[IEMCrazy]

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True. At least you can play them offline except there's that one company, EA maybe?, that's changing that. What's messed up is buying a disc that activates with Steam, preventing its resale (even though you aren't really supposed to re-sell PC stuff since it can just be ripped and stored, and it still has a license key I guess but still kinda messed up). Smart idea to prevent piracy, but not very nice 

 
It comes back to the old "did I buy the disc, or did I buy a license" debate where DRM-loving publishers want to eat their cake and have it too.  If you own the disc, then it is your right to sell that disc as property.  If you own a license, then it is your right copy and transfer that license to as many devices as possible so long as you're using only one license at a time and do not transfer it.  While they argue about you buying the disc or buying a license what they really provide you is a lease.  But "lease" doesn't sell well in marketing speak so they try to pretend it's something else.
 
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If you lose your SACD, the shop wont give you a replacement either.  As for "overcharging" -- if the price isn't good for you, don't buy from them. Not to mention, there are quite a few SACDs now that cost over $100, sometimes $250 or more because Sony stopped making them, so I have to disagree with your argument. 

 
True enough, but to preserve an SACD you need only keep it in a box and not physically damage it.   My SACD's don't randomly depolarize and refuse to boot, or blow all backups at once in a serious power supply problem

  Trouble is while buying digital may be arguably cheaper (or more expensive!) backing up digital data is far more expensive and power hungry than backing up physical content.  With physical you simply must not physically damage it.  With digital, no amount of redundant storage is safe enough.  I come close to good backups.  A fileserver running a RAID array, plus the copy on the dedicated music server, then dual backups of the main server.  It's as safe as one can get outside a datacenter, and I'm not personally worried about it.  But that kind of backups for normal people comes at way too substantial an expense and cost in electricity.  I needed it for things beyond audio.  Joe User will have a hard time justifying the costs of servers and operation (and of course redundant power!) to keep their music from getting lost.  I don't blame HDTracks, but I also don't blame anyone who takes issue with that policy and refuses to support them because of it too. 
 
I agree: If you don't like the price, no need to buy there, plenty of other vendors out there.  Right now they offer what I need, the only way to get 24 bit for my Squeezebox rig, and they're doing it at an almost palatable price.  It's within a dollar or two of what I used to pay Telarc for SACDs back when they sold them.  I just wish they'd update their weekly sales more.  It's been the same list for three weeks and counting.  I like buying up the entire page of Weekly Sales when it's different....I can justify those prices far more easily

 

[IEMCrazy]

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Chesky fixed those tracks a few days ago. I re-downloaded the 24/96 and 16/44 albums, and they work fine. Let me know if you guys are still having problems, and, if so, I'll give them a call.

 
The files work.  I only tested with a mono speaker,  I don't want to really listen until I have time to enjoy it, but I had to at least test it for the cause!  Thanks for the info!

 

[jtaylor991]

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It comes back to the old "did I buy the disc, or did I buy a license" debate where DRM-loving publishers want to eat their cake and have it too.  If you own the disc, then it is your right to sell that disc as property.  If you own a license, then it is your right copy and transfer that license to as many devices as possible so long as you're using only one license at a time and do not transfer it.  While they argue about you buying the disc or buying a license what they really provide you is a lease.  But "lease" doesn't sell well in marketing speak so they try to pretend it's something else.
 

I meant like you can't return a CD or the like for a computer (unless it's like defective) because people would buy, rip, and return (like some do with Netflix lol) but I see your point. I guess as long as I don't keep using it I could sell the license to someone else, but I think those license keys usually work only once

 

[KT66]

will this be out on CD?
 
or another US only HD tracks offer, available to approx 4% of the worlds population

 

[Benjamin6264]

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will this be out on CD?
 
or another US only HD tracks offer, available to approx 4% of the worlds population

 
I don't think the market is big enough to make it worthwhile for them. Also, CD format would limit the sample rate to 44.1khz.

