Hi Nathan --
I haven't a/b'd it with the "regular" CD (or, in my case, the "deluxe edition" cd, which for the relevant tracks I believe is identical). I really should get to this comparison. I have a vinyl rip which I was listening to -- and it's mindblowingly great, really; very natural -- and the HDTracks 24/96 file is (obviously) *louder*, but also background is really black in comparison to the 24/96 vinyl rip. No noise behind all the detail. Except this one 1/2 second flaw om Part III - Pursuance, which makes it ANNOYING! But seriously, to be fair I'll have to listen to the CD fed into my Benchmark DAC1PRE and compare, from there, the 24/96 file from HDTracks.
The HDTracks version was an impulse buy -- just got the USB DAC hooked up and bought a favorite record in with the new capabilities. I didn't read any reviews, didn't know about AIX records before your post, all that. This is one of those albums that I just bought the high-resolution digital file because it was THERE, y'know? It's Coltrane's A Love Supreme, so I had to get it. Not necessarily smart.
I'm not a professional reviewer and won't go into huge paragraphs, but I will give a listen both ways on my speakers and on my headphones before I feel like I can say anything.
The Conjure record... ("Conjure: Music for the Texts of Ishmael Reed")... well, that's night and day. No particular care needed in comparing the 24/88 high res file with the CD. I *love* this album, by the way, and was never happy with the CD. I'm happy with the high-res FLACs.
The 'Trane I'll get back to you on! Meanwhile, I'm just annoyed as can be about the momentary flaw in the FLAC file. I'll get to it when I sort through the mound of CD's in front of my rig. That'll happen soon-ish.