much is known about the new album, but you can preorder it in WAV format here: http://www.thekingoflimbs.com/

Convert FLAC to Apple Lossless on a Mac

If you want to use iTunes to store your lossless library, your music collection must be in the Apple Lossless format. Since most of the online music stores use the FLAC format, you need to convert the files you download. This process doesn't reduce the quality of the audio, it's simply a switch between compression formats. It's similar to converting a ZIP file to a GZIP archive. Same data, different algorithms.

For this task I've been using XLD for many years. It was first released in 2006 and over the time the developer added audio formats compatibility and features like ripping CDs. Today I'll focus on converting a FLAC to Apple Lossless.

XLD supports the following lossless formats: FLAC, WAV, WAV64, AIFF, PCM, WavPack and Apple Lossless.

First, you need to edit the preferences. In the general tab you must specify Apple Lossless as the output format.

The Apple Lossless format only has one option, the sample rate. The default is "same as original" and this is what I'm using.

I prefer to select an output directory myself to avoid mixing the original files with the converted files. It makes it easier to import into iTunes. Output name format is arbitrary and somewhat irrelevant to the task since iTunes will organize the music directory itself.

The next important tab is batch.

Preserve directory structure is recommended to avoid name collision in the output folder. I choose unlimited directory depth so XLD will crawl and convert every audio files it finds in the input folder(s).

Last tab important for conversion is metadata.

I leave everything to the default values. It can be a hit-or-miss since there is no established standard. For example the cover image is not always included and the image name can obviously change. You will want to adapt the settings to the online music store you most frequently use.

You are now ready to import. I keep the XLD application in the dock so I can simply drag the FLAC folder (or any of the other supported format) to the XLD icon. The conversion immediately begins. If you have a multi-core computer it's possible to decode many files simultaneously. This setting is located in the general tab (maximum # threads). This will speed up the process.

Once the conversion is completed, you drag the output folder to iTunes and voilà. If iTunes manages the music library itself, you can trash the output folder created by XLD.

Merge Records

With the release of the new destroyer album, Kaputt, I should point out that every new Merge records are available to buy in FLAC on the label website.

Oh, and it scored 8.8 on Pitchfork.

Zunior

Zunior is a online music store focused on canadian artists.

Zunior.com is a small team led by Dave Ullrich out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dave is a musician, developer, and music lover that started Zunior.com as a way to sell music directly from artists to their supporters. The site builds on Ullrich's experience as the manager of The Inbreds independent label, PF Records, and on his current experience working as a developer and promoter of open source software.

They offer albums in MP3 or in lossless FLAC. Albums sells for 10.88$ (8.88$ plus 2$ extra for the FLAC edition). This is taxable for Canadian residents;  with the GST the total of the purchase is 11.42$. I was looking for the Montreal band Braids first release, and Zunior has it in their vast catalog.

At checkout you need to log in to your account, or create one if you're a new customer. If it's the case, check your email upon account creation, the welcome message include a coupon code for a dollar off the first purchase.

Payment by credit card or PayPal [I selected PayPal]. Once the payment is completed you are redirected to the website where you can download the music. Zunior has a download manager, but it's also possible to directly download one zip file containing all the FLACs.  I find this option more convenient than having a download manager for every online store!

The download includes the album's cover in JPEG and the booklet in PDF.

I should also note that it's possible to download the purchase later by logging back into your account.

Search digital audio stores

In the comments of my post about HDTracks, a reader mentions a a search tool he created:  the Digital audio store Google search. It's a great idea, from this page you can search all the online music stores at once.

As an example, if I search for the new Braids album, the first result is the release in FLAC at the Zunior store. Exactly what I'm looking for.

Another random example, I search for Sufjan Stevens and once again the first search result points to The Age Of Adz available in FLAC on his Band Camp page.

Unfortunately it's not a "hole in one" for every search. For example, the Jazz side of the moon album, which I bought on HDtracks, doesn't show up in the results. HDTracks is probably not indexed by the custom search.

Finally, what's missing is a friendly URL. http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=014240413029755198024:0lxj6ikvhca makes it impossible to navigate to without a bookmark.

Thanks for the tip, Andrew. It will be very useful for my searches, and hopefully, helpful to others too!