The Loudness Wars Rage On! Is FLAC as Good as CD Sound Quality?

By: Robert Petty, Team SoundDomain

This question came up while discussing the poor recording practices used these days. I've posted before about what compressing music into MP3 format does to your recordings. I decided to take a song that I like and compare the original CD recording to a FLAC version of it. The song? Steve Winwood "Higher Love" It has a nice percussion intro, and some decent dynamics. Steve's voice is pretty "thin" sounding compared to some, but that makes it even harder for an ordinary system to produce it realistically. So here's the results.

Doing an A/B comparison between the FLAC recording and the original CD, I sat in the car with just these two discs and played them both several times without looking at which disc I was listening to. The volume seemed identical. The only thing I could pick out was one of them seemed to have a little better dynamics than the other. For those who have never heard that term before, it's basically the difference between the "soft" parts of a track and the "loud" parts of the track. One of the discs seemed to have a little more definition between the soft and loud parts of the song, and there were some very faint details that were more clear in the same disc. Before we discuss which was the better one, let's look at the analysis.

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AC/DC Set To Rock XM All Night Long

Posted by: Brian Murphy, SoundDomain Moderator

AC/DC RADIO TO AIR ON XM RADIO

 

AC/DC band members will host “AC/DC Radio” on XM channel 53 and will broadcast non-stop AC/DC music from their three-decade career

 
“AC/DC Radio” will premiere in advance of the band’s upcoming studio album “Black Ice”

 

NEW YORK–September 9, 2008– SIRIUS XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) announced that legendary rock band AC/DC will host their own music channel on XM Radio.  The channel will celebrate AC/DC’s iconic career and the upcoming release of Black Ice, the band’s first studio album in eight years.   AC/DC Radio will be broadcast on XM channel 53 and will debut on Monday, September 15, 2008 at 6 pm ET through January 15, 2009.

 

B&W Music Club - Free Music Download

By: Ben Vollmer, Car Audio Nationals, Team SoundDomain

I was stumbling around the Bowers & Wilkins website the other day looking for spec's on my B&W Speakers. While poking around, I ran across the B&W Music Club, which includes some exclusive new music recorded in Real World Studios, which is Peter Gabriel's studio. They have a pretty cool way of working with some artists who you probably have not heard of before.

B&W commissions each artist with the creative guidance of the partners at Real World. B&W then pays that artist an advance and finances the creation of the recording and associated content at Real World Studios.Each album they commission is offered for one month as part of the B&W Music Club. After an additional month, the rights to the album return to the artist, who is then free to arrange a more traditional release deal with anyone they choose.

You can also read about James Newton Howard, the legendary Hollywood composer whose most recent soundtrack is for the astonishing new Batman film – The Dark Knight. He has produced four scores for Joel Schumacher, including compositions for Flatliners and Falling Down, but his most fruitful collaboration has been with M Night Shyamalan, for whom he composed memorable scores for The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, the Village, Lady in the Water and the Happening. Other recent and forthcoming scores include his ambitious score for the Peter Jackson blockbuster King Kong, the Leonardo DiCaprio thriller Blood Diamond, and most recently the Dark Knight. I love his quote on sound.

"I’ve always thought notes have tactile qualities. Some are chewy. Some have … I don’t know … a rust-like quality.  Others have a kind of knife-edge, prickly feel about them. In my mind, every note has a distinctive character, much like the characters in a movie." -James Newton Howard|Film Composer

I just downloaded the free trial album and this has now been added to my subscriptions. Recorded by a group of adventurous Ethiopians and Nick Page, one half of the British group Temple Of Sound, Dub Colossus is a unique attempt to mix traditional East African music with the some very experimental reggae sounds. Recorded first in Addis Ababa, it was completed in a two-week session at the Real World studios in Wiltshire.

Oh yeah, and B&W also has a great sound-related blog.

Video: Kid Rock-- "Steal Music, Steal Everything"

So I can honestly say that ever since the original Napster was shut down, I haven't used any service to download music other than iTunes. The spam, spyware, and reduced computer performance that were associated with peer-to-peer applications really didn't seem worth it, and I've never jumped on the torrent bandwagon. I honestly think 99 cents is worth it for good music. And regardless of what side of the music download fence you stand on, I think you'd have to agree that this video by Kid Rock is pretty damn funny. He, of course, is on the side of the fence that does not support illegal downloading. Thanks for the tip, Ben!

in the forums!

Source: CNet

Tunes for Tuning: HDTracks

By: Ben Vollmer, Car Audio Nationals

Up until last week I only bought music one way, on those shiny objects called CD's. I detest DRM on purchase music and don't like the bitrate of the music available via MP3's from download services, so I have been stuck buying CD's and ripping the music to my home media server at a lossless bit rate. That works well at home, but when copied to an iPod, I always feel like the bottom and top end of the music is missing. For example, yesterday in my car trip and I was listening to a White Stripes mp3 track, and it was seriously lacking in the bass department in a huge way.

Last week, I was introduced to HDTracks.com, which was founded by David and Norman Chesky of the audiophile record label Chesky Records, featuring thousands of artists, including Smokey Robinson, Joe Jackson, Bob James, Buddy Guy, Nina Simone, Earl Wild, Zubin Mehta, The Kinks, Of Montreal, Yo La Tengo, and Jerry Garcia - over 60 independent labels around the world.

Now here's a good deal: