The Classical Download Thread

Started by Mark, June 03, 2007, 02:04:37 PM

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John Copeland

Quote from: Mark on March 14, 2008, 04:42:48 AM
Excellent offer from eClassical: grab it with both hands.

Berlioz Requiem - Norrington

Yes, thankls for this - a great work, double CD, hopefully a fabulous performance, all for just over 3 quid.  I'm trying not to download these days, but this was just too good to miss.

marvinbrown



  My quest for Bach's cantatas continues.  My membership at emusic was renewed yesterday and I took full advantage of my 50 downloads per month all in one day  :o...;D and most of the downloads were of the folowing:

  Cantatas 21, 23, 66, 105, 106, 131, Suzuki

  Cantatas 82, 191 Rilling

  I just love emusic  :D!

  marvin

eclassical

Quote from: Jezetha on March 14, 2008, 05:07:31 AM
I got an email with this offer a few days ago, as a regular customer. And I wonder whether the discussion with Rikard from eClassical has changed something, for this download comes with pdf files (with the booklet, the inlay and the label) and a jpg with the cover. Is this a first?

Actually, we took the discussion seriously and I've spent hours replacing small cover art with larger images, etc since having the discussion.

But it's actually not up to us if we can include PDFs with booklets etc. It's up to the labels, and some labels don't have it at all, others don't want
to give it away because they believe it would compete with CD sales if booklets are included (sigh). Why don't you contact the labels and request this? I don't think they realize that there is a great demand for booklets in PDF (although I've told them but they wouldn't listen) and that competing with their CD sales isn't a bad thing, it's actually the future ;-)

Anyway, we listen and will include as much extra material as we can in our future offers. UK label Signum has understood this and are offering booklets that we include when using their music. I've also linked to booklets on our "view all tracks from CD" page, if we have it.

And you can browse here:

http://www.eclassical.com/pdf/ (PDFs)

and here:

http://www.eclassical.com/cover_art/ (improved quality cover art)

In particular the sometimes minimal pictures from Hänssler were replaced with larger ones, but I've gone through all labels and will continue this work.

Just wanted to say that we heard you and we're working on it. Hopefully the labels will wake up soon too!

Rikard

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: eclassical on April 07, 2008, 05:32:59 AM
But it's actually not up to us if we can include PDFs with booklets etc. It's up to the labels, and some labels don't have it at all, others don't want to give it away because they believe it would compete with CD sales if booklets are included (sigh). Why don't you contact the labels and request this? I don't think they realize that there is a great demand for booklets in PDF (although I've told them but they wouldn't listen) and that competing with their CD sales isn't a bad thing, it's actually the future ;-)

Hi Rikard!

Thanks for your update.

I can both understand your exasperation and the reasoning of the labels. But - and here you are right - they are thinking short-term. Why don't they see that CDs and mp3s (or flac files) simply complement each other, and that a downloader is just as much a customer as a buyer in a shop (online or otherwise), and that he or she is also entitled to as much information?

Yes, I think I'll write to some of my favourite labels...

All the best!

Johan
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

eclassical

Quote from: Jezetha on April 07, 2008, 05:41:47 AM
I can both understand your exasperation and the reasoning of the labels. But - and here you are right - they are thinking short-term. Why don't they see that CDs and mp3s (or flac files) simply complement each other, and that a downloader is just as much a customer as a buyer in a shop (online or otherwise), and that he or she is also entitled to as much information?

Yes, I think I'll write to some of my favourite labels...

Johan, why not post your emails to the labels and any replies here? It would be very interesting for us all, I think, to hear how they reason ;) Or at least share the response as a summary here?

Rikard

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: eclassical on April 08, 2008, 12:11:13 AM
Johan, why not post your emails to the labels and any replies here? It would be very interesting for us all, I think, to hear how they reason ;) Or at least share the response as a summary here?

Rikard

I'll keep you posted.

Johan
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Daedalus

Hello all,

I have only recently started to experiment with downloading music - I feel that the price must represent a fantastic bargain for me to consider doing so, otherwise I may as well part with a little more cash and obtain a CD version with the artwork and notes etc.
I tend to download single movement pieces because I would normally have to buy a whole CD for just one piece of music - this way I can often find excellent bargains.

