Good morning,
Wondering if anyone has tested / reviewed the same high-resolution album purchased from Linn Records vs. the same high-resolution album purchased from HDTracks?
I've read a few threads in the past that say some of the high-resolution albums from HDTracks is of poor quality. I wrote to HDTracks recently and I received a very good explanation from HDTracks when I asked them to address some of the concerns I had read in various forums; their reply is below... However if HDTracks does nothing to alter what they receive from the various labels AND their quality is "sub-par" (according to some folks) wouldn't that same sub-par album also be sub-par if it was purchased from Linn Records?
As with all the music in our store, we receive the most up to date masters from our record label partners. Each record label has their own recording/mastering process when it comes to high res. We are not a record company. We don't do anything to music provided to us by record companies. If something needs to be changed or revised it is sent back to label for the process to be taken care of. We are just a retailer. We don't downsample or upsample.
Whenever possible we try to provide as much information as possible about the mastering process that is giving to us by the labels.
Older recordings when remastered may present qualities that originally were unnoticeable when first released or in previous formats. We only hope that our label partners have taken note of that. When it is an issue we do our best to have them correct it.
In general with regards to our hi-res content, we DO test them in-house as well as by an independent 3rd party, at various time points within each track in the album. What we look for is a gradual rolloff in frequencies up to the appropriate point for 44, 48, 76, 88, 96/24, etc, and reject anything with an obvious brickwall cutoff. Note that depending on where in a track a sample is taken, the rolloff may be at a slightly different frequency, which is natural with dynamic music.
Wondering if anyone has tested / reviewed the same high-resolution album purchased from Linn Records vs. the same high-resolution album purchased from HDTracks?
I've read a few threads in the past that say some of the high-resolution albums from HDTracks is of poor quality. I wrote to HDTracks recently and I received a very good explanation from HDTracks when I asked them to address some of the concerns I had read in various forums; their reply is below... However if HDTracks does nothing to alter what they receive from the various labels AND their quality is "sub-par" (according to some folks) wouldn't that same sub-par album also be sub-par if it was purchased from Linn Records?
As with all the music in our store, we receive the most up to date masters from our record label partners. Each record label has their own recording/mastering process when it comes to high res. We are not a record company. We don't do anything to music provided to us by record companies. If something needs to be changed or revised it is sent back to label for the process to be taken care of. We are just a retailer. We don't downsample or upsample.
Whenever possible we try to provide as much information as possible about the mastering process that is giving to us by the labels.
Older recordings when remastered may present qualities that originally were unnoticeable when first released or in previous formats. We only hope that our label partners have taken note of that. When it is an issue we do our best to have them correct it.
In general with regards to our hi-res content, we DO test them in-house as well as by an independent 3rd party, at various time points within each track in the album. What we look for is a gradual rolloff in frequencies up to the appropriate point for 44, 48, 76, 88, 96/24, etc, and reject anything with an obvious brickwall cutoff. Note that depending on where in a track a sample is taken, the rolloff may be at a slightly different frequency, which is natural with dynamic music.