The RIAA has stipulated that “Hi Res” now means recording music at a sample rate of 48khz and 20 bits of depth, as “originally intended” by the creators.

Well that’s just weird, because most home recording interfaces produce a better signal than that right out of the box (most go to 24 bits).

You can buy hi-res music if you want, but make sure your playback gear is capable of reproducing the sounds it contains (you are a true audiophile, right?). If you have a cheap stereo, buying hi-res music is a waste of money, in my opinion.

If you really want to get into the nerdy evidence of why I say this, read this article on Sample Rates and Bit Depths in recording. some good info there.

I personally think that listening on any upscale playback devices you can buy in the mainstream today, 48khz/24 bit records are as good as you will be able to discern with both that equipment and  your ears. Unless you are willing to drop tens of thousands of dollars on playback gear, don’t waste your money on formats greater than that. Besides, higher quality music makes larger (huge, in fact) files, and it will just take you that much longer to download them. Buying physical media is a better option, in that case.

Thanks to Music 3.0 Blog for the original post,
The RIAA for the logo,
and Applied-Acoustics for the tech.

Nimbit, A PreSonus company, is now offering HD file downloads from their artist’s stores. This is pretty cool. Consider what I wrote previously on low quality mp3s and you will recall I made reference to things changing. Here is your proof.

Unleash your beautifully recorded WAVs, AIFFs, or FLAC files and tickle your fans’ ears with attenuating cymbals and jiggle their undersides with full bodied bass.” _Nimbit, Dave Coffin.

I have been working over the last two weeks with a close client on three songs, tracking, mixing and a little session work with a kit and various percussion pieces. We were waiting on two of the artists to track their parts and suddenly I’m told there are seven (7) more songs they want to do!!! Life is great! I will try to get some samples up as we start to finalize…stay tuned!

I was just looking around on G+ and came upon this video that shows what MP3s have done to the market. Eye-opening to say the least. I have read about Neil Young’s efforts to bring back hi-fi quality to digital recordings with Pono, but from the poking around I did, this is an audio reconstruction effort, not a ‘let’s put larger files on the internet’ effort. It is from the Harmon corporation, called Clari-fi  and attempts to sense what elements have been removed from recordings via compression and then restore them. Interesting idea, as it would not necessitate a change from how media is currently delivered.

There is some really good information in this video, presented by some top name artists and engineers. They present deep insight into what we have grown accustomed to with digital music, and how the industry has changed over the last two decades.

Here is the link to the video http://youtu.be/mDZcz-V29_M , its 22 minutes long, but worth the time. And don’t forget to check out the Clari-fi link above.

As musicians and recording professioinals, I think we owe it to ourselves and everyone else that our music touches to present the best quality possible. If we don’t strive for excellence, why are we in the business in the first place?