(This entry was updated 12/2/18.)
Three years ago I posted the entry in this blog called Listening to Tomorrow. I wrote about the wonders I experienced after loading my music library onto a computer hard drive and using the computer as a “music server.” Since then, the idea of music existing as computer files—as opposed to physical discs one loads into a player—has expanded.
Today, there are a myriad of music server applications for the various computer operating systems. For those who want to take the fidelity beyond the capabilities of their computer’s sound card, there are countless external digital-to-analog converters (DACs) to choose from. There are also numerous online sources for downloading music. Some still offer the data-reduced formats such as mp3. Others now tout “full CD quality”—in some quarters, an oxymoron. And some offer extended-resolution and high-resolution files. (For more information on the different formats, see the blog entry cited above.)
My music server has become the way I listen, whether via Wi-Fi feeding smaller systems in the house, or via direct connection to the music library drive when listening on the main system. Yet for several reasons, as a consumer I have been hesitant to purchase downloads. Early experiences with more than one provider were disturbing in that what was often sold as “high resolution” turned out to be upsampled Redbook—in other words, plain old CD sound, in a high res “package”—sold at a high res price. Whatever the reason (or reasons), this was so rampant I feared the fledgling market might never get off the ground.
I was also not enamored of the .flac format in which the vendors delivered their downloads. While called a “lossless” way to reduce file size, making for convenient, faster download times, the results were not so lossless according to everyone participating in the comparison tests we ran in my studio. (Based on what I see on the Internet and in many printed audio journals, it seems many listeners are not bothered by flac. In our tests however, the results were unanimous—everyone heard a difference between the source .aif masters and the .flac files created from them.)
In time I was glad to see some vendors offer what appeared to be the raw PCM formats I prefer, such as .aif and .wav. These are the formats used to make the recordings. However, it turned out that at least with some of the vendors, what was being delivered to the customer was still a .flac file. The “download manager” software the vendors provided for use on the customer’s computer expanded the file back to .aif or .wav. For my own purchases, I avoided the downloads and stayed with CDs or with the high resolution files-on-DVD versions that some of the vendors sold. When the discs arrived, I’d extract the files—this is called “ripping” a disc—and add them to the server myself. For all the files on my server I chose the uncompressed .aif format—the same format I use to make and master recordings.
As the owner of the Soundkeeper Recordings label, I stayed away from offering downloads for several reasons, even though many folks have requested them over the years. The prime reason is that I seek to deliver our recordings to our customers with nothing less than the very best sonics, and from my perspective the download schemes I’ve seen involve compromises.
A full album at high resolution (24-bit/192 kHz sampling rate) can be larger than four Gigabytes in size. Where others reduce file size—and by that means shorten download times—by utilizing so-called “lossless” compression formats (such as .flac or .alac), to my ears these result in subtle alterations of the sound, hence I don’t consider them lossless. Trading fidelity for convenience is not what Soundkeeper wants to offer our customers.
Another common approach taken with downloads, is to break albums up into “singles”. Our artists go to considerable efforts to create whole albums, so this is the only way we want to deliver their work to our customers.
It took a while for the answer to come but I believe there is another way. Soundkeeper Recordings will soon offer downloads without any of the compromises cited above. How to deliver full albums at up to 24/192 resolution? Fans of the so-called “lossless” formats compare them to zipping a word processor file. Yes, the zipped words come back intact, even though I can’t say I find the same to be true of flac’d music.
So what about zipped music? We’ve used zipped music files before, such as those on the Format Comparison page of the Soundkeeper Recordings website. And when unzipped, no one who participated in our tests could differentiate between the source file and the copy that had been zipped.
What about file size? Converting an .aif or .wav file to a .zip file does not reduce the size to any significant degree. It does make for simple downloads though, without exacting a sonic price. When the files have been downloaded, the user unzips the file and simply drags the tracks into the server application of their choice (iTunes, Amarra, etc.).
One of the reasons I prefer .aif format for my music files is that the files can contain metadata (artist, album title, track title, composer, album cover art, etc.). This metadata becomes part of the file. The .wav format does not support metadata, so when the user adds this information in their music application, it resides in the application and not in the file. If the file is moved out of the application, the metadata is lost. In contrast, move an .aif file and the metadata travels with it. The .aif file downloads from Soundkeeper Recordings will have the full metadata in them when they arrive on the customer’s machine.
Within the next week, we’ll begin offering downloads in six formats: 16/44, 24/96, and 24/192, .aif or .wav. For those who prefer disc formats, we plan to continue offering CD versions. The downloads will replace our files-on-disc formats and are just a long overdue addition that will please a different set of Soundkeeper listeners.
The Soundkeeper 