The Classical Download Thread

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

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George

Quote from: Mn Dave on April 08, 2009, 01:40:48 PM
Indeed. Too bad I have to pay to upgrade my albums, but at least I don't have to pay full price again.

That's cool that they offer the option to pay a bit more to upgrade. Since the plus takes twice as much space, might be wise to not upgrade it all.

Dr. Dread

Quote from: George on April 08, 2009, 01:43:09 PM
That's cool that they offer the option to pay a bit more to upgrade. Since the plus takes twice as much space, might be wise to not upgrade it all.

Yeah, only stuff I really love. (I upgraded two so far: A Dylan and a Bernarda Fink).

Frumaster

#502
Quote from: George on April 08, 2009, 01:35:16 PM
Very, very good news and a step in the right direction.  :)

You're right, a postitive step...but still a baby step.  They're charging near CD prices for downloads without delivering a tangible product or even liner notes.  Why can't they just go lossless?  Its so frustrating.  They're losing tons of business because people can just find lossless torrents for free.  I can guarantee that if iTunes went lossless, sales would go up and illegal downloads would go down.  I know I would buy from them. 

Maybe I won't have to wait much longer though.  The only intermediate step remaining is 320k.  Guess they're trying to milk this process for everything its worth.

Oh, not to mention that Amazon has had 256k as the norm for quite some time already.

George

Quote from: Frumaster on April 08, 2009, 01:46:55 PM
You're right, a postitive step...but still a baby step.  They're charging near CD prices for downloads without delivering a tangible product or even liner notes.  Why can't they just go lossless?  Its so frustrating.  They're losing tons of business because people can just find lossless torrents for free.  I can guarantee that if iTunes went lossless, sales would go up and illegal downloads would go down.  I know I would buy from them.

Me too, I was just tying to be positive about it.  :)

Dr. Dread

I'm not going to get into this, but many new albums come with liner notes and I don't think many people are ready to give up disc space to go lossless.

Okay, I'm done. I just wanted to make the one announcement.

Frumaster

Quote from: Mn Dave on April 08, 2009, 01:51:14 PM
I'm not going to get into this, but many new albums come with liner notes and I don't think many people are ready to give up disc space to go lossless.

Okay, I'm done. I just wanted to make the one announcement.

Memory is cheap though!  You can get 500GB for 100 bucks or so.  Plus, with a decent ad campaign they could convice people of lossless superiority, and then people wouldn't mind the extra space so much.

Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich

#506
Quote from: Mn Dave on March 27, 2009, 09:13:02 AMYes, well, what's your point?
I often need to transcode stuff for listening in my car (apply some variable dynamics effect - essential for car). Lossy->Lossy == EVIL. :D
In times with cheap Terabyte hard disks and endless Internet bandwidth I want the best available source.
A lossless source is the only proper starting point and the only valid source for being flexible. Beside the stuff for car, I also convert to an mp3 player (lame @ v2) and to my Livingroom-Notebook (vorbis at q8).

Teresa

 :D   The Boston Symphony Orchestra is offering the deal of a lifetime $50 for a 1 year subscription.  A 1 year subscription includes their current six 88.2kHz 24 Bit downloads plus all the music files on their site and all that will be released in the next year. From what James Levine said that should be at least 8 more high resolution downloads.

I paid for the one year subscription and it is the best deal I've ever seen on music.  You can also buy their downloads a la carte.

Prices are $8.99 to 9.99 for 2 channel 24/88.2 and $11.99-$12.99 for multichannel 24/88.2. All include detailed program notes and back and front covers in PDF form.

The six high resolution 24 Bit 88.2Khz downloads so far, first price is Stereo, second price is Multichannel. There are also MP3 Stereo versions available for $1 less.

The Red Sox™ Album (Keith Lockhart, Boston Pops) Stereo only $8.99

Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé (James Levine, Boston Symphony Orchestra) $9.99/$12.99

Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem), Op. 45) (James Levine, Boston Symphony Orchestra) $9.99/$12.99

Mahler: Symphony No. 6 (James Levine, Boston Symphony Orchestra) $9.99/$12.99

Bolcom: Lyric Concerto; Symphony No. 8 for chorus and orchestra (James Levine, Boston Symphony Orchestra) $8.99/$11.99

Mozart Chamber Music for Winds and Strings (James Levine, Boston Symphony Orchestra) $9.99/$12.99

The following are MP3 only

Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra: Live Performances 2006

Oscar and Tony: Award-Winning Music From the Stage and Screen

Sleigh Ride - Christmas Favorites

America

Plus 12 programs from "From the Broadcast Archives: 1943-2000"

So as you can see there are 22 programs so far that you get for your $50, plus all the ones added to their web site in the next year.

Fëanor

#508
Quote from: Frumaster on April 08, 2009, 01:46:55 PM
...  They're charging near CD prices for downloads without delivering a tangible product or even liner notes.  Why can't they just go lossless?  Its so frustrating.  They're losing tons of business because people can just find lossless torrents for free.  I can guarantee that if iTunes went lossless, sales would go up and illegal downloads would go down.  I know I would buy from them. 

Maybe I won't have to wait much longer though.  The only intermediate step remaining is 320k.  Guess they're trying to milk this process for everything its worth.
...

Indeed.  I personally refuse to pay CD prices for lossy downloads, even 320 kbps.

The fact remains that even 320 kbps files are much smaller than lossless. Nevertheless at hard disk prices today, you have SFB if you prefer a lossy format just to conserve space.  The lossy downloads have to do more with download speeds rather that storage space.  I think the answer to the download issue is BitTorrent, but that techology is anathema to commercial providers because of its association with downloading illegal copies.

Kuhlau

Quote from: Frumaster on April 08, 2009, 01:46:55 PM
Why can't they just go lossless?  Its so frustrating.  They're losing tons of business because people can just find lossless torrents for free.  I can guarantee that if iTunes went lossless, sales would go up and illegal downloads would go down.

Can you really guarantee that? Wow! You should work in Apple's sales or marketing departments.

Sorry, but that's a pretty naive view. I'm guessing you acquire stuff illegally via torrents. And I'm also willing to wager that even if iTunes went lossless, you'd still get stuff from torrents. Why wouldn't you? It's there, so you take it. Unless some moral issue prevents you. But I don't know many human beings who'd get moralistic about this (unless they were losing money personally because of illegal file sharing - and even then, it's an economical rather than a moral issue).

The fact is this: torrents are addictive. High-quality stuff for free. Who's going to switch to paying for lossless when they've experienced that? Only meths drinkers and village idiots. No, the answer lies in what Feanor hinted at - record companies have to agree a way to monetise torrents, like a levy on ISP charges for those who upload and download heavily.

Believe me, the record execs WILL cave in eventually. It's a case of market forces - and we all know how swayed big business is by these.

FK

Dr. Dread

What's the difference between a "download" and a "torrent"? Thanks.

Fëanor

#511
Quote from: Kuhlau on April 09, 2009, 03:52:10 AM

Quote from: Frumaster on April 08, 2009, 01:46:55 PM
...  They're charging near CD prices for downloads without delivering a tangible product or even liner notes.  Why can't they just go lossless?  Its so frustrating.  They're losing tons of business because people can just find lossless torrents for free.  I can guarantee that if iTunes went lossless, sales would go up and illegal downloads would go down.  I know I would buy from them. 
...

Can you really guarantee that? Wow! You should work in Apple's sales or marketing departments.

Sorry, but that's a pretty naive view. I'm guessing you acquire stuff illegally via torrents. And I'm also willing to wager that even if iTunes went lossless, you'd still get stuff from torrents. Why wouldn't you? It's there, so you take it. Unless some moral issue prevents you. But I don't know many human beings who'd get moralistic about this (unless they were losing money personally because of illegal file sharing - and even then, it's an economical rather than a moral issue).

The fact is this: torrents are addictive. High-quality stuff for free. Who's going to switch to paying for lossless when they've experienced that? Only meths drinkers and village idiots. No, the answer lies in what Feanor hinted at - record companies have to agree a way to monetise torrents, like a levy on ISP charges for those who upload and download heavily.

Believe me, the record execs WILL cave in eventually. It's a case of market forces - and we all know how swayed big business is by these.

FK

Tut, tut, Kuhlau,

Are you implying that Frumaster has downloaded illegal copies, or that he ought to??   >:D

What iTunes and other download vendors ought to do is provided them at much lower cost.  The brutal fact is that it is much cheaper to deliver downloads than phyisical CDs to the consumer, but the download pricing structure doesn't reflect this.  Such is the conservatism and greed of the music industry that they can't grasp that illegal copying would be largely forstalled and revenues actually rise if the price of a "song" were a reasonable $0.10 - 0.15 rather than $0.99 - 1.39 as it is now.

As a classical listener consider this.  If a recording company were to make albums available in lossless format (via BitTorrent or standard download) for say, $2.50 per, their revenues would be stable or improve.  Furthermore they would have little need delete items for their catalogues -- always disappointment for music lovers -- since it's the physical disc and its distribution that drives that phenomenon.

Opus106

#512
Quote from: Mn Dave on April 09, 2009, 05:10:02 AM
What's the difference between a "download" and a "torrent"? Thanks.

Download: getting a file stored in a (single) server somewhere. You know, the click-and-save procedure.

Torrent: One or more persons who have the file seeds it to the rest of the world. The whole file is split into smaller chunks and the "peers" (the people in the "swarm" who download this stuff) get a few chunks at a time from the seeder and also exchange stuff between each other.

Torrent, in a way, is a form of download, but it doesn't strain a single server trying to service thousands of download requests at the same time, especially in case of very large files. Also, the seeders and peers can put a cap on their max. upload and download speeds, and can even decide not to seed or share with certain people. The more peers you have in your swarm, the less each has to upload. Before a person can start seeding, he or she needs to create a torrent file which has to be downloaded by the peers and opened using a peer-to-peer (P2P) application (utorrent, Azureus, BitTorrent - the original, and the like).
Regards,
Navneeth

Fëanor

#513
Quote from: Mn Dave on April 09, 2009, 05:10:02 AM
What's the difference between a "download" and a "torrent"? Thanks.

Well a "torrent" is a download of a sort.  A regular download is from a single source; it typically occurs during a single, continuous interval of time, although there are download programs that permit downloads to be stopped and restarted.

On the other hand, a BitTorrent technology permits a given download to be downloaded in part from many sources similtaneously, and the download can be interrupted and later resumed with no fuss.  Also, one can download one or many downloads at once while regulating the amount of your computer's resources that are dedicated to the overall torrent process.

The torrent "sources" I allude to can be any computer on the Internet that has copy of the constituent files that is defined as a "torrent".  Typically BitTorrent users, actual participants, are uploading stuff they have previously downloaded, as well as downloading new stuff.  Of course, all this is what makes BitTorrent such a boon for illegal copying.

Dr. Dread

#514
Quote from: opus67 on April 09, 2009, 05:49:37 AM
Download: getting a file stored in a (single) server somewhere. You know, the click-and-save procedure.

Torrent: One or more persons who have the file seeds it to the rest of the world. The whole file is split into smaller chunks and the "peers" (the people in the "swarm" who download this stuff) get a few chunks at a time from the seeder and also exchange stuff between each other.

Torrent, in a way, is a form of download, but it doesn't strain a single server trying to service thousands of download requests at the same time, especially in case of very large files. Also, the seeders and peers can put a cap on their max. upload and download speeds, and can even decide not to seed or share with certain people. The more peers you have in your swarm, the less each has to upload. Before a person can seed, he or she needs to create a torrent file which has to be downloaded by the peers and opened using a peer-to-peer (P2P) application (utorrent, Azureus, BitTorrent - the original, and the like).

Thanks, Nav!!

And Feanor. :)

George

#515
Download = A way to get a specific file that someone else has already uploaded and has shared the link with you. 

Torrent = A way to get pretty much anything that was ever recorded, assuming someone has created a torrent for it. Torrents are much more public, so you don't need to know the person who created it.  8)


Teresa

#516
Quote from: Mn Dave on April 09, 2009, 05:10:02 AM
What's the difference between a "download" and a "torrent"? Thanks.

Others have to you what BitTorrent downloads are, now it is time for a word of caution.  :o

I am very cautious on the Internet and refuse to use BitTorrents. A BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) communications protocol. This two-way communication opens up one's computer to spyware, malware and attacks.   So download these out at your own risk.

Here is more information on BitTorrents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_(protocol)

I stay with traditional one-way downloads from trusted websites such as HDTracks, various Symphony Orchestras and other legitimate sellers.  :)

Coopmv

Quote from: Teresa on April 09, 2009, 06:40:00 PM

I stay with traditional one-way downloads from trusted websites such as HDTracks, various Symphony Orchestras and other legitimate sellers.  :)


The same here.  I downloaded a few symphonies from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra website, which I certainly trust.  No downloads for me from any other type of websites ...

Opus106

Quote from: Teresa on April 09, 2009, 06:40:00 PM
I stay with traditional one-way downloads from trusted websites such as HDTracks, various Symphony Orchestras and other legitimate sellers.  :)

Try downloading an Ubuntu image file (all 696 MB of it), on release day from the any of the Ubuntu servers from around the world! :D ;)

Just to make things clear, while this is a thread dedicated to download of classical music, the BitTorrent protocol can be used to download any kind of file, not just audio. :)
Regards,
Navneeth

mwb

Quote from: Teresa on April 09, 2009, 01:39:38 AM
:D   The Boston Symphony Orchestra is offering the deal of a lifetime $50 for a 1 year subscription.  A 1 year subscription includes their current six 88.2kHz 24 Bit downloads plus all the music files on their site and all that will be released in the next year. From what James Levine said that should be at least 8 more high resolution downloads.

....

So as you can see there are 22 programs so far that you get for your $50, plus all the ones added to their web site in the next year.

Yeah, I asked a few weeks ago if anyone has tried it yet.  Good to see someone now has and likes it.

I may wait for the couple of weeks for the current season to end so my year sub will include all of next season and the archives for the current and past ones that they add.
- Michael