As a poor postgraduate student, I am deeply afraid of subscription services etc. I have tended to stick to 'pay as you go' sites. Some sites, such as Classics Online, seem to be very expensive as far as I am concerned - I could normally get the CD for the prices they charge. That really is the deciding factor for me - the download must be much cheaper than the price of the CD, otherwise what is the point?

I have just visited the  Classic Music Mobile site as recommended by somebody on this thread - what incredible value! I have downloaded a few excerpts and all seems well with the sound quality too. Is there anything on there that I should stay clear of?

I must confess that I find downloading to be a very timely pursuit! I tend to copy my downloads to CDs, as well as to my MP3 player, so that I can listen to the music in my study and while out travelling respectively. Copying to CD also provides a way of 'backing up' my downloads. I would hate to lose all of my downloaded music - at least I would be able to recover it from CDs.
Do any of you bother to copy your downloads to CD-R?

So many questions!  ;D

D.


Daedalus

Does anyone know if converting one file to another file type would result in a loss of quality?

I have downloaded something as a WAV file - if I convert this WAV file to an MP3 file using MediaMonkey or something similar, would this be better than just downloading it again as an MP3? 

Any guidance would be appreciated.

D.

J.Z. Herrenberg

#388
Quote from: Daedalus on April 22, 2008, 03:18:44 AM
Does anyone know if converting one file to another file type would result in a loss of quality?

I have downloaded something as a WAV file - if I convert this WAV file to an MP3 file using MediaMonkey or something similar, would this be better than just downloading it again as an MP3? 

Any guidance would be appreciated.

D.

If you don't want any loss in quality but still want a smaller size, convert your WAV file to FLAC, not to mp3. I suggest you download foobar2000 to play and convert files. It's very small and relatively easy to use. If you want to burn FLAC files to CD (to make an Audio CD), download Burrn.

If you have any questions about how to use them, let me know.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4003.html

http://www.burrrn.net/?page_id=4
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Daedalus

Jezetha - thanks for this.

I have downloaded a WAV file to copy to CD  - I figured go for the very highest quality.
However, now I have got the WAV on CD, I want to make an MP3 copy for my MP3 player.
It sounds like this foobar2000 might help me to achieve this.

My main concern was that, in converting from wav to mp3, I might not get the same quality mp3 file as I would by just downloading the file again in mp3 format. Does that make sense?

A similar idea is if you were to copy a CD to WAV files and then convert the WAVs to MP3 afterwards using software like foobar2000. Would it be better to have just copied the CD again but this time to MP3? It probably makes no difference but I am easily confused by this kind of thing!  ::)  :)

D.

J.Z. Herrenberg

#390
Quote from: Daedalus on April 22, 2008, 03:43:33 AM
Jezetha - thanks for this.

I have downloaded a WAV file to copy to CD  - I figured go for the very highest quality.
However, now I have got the WAV on CD, I want to make an MP3 copy for my MP3 player.
It sounds like this foobar2000 might help me to achieve this.

My main concern was that, in converting from wav to mp3, I might not get the same quality mp3 file as I would by just downloading the file again in mp3 format. Does that make sense?

A similar idea is if you were to copy a CD to WAV files and then convert the WAVs to MP3 afterwards using software like foobar2000. Would it be better to have just copied the CD again but this time to MP3? It probably makes no difference but I am easily confused by this kind of thing! 

If you convert a WAV file to mp3 there is some loss especially if the bitrate is low (say 128 kb). If the bitrate is set at 192, for instance, many people don't hear a difference. Probably a bitrate of 320 is best, but the maximum I get on foobar is 220 or thereabouts. You'll have to check, if you want to download an mp3, what the bitrate is - if it's 320, go for the download. It saves you converting WAV files to mp3s at a lower bitrate. If you can still follow me...

Btw - ripping with foobar2000 is easy:

Start the programme - go to File - click on Open AudioCD - Select drive - and the rest is easy (if your CD is in a database, you can automatically download tags).

To set the bitrate for mp3s:

Click on File - go to Preferences - go to Tools - click on Converter - you see 'Encoding Presets': choose MP3 - click on edit - choose (use the slide) best quality - OK.

P.S. I just remembered - I don't know if the LAME encoder (to make mp3s) has to be downloaded separately. It's been so long I've been using this...
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Daedalus

Jezetha, thank you for this very quick and informative response.
I think I have an idea of how to proceed now! Thank you for your help.

D.

