“New Format Provides Ultimate Audio Quality”.

Thomson og Fraunhofer har introdusert et nytt filformat, mp3HD.

Men hva er egentlig nytt? Nyheten sammenlignet med det tradisjonell MP3-formatet er at mp3HD støtter tapsfri kompresjon. Men det gjør forsåvidt allerede både FLAC, Apple Lossless og diverse andre. Så, ingen nyhet. Formatet støtter ikke en gang samplefrekvenser  over 48 KHz og maks bitdybde er 16 bit per sample. Så det støtter faktisk ikke 96/24 eller høyere, i motsetning til de fleste nye formatene introdusert med bl.a. Blu-ray – er det da HD?!?

Kompresjonsfaktoren er omtrent den samme som for FLAC, 50% +/-, så ingen forbedring her heller.

En annen egenskap ved mp3HD er at det er bakoverkompatibelt med MP3. Det betyr at den faktisk inneholder a tradisjonell MP3-file, slik at en god, gammel MP3-spillerkan spille de nye mp3HD-filene. Da selfølgelig med ”MP3-kvalitet”, ukjent ved hvilken bit-rate. Filene vil uansett bli ganske store, omtrent tre ganger større, sammenlignet med tradisjonell 320 Kbps MP3.

So, what’s the point?!? 

Jeg holder meg fortsatt til FLAC!

All4MP3 Home

The catalog of HDtracks is currently quite limited, but it holds some titles of i.a. Henry Rollins Band, Ray Davis and The Kinks, Norah Jones, The Byrds and some other interesting artists. The price charged for a complete album is $ 11.98 which is quite reasonable.

I’ll test it out as soon as I get home to my Squeezebox. You should test it out too at www.hdtracks.com.

Update:
Unfortunately, I just realised that HDtracks offer their dowload services  to US citizens only :-(

The Slip is available in both MP3 (320 kbps), FLAC and high-resolution WAV (24 bit/96 kHz). Downloading of the largest files are offered as torrents and downloads in just a few minutes. And not only is it free, but they even encourage to distribute it and share it with friends under the Creative Commons licence. The physical CD will not be available before July. It will be interesting to see how much that will sell… But even though NIN offers this download for free I would be happy to pay for such services in the future.

As you may have notices from my previous postings, I have been waiting for someone to do this for a long time. Until now I have been forced to by the CD for then ripping it to achieve this quality. Now I finally get full CD-quality and above without having to go via the physical media. (Unfortunately my Squeezebox only supports 24 bit/48 kHz).

This is the way to go, Trent!

Download the album at www.nin.com.

Previously Neil Young has released many of his albums on DVD-Audio as his high-resolution audio format and I guess Blu-ray will be comparable to DVD-Audio regarding quality both formats supporting 24 bit/192 kHz in stereo, although it will not match SACD :-(

One of Young’s main arguments for using Blu-ray is the possibility to navigate the extras while listening to high-resolution music. He also plans to release even more extras via the Internet. To get this you will need a player supporting the Internet functions of profile 2.0.

OK, I admit it. I am a follower! (That was hard for a guy who claims to be a techno-geek) 

Just recently I bought a pair of Koss PortaPro headphones to replace my crappy earplugs. The PortaPro has been in the market for over 20 years, launched in 1984, and is just as image building as the iPod for portable music, and they are more popular than ever. I must admit that is quite impressive.

The PortaPro sounds great, maybe a little too much BASS, but very open and clear. They are also very comfortable to wear, and they have a open construction, meaning you hear the surroundings good as well (important feature to avoid being hit by a bus or bicycle sneaking up from behind :-). I can now even look street cool and listen to good music at the same time.

Source of music from this brief test was Steely Dan’s Aja, which is a fantastic album, encoded and compressed at 192 kbps WMA and played back from my Sony Walkman. I haven’t tested the PortaPro on my Hi-Fi setup yet, and I very much doubt they will even get close to my AKG K 240 studio monitors, but then again, they weren’t designed for that purpose either.

Please share your experience!

As you may remember from previous postings I have ripped all my music and stored it as audio files on my network storage server. So, you might ask, what are you gonna do with it there? Well, I agree, music is no good on a server if you can’t listen to it. So to listen to it I have bought a network music player called Squeezebox. Squeezebox from Slimdevices (now Logitech) is a Hi-Fi network music player supporting almost all music formats including MP3, WMA, AAC, AIF, WAV and FLAC. It also has a hi-grade Burr-Brown DAC with solid stereo cinch connectors in addition to both electrical and optical S/PDIF output for connection to a even more serious DAC, if you have one. I have connected mine to my Rotel Processor, not because of the audio quality, but because this one supports even more audio formats like HDCD and DTS.

The audio quality of this device is very good! At least in my ears. It is definitely as good as a dedicated CD player in the same price range (299 USD). As a consequence my Pioneer SACD/CD player is no longer in use. At least not for playing ordinary CDs. SACD and DVD Audio however is an other story. But anyway, I’m to lazy to get up from my chair to put on a SACD so I end up listening to the standard CD version through my Squeezebox anyway. That’s how good it sounds. If you want something better, you can either upgrade to Slimdevices Transporter, which is their absolutely high-end alternative, or add a Benchmark DAC 1 to your Hi-Fi system.

To actually be able to play back music from my network storage server i had to install Slimserver on it. Slimserver is free and available from www.slimdevices.com. It is easy to install and it automatically imports all your iTunes libraries. This is if you are running a standard OS such as Microsoft Windows. It’s not quite so easy if you are using something else, such as my Linksys NSLU2. But it is definitely manageable.

The Squeezebox is my absolute best buy of 2007 what so ever! An it still is in 2008!

Links for more information on the Squeezebox:
www.slimdevices.com - Slimdevices homepage
www.stereophile.com - John Atkinson’s review of the Squeezebox, September 2006

Links for more information on the Linksys NSLU2:
www.linksys.com - Linksys homepage
www.nslu2-linux.org - How to install Linux and Slimserver (and lots of other stuff) on your NSLU2