 

[KT66]

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I don't think the market is big enough to make it worthwhile for them. Also, CD format would limit the sample rate to 44.1khz.

agreed CD would be wrong, but maybe sell as USB sticks?
 
still missing out on 96% of the world, a lot of which is wealthier than the USA, is a bad business plan

 

[IEMCrazy]

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agreed CD would be wrong, but maybe sell as USB sticks?
 
still missing out on 96% of the world, a lot of which is wealthier than the USA, is a bad business plan

 
And their distribution radius is the only thing about HDTracks that you find to be a bad business plan

 
The key here is it's an audiophile market, by a small-time US recording studio, centered on high-res distribution of stuff that otherwise would only be available on SACD & DVD-A.  Cheskey does, or did, have a DSD/SACD production setup, not sure if they still use it and distribute globally or not, but this particular album, an audiophile demo disc is so niche, the cost of SACD/DVD-A/BD-A production wold be a loss in money.  Setting up digital distribution and haggling with international requirements and publishing licensing, copyright ownership disputes, etc is a major business and costs a lot of money to get started.  Lets first worry about HDTracks getting enough record contracts, bandwidth capacity, and customer base in their home market before they go spending fortunes globetrotting?

  They may be missing "96% of the world" but I'm guessing not much of that world outside the US, CA, AU, (UK, DE, FR, and surrounding areas), CN, JP, etc has much of a market for audiophile recordings in high res let alone binaural demo discs.  Not all of the world is as crazy as we!  Besides, we Yanks are envious of your cheaper Sennheiser prices

 
Of course there is a 16/44.1 version of this on HDTracks which makes me presume perhaps CD distribution is probable.  Not sure if Cheskey has any international distribution at all though. 

 

[JoeyRusso]

I downloaded this last week and was mostly impressed.  My daughter got a kick out of the Test tracks, especially the left/right tracks.  She ripped the headphones off her head and said: "Wow, that's creepy"..  lol

 

[IEMCrazy]

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I downloaded this last week and was mostly impressed.  My daughter got a kick out of the Test tracks, especially the left/right tracks.  She ripped the headphones off her head and said: "Wow, that's creepy"..  lol

 
Very cool, I'm saving my copy for when I can sit down and really listen to it in dead silence.  I was going to pull out the K702 for true neutrality and better binaural effect, but I may just have to use HD650.   HD650 naturally has that "creepy" effect at times with a drum or something that sound so real and so very "just behind your shoulder", I can imagine what this sounds like with the binaural recording

 

[JoeyRusso]

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Very cool, I'm saving my copy for when I can sit down and really listen to it in dead silence.  I was going to pull out the K702 for true neutrality and better binaural effect, but I may just have to use HD650.   HD650 naturally has that "creepy" effect at times with a drum or something that sound so real and so very "just behind your shoulder", I can imagine what this sounds like with the binaural recording

 
She was using my Q701's at the time.. I suggest starting with them

 

[IEMCrazy]

Nice...I think I'll stick with the original plan then!  I'm looking forward to it.  I keep picking other genres since it's been a bit warm and I've had a fan on...this deserves dead silence.  I just hope to get to try it before November while waiting for "perfect silence"

 

[jtaylor991]

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Nice...I think I'll stick with the original plan then!  I'm looking forward to it.  I keep picking other genres since it's been a bit warm and I've had a fan on...this deserves dead silence.  I just hope to get to try it before November while waiting for "perfect silence"

I have tinnitus, therefore no perfect silence ;(

 

[edstrelow]

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​

 
 
 
Quote: Originally Posted by jude 

...In case you're not familiar with what a binaural recording is, let's discuss what it is, and why it's so very relevant, so very cool, for Head-Fi'ers: Many here would agree that excellent headphone systems can open up a recording's innermost details and subtleties like few loudspeakers can. From a price/performance standpoint, headphones, in my opinion, almost always outperform their loudspeaker counterparts in several respects. Still, though, headphone listening has its shortcomings, key among them imaging--when it comes to imaging, headphone listening is fundamentally flawed. As HeadRoom describes part of the problem:
 
Quote: Originally by HeadRoom:
So here's the problem with headphone listening in a nutshell: the sound in the right channel is only heard in the right ear and the sound in the left channel is only heard in the left ear. What's missing in headphones is the sound going from each channel to the opposite ear, arriving a short time later for the extra distance traveled, and with a bit of high frequency roll-off for the shadowing effect of the head.




 
If you've tried crossfeed, then you know it can help solve some of the imaging issues inherent with headphone listening, helping to form a more cohesive image, but still unable to take the image out of your head. To achieve convincing, realistic imaging through headphones requires much more than a crossfeed circuit can achieve; and this is where binaural recording comes in.

Rather than try to explain the science and mechanics of binaural recording in great detail, let me instead give you links to pages that do a far better job of explaining it than I could:
 

1. Wikipedia's page about binaural recording
2. The Binaural Source's "Binaural For Beginners" primer

Simply put, the intent of binaural recording is to capture sound exactly as the human ears hear it. Even more simply put, one of the most common ways to do that is to place high-resolution microphones inside the ears of a purpose-built dummy head, its ear-shaped molds designed to simulate the fleshiness/pliability/resonance and shape of actual ears. (This can be taken further still with a full simulated head/neck/shoulder/torso setup.)

The recording sounds interesting.  Your psycho-acoustic explanation is off the rails.  Bianuaral recordings do not provide crossfeed, nor does regular stereo, listened through headphones..    The sound of each channel heard by the opposite ear is an artifact of speaker reproduction often called  a "phantom channel."  Far from enhancing locaization it messes it up as anyone who has heard speakers that suppress it knows.  Check out Polk's old SDA systems.   Blending and mixing up the 2 channels simply makes the minimizes the stereo localization cues.  The headroom people were simply full of beans on this issue and used this erroneous bit of psuedo science to peddle their cross-feed blend systems.  If you like blend and crossfeed that's your choice, it will shrink the width of a stereo image and some people seem to be able to convince themselves that this give better forward projection of sound.  In tuth it does sound more like speakers but speakers give flawed stereo.

 

[TheWuss]

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The recording sounds interesting.  Your psycho-acoustic explanation is off the rails.  Bianuaral recordings do not provide crossfeed, nor does regular stereo, listened through headphones..    The sound of each channel heard by the opposite ear is an artifact of speaker reproduction often called  a "phantom channel."  Far from enhancing locaization it messes it up as anyone who has heard speakers that suppress it knows.  Check out Polk's old SDA systems.   Blending and mixing up the 2 channels simply makes the minimizes the stereo localization cues.  The headroom people were simply full of beans on this issue and used this erroneous bit of psuedo science to peddle their cross-feed blend systems.  If you like blend and crossfeed that's your choice, it will shrink the width of a stereo image and some people seem to be able to convince themselves that this give better forward projection of sound.  In tuth it does sound more like speakers but speakers give flawed stereo.

 
My understanding - and experience - with crossfeed couldn't be more different than how you just described it, edstrelow.
 
Proper crossfeed widens the stereo image by moving the extreme left signal and extreme right signal into focus. 
 
Saying that it "blends" the left and right channels is a bit of a misnomer.  and thus one of the reasons crossfeed is misunderstood as a "mono-izer".
 
Audibly, the left and right signals are not blended, but are actually pushed even further apart.  Because they are brought into focus, and the ear can pinpoint an acousstic location for the signal.  In other words, what once sounded as if it was eminating from within the headphone now sounds as if it is eminating from further away.
 
And the center image, a "difference" signal between the left and right channels, comes into tighter focus, and appears to come from in front of the listener.
 
I no longer use crossfeed, because my system produces a sufficiently holographic sound without it.  But, when I had a less resolving sytem it was of great benefit.  And I firmly believe crossfeed helped ease me into the realm of head-fi. 
 
So, yes.  If speakers create "flawed stereo" - whatever that means - then I'd rather headphones sound like speakers. 

 

[maverickronin]

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Saying that it "blends" the left and right channels is a bit of a misnomer.  and thus one of the reasons crossfeed is misunderstood as a "mono-izer".
 
Audibly, the left and right signals are not blended, but are actually pushed even further apart.  Because they are brought into focus, and the ear can pinpoint an acousstic location for the signal.  In other words, what once sounded as if it was eminating from within the headphone now sounds as if it is eminating from further away.

 
Crossfeed actually does mix the channels together but it doesn't do it indiscriminately.  The level of crosstalk varies with the frequency and drops off as the frequency increases.  This mimics the way sound reaches you ears IRL.  Lower frequencies with longer wavelengths will bend more around the edges of obstacles, such as a person's face.  This means that the lower the frequency the more you will hear it in both ears even if source is at an angle to you and one of your ears doesn't have a straight line path to the source.  These difference in volume between each ear that vary with frequency and angle are one way that your brain determines what angle a sound is coming from.
 
