HD greedsters - it ain't rock'n'roll old chum

I just thought up a new insult for greedy people: "greedsters" (or for twitter #greedsters)

I would now like to apply the new word (in my vocabulary that is) greedsters to the killjoys who make it impossible in the UK to download any HD music worth playing.

I tried HD tracks and clicked the buy button on Eric Clapton's Love Songs and... HD 96/24 download but was told "you can't have it because you live in the UK"

Same goes on Qobus for Yes Fragile in HD96/24.

And that's all I could find worth trying alongside vinyl albums I have/have had and remember, to be able to do listening tests on my 192/24 DAC prototype.

There must be money involved here!

So, the greedsters stopped play! !

I did find something however...

By paying a subscription to Bowers and Wilkins I have been able to download (or should I say I'm in the midst of downloading - takes a long-long time) two "new release" Peter Gabriel Albums in 24bit/48kHz FLAC - the highest res available.

I don't mind paying £33.95 for two albums in studio definition, and I get the option of choosing two more albums every month... whether I'll like them or not is another matter, but I spent a whole lot more on vinyl with Britannia record club a couple of decades ago. So hats off to B&W - at least I'm downloading better than MP3 or CD quality - in the UK.

But if 48/24 is studio master quality then what is 96/24? If the studio "machinery" employed by Peter Gabriel and the London Symphony Orchestra is 48kHz, and let's face it they'd know best wouldn't they? Then why all the fuss over 96kHz? Wouldn't a 96kHz version have simply been up-sampled from 48kHz? I'm looking for answers here.

My B&W SoS membership lapsed a couple of months ago, but I think I'll renew it. It's not all to my taste, but there are albums that certainly make it worthwhile. It's all recorded and mastered beautifully, with none of the typical brick-walling that the record company engineers think will mean more sales because the louder the better (no-one will hear the distortion/compression/lack of dynamics because the whole music buying population uses iThing with "BassBoomers by DJ Deafness" earplugs - don't they?). In the last decade or so this loudness war has produced some walls of sound that could have been showcases for the CD format but are, instead, fatiguing to the ear. I think it's about time "remastered" meant quieter with more dynamics, not louder! But I rant and digress...

Thanks tg. I need to have a full grasp of this information and outside this user group nobody else seems to want to come clean, either that or they don't know.

So, 96kHz and higher is a direct to hard drive thing. Digital tape's maximum sampling is 48kHz.

Now this, gleaned from Kate Bush's website, is starting to make sense: "Kate mixes all of her audio on to 1/2 inch tape at 30ips. The analogue tape is then digitally mastered using 24bits at 96KHz." So it's analogue to digital, the digits being 96kHz. I'll download it!

Therefore, for 96kHz to be the standard (or even 192kHz and higher), the studio really has to record to analogue and then digitize. If it doesn't, then anything 96kHz is up sampled.

Now, I note "audiophile" sound cards, the ones with SPDIF are difficult to obtain (that's what we've found recently), so the trend is over to USB, but that also carries system sounds, which can be turned-off, but what about system noises? My next question should belong to "digital chat" and I'll post it there: what about Ethernet?