Help - looking for high quality digital music files

fretworn

fretworn

Rock Star
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OK confessions of an old dude… I’ve degenerated down to just Spotify for listening to music.

Where can I find some very high-quality digital audio to test out new headphones (and compare to my monitors)?

Any acoustic/vocals music with guitars, piano, brass, etc. can be folk, bluegrass, Jazz, big band… Even symphonic, depending on the composition.

Or if you just have something that is stellar… That will work too - any genre.

Many thanks.

👍❤️🙏
 
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The HD releases of Pink Floyd on HDTracks are excellent, they preserve the original dynamics of the albums (uncompressed) from the master tapes and are in 96kHz · 24bit, I consider them a benchmark.

The Wall and The Dark Side of the Moon are great.

www.hdtracks.com

HDtracks | You can hear the difference. Listen on the go in master studio quality.

HDtracks is a high-resolution music platform for music lovers to download their favorite tracks in master studio quality. Join us today for the ultimate listening experience!
www.hdtracks.com www.hdtracks.com
www.hdtracks.com

HDtracks | You can hear the difference. Listen on the go in master studio quality.

HDtracks is a high-resolution music platform for music lovers to download their favorite tracks in master studio quality. Join us today for the ultimate listening experience!
www.hdtracks.com www.hdtracks.com

Try browsing HDTracks, they have almost everything in higher than CD quality, all digital.
 
Off topic but this thread made me think of Neil Young’s attempt to make the hi fidelity iPod player, the Pono. (Which of course went nowhere)

HDTracks is great. (But I’ve given up on storing media)
 
Here's the Folk category.
You can Sort (upper right corner) by Popularity, great music right on the first page.

www.hdtracks.com

HDtracks | You can hear the difference. Listen on the go in master studio quality.

HDtracks is a high-resolution music platform for music lovers to download their favorite tracks in master studio quality. Join us today for the ultimate listening experience!
www.hdtracks.com www.hdtracks.com

PS.
The "lower" HD quality 96kHz 24bit albums are usually cheaper than the 192kHz 24bit ones, and some even offer 44.1kHz 16bit which is just as good.
Audiophile Tip: The quieter albums are the ones that preserve full dynamics, you can preview the tracks on there.
 
I'm using Apple Music. They used to offer a smaller selection of tracks than Spotify, but they've addressed that in recent years, it's pretty good. And as Drew pointed out, they offer a lot of their content in lossless format. You should be able to get a 1 month free trial from Apple.

If you do try it, be sure to check that the streaming setting is configured to prefer lossless, otherwise it may be downsampled for streaming.

@fretworn Classic audio system testing recordings are Steely Dan's Aja and Gaucho albums. A lot of Steely Dan's recordings are good for this purpose, actually. Superb engineering and production with a broad range of instruments and tones.
 
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Good stuff fellas… Apparently I haven’t been keeping up with what people freaking stream lol

I was listening to Spotify, and I could just hear all that shit on the mix/crushed top.

Bought some new phones and wanted better quality audio.l for testing this week. There’s a 30 day return window that I want to optimize.

Nice thing about the new headphones as I can really hear the “production“ aspects, even w trashed ears.
 
jellodog said:
I'm using Apple Music. They used to offer a smaller selection of tracks than Spotify, but they've addressed that in recent years, it's pretty good. And as Drew pointed out, they offer a lot of their content in lossless format. You should be able to get a 1 month free trial from Apple.

If you do try it, be sure to check that the streaming setting is configured to prefer lossless, otherwise it may be downsampled for streaming.

@fretworn Classic audio system testing recordings are Steely Dan's Aja and Gaucho albums. A lot of Steely Dan's recordings are good for this purpose, actually. Superb engineering and production with a broad range of instruments and tones.
Click to expand...

+1

I use Apple Music, and have it set to lossless over wifi and for downloads, and set to “High Quality” (AAC 256) over cellular.

Things have come a long way.
 
Tidal for streaming is amazing, they list credits better than anyone else at the moment which should be mandatory in 2023.

For downloads, 7digital are quite good as is Qobuz (also has a streaming service but i’ve never used it)
 
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