Sugar Plum Fairy

A little Christmas music, delivered differently ...

Amnesty International and Bob Dylan

You have probably already heard that Amnesty International, as a fundraiser, is to release in late January 2012 an album of some 70 covers of Bob Dylan pieces. You can now listen online and pre-order here: http://www.facebook.com/amnestyusa?sk=app_115392725211599

The 4 CD collection is $24.99, with digital downloads ("high bitrate" MP3s) for $19.99. (I will prefer to rip my CDs to FLAC, thank you.)

And here's the complete tracklisting: http://www.nme.com/news/bob-dylan/60580

Bravura

Once again I am off on my annual quest to find tolerable Christmas music. One of my stellar finds a year or two ago was Tom Waits' Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis. Probably my reigning favorite piece of Christmas music would be the Estonian Chamber Choir's New Joy album. And of course, there is Bach's Christmas Oratorio. And so on.

Last night, plumbing the depths of the interwebs, I chanced upon Bravura Records, a recording studio that deals with producing high-resolution digital music. They have some utterly wonderful freebies as their Christmas gift to the user. These are 24-bit jazz pieces in AIF format (iTunes-compatible, but please play them through the best audio equipment you have for full effect), and even at 90 - 100mb per, they are well worth the download. They sound great, and only begin to hint at Bravura's even-higher res normal offerings. Read about how Bravura came to be, and get your free downloads here.

Loudness, Unabated

Having recently upgraded my audio system(s) -- and taking on, as a fresh empty-nester, a project to optimize the entirety of my music collection and digital playback scenario -- I have been revisiting old music. And, now that I have brought my turntable out of mothballs and integrated it into the new upstairs system, I am often shocked at how much better vinyl sounds than many recent CDs. And how much better older CDs can sound than newer CDs. I am really becoming wary of remasterings, even ones that purport to be digital remasters to high-resolution 24-bit lossless files. Chalk this all up to the "Loudness Wars", which is exposed and tracked by sites like TurnMeUp.org. For an illustration, watch this:



To help disclose the reality here, I am using a plug-in component for my favored (at his particular time) digital player for Windows, Foobar2000. The component is the Dynamic Range Meter (I downloaded mine from the author's site at http://www.dynamicrange.de/de/free-downloads). The software is based on work done by the Pleasurize Music Foundation. This thing measures a DNR value, or the decibel range in a digital music file. Pleasurize believes most everything should have a value of 12 to 14, and that something as low as a value of 3 is flat unacceptable.

With my newer equipment and optimizations (software tweaking included), lousy sonics of source material are now more apparent, and I am running Foobar2000 with the Dynamic Range Meter on suspect files, eventually intending testing all my digital collection (this will definitely take a while to get through everything). Sure enough, digital files that don't sound that great often turn out to have been ripped from "modern" CDs and display low DNR values. Thankfully, most classical and jazz albums I have tested so far are not so bad; the worst offenders are rock, pop, and re-issue compilations.

This appalling situation is driving me down a path of (a) buying only vinyl music from here on out, or (b) downloading only audiophile-acceptable high-res digital files from appropriate sources*, or (c) both. And probably working out how to make truly high-quality vinyl rips of my own.

* I have purchased good 16-bit and 24-bit music from the B&W Society of Sound and directly from some artist sites. I have also downloaded music from HDTracks with good results, but some audiophile forums warn against some HDTracks remasterings. I will be exploring these and more sites in the future and will keep you apprised.