[Henry Flower]

As a perfect contrast to the Brautigam Beethoven disc: Scarlatti played on a Steinway!  I'm not sure it's right, but it's certainly interesting.    The other one today is Shostakovich's 11th symphony, conducted by Pletnev.  Although Shostakovich is my all-time most-loved composer, I don't really rate the 11th, but a lot of people do like it.  Worth a look.

 

[liuzerus87]

Has anybody bought anything off of pristineclassical.com? The website offers remastered historic recordings at up to 24bit flac, and some of the recordings available are truly classics, but I'm really wondering whether, for recordings from the 30s and 40s, the extra quality offered by lossless really makes a difference.

 

[bowei006]

I will need to check these out
i am mainly into rap like eminem and other mainstream members. and also likin park and other hard rock. along with pendulum . i hope the istes listed will have what i am looking for

 

[Henry Flower]

Bringing the thread neatly back to the first post, for a few more hours one can get an absolute gem: Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan performing three of the Christmas cantatas by Bach.  They perform Bach exactly the way it should be: with musicianship as well as scholarship.  Essential repertoire, great performance, absurdly low price -- Merry Christmas!  Hopefully we'll get the remaining cantatas tomorrow (*crosses fingers*).

 

[mrpink44]

Thanks Henry!! Just went out and picked this up....24 bit flac for $5.45!! Looking forward to listening to it.

 

[Henry Flower]

I don't want to turn this into an eclassical shilling thread, so I won't give a running commentary on the offerings, but it's worth noting that they've now started a 'daily deal'.  I don't know how long this will run or what the discounts will be, but today there's 50% off a Vanska disc of Sibelius and some other Finnish composers (16 bit FLAC or mp3): http://www.eclassical.com/pages/special-offers.html/?cache=purge

 

[Henry Flower]

In addition to the daily offers (most of which have been uninspiring so far), eclassical have a new, absurdly complicated promotion where one disc has 24 bit flac for the same price as 16 bit, while another has a flat 30% discount.  There's no special page for the new offer, but it's accessible from their front page.  The first offerings are very tempting Sibelius and Beethoven symphonies by Vanska and the Minnesota Orchestra.

 

[mrpink44]

Thanks for the update Henry!! I'll make sure to stop by on a daily basis to checkout the new deals.

 

[brink]

Here's another site that offers lossless albums in cd quality and hirez:
 
http://www.gubemusic.com
 
Established by a Norwegian jazz musician, Bugge Wesseltoft, it seems to focus a great deal on Norwegian/Scandinavian artists, both classical, jazz and other genres...

 

[Henry Flower]

That's a tempting site, clabbe!  Unfortunately my knowledge of Scandinavian jazz is almost nil, and the clips on the site are quite short, but I'll use the Scandinavian jazz appreciation thread and Naxos online to explore possibilities.
 
On the subject of recommendations here, today's offer from eclassical is a disc of Holmboe, who Sordel mentioned in the Underrated composers thread.  I've just started listening to it, and I'm impressed.

 

[Henry Flower]

It's been mentioned in passing already, but I've been having a look around the Hyperion site.  Prices are variable, but mostly around the eight pound mark for a 'disc'; however you can pre-pay to receive a discount (maximum 25% off if you pre-pay sixty pounds or more).  They only sell their own catalogue, but they have some of the finest British artists (Steven Isserlis, Ian Bostridge, and so on).  I especially like their section called "Please, someone, buy me...", which lists their ten least popular recordings, some at a discount.   Leslie Howard's marathon series of Liszt's piano music claims three of the ten current spots!

 

[skeptic]

Just wanted to say thanks for turning me on to eclassical.  I had been looking for a reasonable retailer/etailer where I could pick up copies of the Bach Collegeum Japan collection, and it doesn't get much better than this.
 
One question for those of you who are hip to the 16bit/24bit distinction - my desktop supports 24bit spdif out while my BCT usb transport (used with my laptop) does not.  If I buy the 24bit recordings, but cause foobar to downsample to 16bit when listening on my laptop, will it sound worse than if I bought the 16bit flacs to begin with?  I suppose the bigger issue will be if the files turn out to be 24/96 (since they don't disclose sample rate until after you buy.)  In that event, as I understand it, I would be unable to use WASAPI drivers for playback on my laptop since my transport is 16/44.1k.  

 

[akiroz]

Just wondering but is it legal to rip CD's I borrow from a public library for personal use?
if so, then thats where i get my legal lossless music

 

[Henry Flower]

An update on Hyperion, which I bought a few recordings from recently.
 
tl;dr: poor site, great recordings.
 
Hyperion has  a lot of great recordings: from their bargain basement I got some of the Howard Liszt series, James Bowman and Barbara Bonney doing Purcell, and good recordings of Messiaen and Martinu.  The Isserlis Bach suites are still on my list.
 
The cheaper downloads are 5.60 GBP for the cheaper discs, less a discount if you pre-buy credit, so it works out as decent value.  Navigating listings is hampered by the site designer's fondness for mouseover popups, which hid whatever you were trying to click on.  The buying process is rather cumbersome, with details such as your phone number being considered required information. Downloading is not great: they don't offer zip files of the albums you buy, while their download manager uses Adobe Air and so is Win/Mac only.  My solution is to use the Downthemall download manager (for Firefox), which downloads all the flac links on the page.  Tracks which you have alread downloaded no longer have links, so it doesn't try to download them again; if you _need_ to re-download them, you can click on the button to get a new downlaod link.
 
The files are not usefully named (just a serial number); not a huge problem as you'll probably re-name them anyway, but it does make dealing with the files unnecessarily cumbersome. Meta-tagging is also suboptimal, with titles of tracks including the composer and work as well as the title of the actual track. Nothing that foobar can't sort out, but again we shouldn't have to. One plus point is the booklet pdfs, which are smaller than eclassical's, though they are well-hidden: they're not available from the download page, only from the album listing page.
 

 

[Henry Flower]

Eclassical.com's Christmas sale will be back this year, with one 24-bit album on 50% discount each day from 1-24 December. From late December there should also be some "virtual box sets", which should be interesting.