The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth
It’s almost impossible to put aside one’s own self interest when preparing a sales piece or writing a few paragraphs for your website’s “About Us” page and avoid hyperbole and marketing spin. I recognize that. I’m guilty of it myself. You choose to say things that are true but don’t really tell the whole story. It’s like the difference between a news item as produced by the network news and the in depth reporting that you get from the PBS New Hour (although my recent experience with NPR has shaken my confidence in their ability to get the whole story or even to get it right…the single line that they used from my interview about high-resolution audio and Blue Coast Records seemed to infer that I support Cookie Marenco’s recording chain…I don’t). As someone that has been typing 500-1000 words everyday about the world of high-end music, I get it.
So I thought I would look around on the web this morning and check in on some site and see how much spin is happening. MY first stop was HDTracks. They are the 800-pound gorilla in the “high-resolution” download world. David Chesky and I started our respective download sites at about the same time. I remember talking to him about including some of his recordings on iTrax.com. He told me that he was preparing his own high-resolution digital music site.
So along comes iTrax.com in the fall of 2007 and a few months later HDTracks. I focused exclusively on real HD-Audio tracks. The only tracks that you will find on my site are ones that were actually recorded at the time the musicians were in the studio or on a stage using high-resolution capable equipment. HDTracks did licensing deals with Warner Music Group, EMI, Atlantic and many other labels. It didn’t seem to matter to HDTracks whether the tracks were originally standard definition tracks or not. Once they were put out as 96 kHz or 192 kHz files…they were magically “HD Tracks”.
Here are a couple of lines from the “About HDTracks” page on their site:
“HDtracks files will put you in the recording studio with the artists. You will hear exactly what the artists and engineer hear in the studio.”
The statement is wishful thinking. You might ask which studio are you going to be in with the artists? The mixing studio where the mixing engineer, artist and producer crafted the master mixes? No. The mastering studio where the engineer created the CD master (the artist is usually not present at this session)? No. How about the transfer station where the EQ’d master (which was prepared for a vinyl LP) has been narrowed to mono below a certain frequency and bumped up in the high frequency range to make the record brighter (the usual path for EQ’d masters)? Yep…that’s what you get many times.
To Be Continued…
Given that high resolution / HD audio is primarily there for ‘audiophiles’, that these people are surely the target market, it amazes me that the industry chooses to market HD audio in a way that makes their target market so ANGRY!
The biggest problem is that the HD audio industry treats their target customers like idiots. The marketing techniques used are exactly the same as for selling washing detergent to housewives, where the buyer is assumed to know nothing about technology, science, or performance. This is a huge mistake!
Here are a few tips for the industry, from a typical customer (me):
– for crying out loud, please don’t attempt to ‘trick’ the buyers. Chesky has been exposed repeatedly for selling 16/44 audio, up-sampled to 24/96 and labelled as being 24/96 audio, on the HDTracks website. Their pathetic whining excuse (when challenged), that they are only passing on files sent to them from the studios, does not impress the customers, who now view their entire website with suspicion. If Chesky wants to tell us that HDTracks is a HD audio website, we hold him accountable for the quality of what he sells and the excuse he gives is seen as a failure of governance and a failure of responsibility to his customers.
– the word ‘Remastered’ is almost useless now, and buyers know it. No one is being fooled any more; we know it is like saying ‘whiter’ and ‘stronger’ to the detergent-buying housewife. Whiter and stronger than what? Remastered from what and to what? Technically speaking it is ‘Remastered’ if you take a 16/44 CD Master and upsample it to 24/96 or DSD, but we buyers all know, by now, that this gives us nothing for our money. So the word ‘Remastered’ now makes us buyers 10% hopeful and 90% suspicious, unless we see some more information.
– so, we have established that the buyers are not like stereotypical housewives and seek to know the truth in some detail to help establish that the music product justifies the use of expensive and carefully implemented hifi systems. What information do we need to see? In my opinion, we want a short paragraph on the process that answers the following questions:
[1] What source material was accessed (live mic feeds, stored mic feeds, original master tape or file, how many tracks), and what is its quality (1/4″ analog, 16/44, 24/48 etc)?
[2] Is it a new mix?
[3] If not a new mix, give a brief note on what was done to make a ‘better sound’.
[4] What is the lowest resolution used in the digital process?
[5] What is the resolution and number of channels of the product being offered to the buyer?
Here are a couple of examples:
“The live mic feeds were digitised at 24/192, mixed and mastered at 24/96 into 2.0, 5.1 and 7.1.”
“A first-generation copy of the original 8-track 1/4″ analog mix tapes was digitised and re-mixed at 24/48. The new mix was mastered in stereo at 24/48.”
“The 16/44 CD master used for the original 1988 CD release was upsampled to 24/96 and remastered for more prominent bass and less sibilance.”
Don’t assume this is just me talking. I believe the comments above are representative of a large majority of the audiophile community, who I think are the primary market for HD audio. We are very frustrated by the HD audio marketplace at the moment.
P.S. I invented the 3 examples that I wrote above. They are meant to be good examples that most audiophiles would appreciate.