P.S. This downloading business is fun!  ;D

rickardg

Quote from: Daedalus on April 22, 2008, 03:43:33 AM
My main concern was that, in converting from wav to mp3, I might not get the same quality mp3 file as I would by just downloading the file again in mp3 format. Does that make sense?

A similar idea is if you were to copy a CD to WAV files and then convert the WAVs to MP3 afterwards using software like foobar2000. Would it be better to have just copied the CD again but this time to MP3? It probably makes no difference but I am easily confused by this kind of thing!  ::)  :)

The most important distinction is between lossless formats and lossy formats (WAV is a lossless format not mentioned in the lists linked, since it isn't compressed at all).

Lossless formats retain all the original information from the source e g the CD but compresses it rather like a zip-file. Lossy formats throw away some information in order to make the file even smaller, higher quality files (320 kbps) retain more information than low quality (128 kbps). Most of the information thrown away is inaudible, but some isn't which causes compression artifacts .

Conversions to lossless formats (like FLAC, WAV, Apple Lossless) don't cause degradation of sound quality, but if the source is already lossily compressed you won't gain quality either. Conversions to lossy formats (like mp3, AAC, ogg) do degrade quality and, at least in theory, conversions between lossy formats also lose quality, although I haven't tried it.

CD (WAV) -> Lossless (e g FLAC or Apple Lossless) -> CD (WAV) should give you an exact copy of the original CD

CD (or WAV) -> Lossless -> mp3 should be equivalent to CD -> mp3.

CD -> mp3 -> lossless is pointless, you get a large file with the same quality as the mp3.

CD -> mp3 (320 kbps) -> mp3 (128 kbps) will (at least in theory, I haven't tried it) give worse quality than CD -> mp3 (128 kbps)

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Daedalus on April 22, 2008, 04:21:26 AM
Jezetha, thank you for this very quick and informative response.
I think I have an idea of how to proceed now! Thank you for your help.

D.

P.S. This downloading business is fun!  ;D

Glad to be of service. Btw, there is an excellent programme, EAC (Exact Audio Copy), which I haven't mentioned because I have never used it... But I know people very exacting in their audio standards who swear by it... FYI.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

George

Quote from: Jezetha on April 22, 2008, 04:41:01 AM
Glad to be of service. Btw, there is an excellent programme, EAC (Exact Audio Copy), which I haven't mentioned because I have never used it... But I know people very exacting in their audio standards who swear by it... FYI.

Yes, I long for the day when it comes to MAC.  :-[

Anyone know if it really gets better quality than an itunes WAV rip?

J.Z. Herrenberg

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

rickardg

Quote from: George on April 22, 2008, 07:31:01 AM
Yes, I long for the day when it comes to MAC.  :-[

There is always Max which is a GUI frontend to cdparanoia, but I haven't used it for ripping.

Quote from: George on April 22, 2008, 07:31:01 AM
Anyone know if it really gets better quality than an itunes WAV rip?

Is there a problem with iTunes ripping? I've naïvely assumed it created a perfect copy of the content of the CD, at least if you've enabled error correction. (Up to interpolation due to scratches, bits flipped by cosmic radiation and other stuff like that).

George

Quote from: rickardg on April 22, 2008, 08:19:28 AM
Is there a problem with iTunes ripping? I've naïvely assumed it created a perfect copy of the content of the CD, at least if you've enabled error correction. (Up to interpolation due to scratches, bits flipped by cosmic radiation and other stuff like that).

It's an ongoing debate. I haven't enountered any problems, but then again I haven't burned 2 copies each way and compared. I'm guessing that the difference is negligible.

Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich

As a sidenote: Always get the latest LAME mp3 encoder (amongst others) from rarewares.org
Since 3.98b8 there's an interesting development: you can use fractions in vbr presets (this is probably not correct english), what I mean is before we could use -V 0, - V 1 [...] to -V9 (0 is the best quality vbr value). Now you can use -V 0.77.

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: Wurstwasser on April 23, 2008, 02:13:02 AM
As a sidenote: Always get the latest LAME mp3 encoder (amongst others) from rarewares.org
Since 3.98b8 there's an interesting development: you can use fractions in vbr presets (this is probably not correct english), what I mean is before we could use -V 0, - V 1 [...] to -V9 (0 is the best quality vbr value). Now you can use -V 0.77.

Thanks for that link! I updated my LAME encoder.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato