Some recent moves on the downloading front show signs that more music is set to become available in whatever format you want, says Andrew Everard

There’s a lot of debate around how one should store music for playback using a network player, streaming client, network radio, streamer, access point – you see, we can’t even agree what to call the things, so the chances of any kind of accord on formats is minimal!

Some will tell you that 320kbps MP3 is more than adequate, and that it’s impossible to hear an improvement using more data-hungry formats, while others view either CD format WAV or AIFF, or lossless FLAC or ALAC as the minima, and would much rather have their music at resolutions beyond that available on CD.

Yet others will look at some of the high-resolution music now becoming available and smell a rat – how can we be sure that the shiny 96kHz/24-bit download for which we’ve just paid an arm and a leg isn’t just a simple upsample of the CD-quality original?

The answer to that one is actually relatively simple – you just run the music file through a piece of software such as Audacity and look for a ‘brick wall’ drop-off in the frequency spectrum just above 20kHz – but I’d argue that we really shouldn’t have to resort to such investigation.

Instead, those channels offering ‘hi-res’ music should play with a straight bat; if they don’t, and we all get suspicious of anything high-resolution, then those same distributors are in danger of shooting themselves in the foot.

Some recent releases and moves in the high-resolution music arena have thrown some of these points into sharp focus: the website of Linn Records, the former Gramophone Label of the Year, is now starting to offer hi-res downloads drawn from the catalogues of Universal Music labels Decca Classics and Deutsche Grammophon; another demonstration-quality release from Norwegian label 2L allows the comparison of the sound – and storage requirements – of various formats, and Apple iTunes is now offering music ‘Mastered for iTunes’ content on its iTunes store, claiming to deliver ‘Music as the Artist and Sound Engineer Intended’.

Let’s take the last of those first, because that claims deserves rather closer scrutiny: at the time of writing there are some 100 albums available ‘Mastered for iTunes’, of which about 40 are classical or ‘crossover’ titles.

Apple talks about its ‘latest high-resolution encoding process’, and assures the music industry this ‘ensures that your music is transparently and faithfully distributed in the way you intended it to be heard’ while requesting it supplies iTunes with high-resolution master files – ‘any resolution above
16-bit 44.1kHz, including sample rates of 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, and 192kHz, will benefit from our encoding process’  and hints that it may still be looking at higher-resolution downloads, saying ‘As technology advances and bandwidth, storage, battery life, and processor power increase, keeping the highest quality masters available in our systems allows for full advantage of future improvements to your music.’

However, the “Mastered for iTunes’ files are still encoded using lossy compression; it may be variable bit-rate iTunes Plus AAC, but it’s still basically 256kbps AAC. It seems the rumoured iTunes high-resolution revolution may still be some way off.

However, while Linn is taking baby-steps with its Universal downloads – though at the time of writing, the cataclogue was showing signs of growing –, those there are are very good indeed. I downloaded a few for a listen as 96kHz/24-bit files, including the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique (Sir Colin Davis/Royal Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra) and Mahler 8 (Solti/Chicago SO), and through my system there’s definitely a power, dynamic openness and detail not available from a standard CD. I’m looking forward to this particular catalogue growing.

Already small but capable of sensational sound quality is the catalogue from 2L, which has just released its latest recording by the Trondheim Soloists. Souvenir, released in two stages, was recorded in surround using the DXD format, giving about four times the resolution of standard SA-CD format DSD, and is available at CD quality, as MP3 files, as high-resolution stereo and multichannel at 96kHz/24-bit, and as 192kHz/24-bit stereo.

Oh, and as an LP Direct Metal Mastered from the DXD files, which are 352.8kHz/24-bit, and a Blu-ray disc combining almost all of the formats.

Thanks to 2L’s Morten Lindberg I was able to download all the versions of the set, and compare sound quality and file sizes: I am absolutely sold on the quality gains available all the way up to the 192kHz/24-bit stereo – I don’t, as yet, have anything able to play the FLACs taken from the DXD version!

But of their kind, even the MP3 files are very good-sounding, so it’s really a matter of trading storage space for better sound. That could be a consideration for many: taking one track, the opening of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, the MP3 version (at 320kb/s) occupies 22.7MB for just under nine and a half  minutes of music, the CD-quality FLAC 51MB, the uncompressed WAV 99.3MB, the 96/24 version 187.4MB and the 192/24 365.6MB.

And for hilarity’s sake, the DXD ‘master’ is 782.7MB.

It just goes to show that there’s really no right format for music: it’s just a case of choosing the one best suited for your needs. Me, I’ll stick to the 192/24 for listening at home, but the 320k version would be perfectly adequate for an iPod through the white earbuds or for listening in the car.

But I really must find a 384kHz/24-bit digital to analogue converter, just to satisfy my curiosity…