One week to grab some high quality audio files...

[Zahari M.]

Hi everyone!

Merry x-mas and happy new year!

Just want to share something with those of you that like high quality acoustical music recordings. If that's not your thing, then this post is of no use to you.

But if you do, then you might find this useful.... ?

Sony have released some new high quality / resolution Walkmans and I am on the look out for some high quality monitoring headphones and the need had arisen to be able to have access to some super high quality high resolution well recorded "real music" such that I / some others could use these recordings to better judge just what you are hearing when auditioning gear....

And luckily for me, Linn Records are actually giving away, until the 6th of January, a free high resolution christmas album. Awesome!!!

If you go to http://www.linnrecords.com/ and click on the banner that says 24-Bits of Christmas, you can start your journey. You will need to register and buy the album at $0.00 via their checkout. But you do not need to provide any card details when you register. It is a very painless registration. No verification needed.

I bought, for free, both the 24bit / 192kHz alac and flac studio master versions of the album!

So now, I have my first ever high resolution audio files! Mind you they are big! This album clocks over 4 Gigs of disk space!

If your just after the christmas music to play on your mobile device, then just buy the mp3 version of the album at $0.00

Hope it is of use to some of you.

Cheers

Zahari

[Joss]

When you get round to testing hi quality headphones, even after all these years as a sound engineer, it is rare you find a studio that is not using Beyer DT100s in the studio and DT770 as a reference headphone. I used them years ago and still use them now. Never found anything better. Big, though!

And when it comes to testing, the two standard forms of music used are normally any quartet recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and something choral, but not recorded in a church. I know that sounds boring, but it allows a clear precise range. Also, we used to always check monitors by playing back known voice overs speaking, not just music. That is a good reference since we all have better knowledge of spoken voice simply by speaking to people.

After that, all the tests in the world are completely pointless - sound is totally subjective (just like colour) so you are looking for a "comfortable average." That is the place not where you think you are getting the most accuracy across a range of sound sources, but rather the place where you are enjoying the experience the most.