This centers the imaging and moves the soundstage forward because stereo mixes assume acoustic crosstalk from speakers which headphones lack.  A guitar panned most or all the way to one channel will still be heard with both ears when played over speakers from diffraction (the sound bending around corners) even if you're in an anechoic chamber.  With headphones you either won't hear it at all in one ear or the volume in the other ear will be lower than how you would hear it IRL.  A hard pan won't occur in nature but even something panned most of the way to one side will sound like it's at a greater angle on headphones than speakers because the level in the opposite ear will be lower.  Increasing the crosstalk between channels as frequency decreases helps to mitigate this by making the differences more natural and moving the stage forward.
 
It's not perfect though.  The usual crossfeed circuits you see on most head amps aren't the most accurate simulation of what the sound waves do IRL.  They capture the broad brushstrokes but don't add the fine details.  There are other things that your brain uses to localize sound as well so even a perfect crossfeed won't give you perfect localization.
 
Quote:

  The recording sounds interesting. Your psycho-acoustic explanation is off the rails. Bianuaral recordings do not provide crossfeed, nor does regular stereo, listened through headphones.. The sound of each channel heard by the opposite ear is an artifact of speaker reproduction often called a "phantom channel." Far from enhancing locaization it messes it up as anyone who has heard speakers that suppress it knows. Check out Polk's old SDA systems. Blending and mixing up the 2 channels simply makes the minimizes the stereo localization cues. The headroom people were simply full of beans on this issue and used this erroneous bit of psuedo science to peddle their cross-feed blend systems. If you like blend and crossfeed that's your choice, it will shrink the width of a stereo image and some people seem to be able to convince themselves that this give better forward projection of sound. In tuth it does sound more like speakers but speakers give flawed stereo.

 
I think you're probably the one full of beans on this issue.
 
Stereo music is already mixed with the acoustic crosstalk from the opposite speaker in mind and accounted for as much as possible.  It's not perfect but it works pretty darn well in a well set up listening room.  Crossfeed is certainly not as good as a proper binaural recording which encodes a more accurate transfer function than a basic modified Linkwitz filter can.  Unfortunately pretty much all 2 channel music is mixed in stereo so we have to make due with what actually exists.
 
The reason to add crossfeed is simple.  You hear sounds IRL with both ears even when they come from a single point.  Excluding the very softest sounds and shortest distances there is no such thing as a hard pan IRL like there is when listening to stereo recordings over headphones.  Reflection, diffraction, and even the attenuated and delayed wave which will pass though your head ensures that you hear the majority of sounds with both ears, especially loud sounds.  Headphones just can't do that when fed stereophonic material.  They sound loud when they only have to move a tiny bit of air right next to your ear but they don't put out nearly enough energy for the waves to audible after they get to the other side of your head.  This asymmetry that headphones create with stereo recordings is completely unnatural.  Stereo mixes that sound perfectly natural on speakers will commonly create soundfields that are physically impossible when listened to over headphones.  A fly can buzz in your ear, sound loud by proximity, and cause an annoying asymmetry but it still sounds like it's right next to your ear.  There is no instrument or voice which can be heard loudly in one ear, sound many feet distant, and simultaneously be inaudible in your other.  Congratulations if you're able to get used to that.  I get headaches from much more subtle imbalances.  It certainly opens up your options when shopping for amps.
 
Crossfeed is indeed a compromise.  A few simple LCR filters don't accurately reproduce even a generic HRTF particularly well.  Even DSPs like TB Isone aren't perfect.  Some people might ask why we should bother if the only solution is such a compromise.  They probably haven't noticed that listening to stereo music over headphones is already a compromise, a far larger one than the "phantom" channel of stereo speakers IMO.  Ultimately you've got to pick your poison.  If you're not bothered by unnatural interaural level differences and prefer a wide soundstage over a deeper one then crossfeed isn't for you.  If you are bothered by those you can use crossfeed and trade some soundstage width for it.  Even binaural isn't perfect as individual HRTFs can vary quite a bit from the averages used to construct HATS.  The fewer compromises you make the less music you'll have left to listen to.
 
You can talk about it's limitations or just not like the effect but it has a very firm basis in psychoacoustics.