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http://www.hdtracks.com/

Hi res, no DRM. You're welcome!

You just reminded me that I haven't purchased music since about 1998, so for me, there's no monopoly to worry about. And with Songza, Spotify, Pandora and radio streaming + tools to convert streams to mp3, it doesn't seem likely that I will for the next ten years or so.

Well, I do remember back in the OLD days, sitting with the radio on the stereo and un-pausing the cassette recorder to try to record songs that were played on the radio.

I got over that real quick....

But what you say is fine enough I guess if you're just gonna use that to listen in the car on on a mobile player, but what about your home stereo..you know, something you put some money into for better fidelity sound, don't you want a lossy format for that?

I tend to buy my music on CDs that I really like and rip it to lossy mp3's for my poor listening environments (car, gym)...but keep the good stuff for the living room stereo for quality listening.

I have seen sites that sell very high lossless formats online and I'm thinking of checking out those for new purchases of replacing CD's lost to Katrina and time....

HD Tracks sells 96/24 tracks in AIFF and FLAC for a very reasonable price.

I don't buy that much music these days, due to my perceived lack of quality of performance and style, but when I do find something I like, it is something to keep. I don't think of music as disposable as many of the youth today seem to do....

If you want to hear something even better than CD, try some high resolution downloads. You will need a sound card that can handle 24 bit samples and preferably at least 96KHz sample rate to take full advantage, but even many integrated sound interfaces can do that now. http://www.hdtracks.com/ is a good place to start.

You have two more days to get the free high resolution holiday sampler from Linn: http://www.linn.co.uk/christma... Get it even if you're allergic to holiday music; most of the songs in the sampler have nothing to do with any December holiday.

Of course FLAC handles 24/192. So does ALAC. Here's a sample record available in all of those formats. hdtracks is a good source for these too.

Your comment points out a huge issue with some sites that release high resolution audio, especially if it's older music.

For the last decade, people have been upmixing regular stereo CDs to 5.1, and doing it extremely well. There have been many cases where a few years later the studio releases its own 5.1 version, using the original material (supposedly) and it comes out sounding worse than a stereo upmix that some guy made in his basement. You can search Demonoid for classic examples of this happening, or just to get your hands on some of the upmixes, if you're interested (you'll have to be able to play DTS files).

Back to the point, I wouldn't be surprised if a large amount of the "classic" albums that are released with higher resolutions are just upmixes, which account for situations like HDTracks' Rolling Stones collection being released in multiples of 44. At the very least, it looks like the source material wasn't recorded in the highest quality possible, or maybe at the time the highest possible just wasn't where we are now.

Hmm...I think I might buy, yet again Get Yer Ya Ya's Out. My favorite live album of all time!!

I agree with the sibling AC's suggestion of bandcamp, many of my favorite modern indie acts put their stuff on bandcamp and make FLAC downloads available.

I haven't used https://www.hdtracks.com/ ; they seem to focus on classic reissues and jazz/classical/opera/etc. (They also have a lot of above-CD-quality FLACs)

Nevertheless, more FLAC availability would be good.

Yes, some places do already offer downloads (whether paid or authorized free downloads) in lossless, but I wish it was more widespread.
Various artists' bandcamp pages
http://www.hdtracks.com/

I sometimes feel the need to buy a physical CD (when available) to get lossless.

I think that you would be pleased with hdtracks.com's classical selection. They don't have anything composed by György Ligeti. But you could always visit thepiratebay.org since you don't seem to mind US copyright law. Also, Wikipedia seems to provide some useful links to György Ligeti recordings.

HDTracks.com

No DRM
lot's of 96khz/24bit
flac/mp3/aiff
Individual tracks
Full albums
All styles of music
Very rapidly growing
New recordings
Lot's of re-releases.

I stopped getting compressed classical (and some jazz) tracks

Depends on the compression. I agree with you about classical music that uses lossy compression, however there are plenty of places where you can get it in a lossless format such as FLAC. Most of them often offer not only CD quality (16-bit, 44/48khz, but also high definition 24-bit 88/96khz for many tracks) FLAC. And Linn records has recently started selling 24-bit 192khz tracks (at not much more then the 88/96khz tracks).

http://www.linnrecords.com/index.aspx
https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php

I always grab the highest definition (24-bit 88, 96, or 192khz) offered and resample when I transcode it to other formats (such as mp3 or AAC for portable players which don't benefit from the higher fidelity).

It's still the only way to get uncompressed music. Some discs even have full surround sound encoding. The compressed AACs sold on itunes sound like crap on a full-sized 5-speaker stereo.

hdtracks.com
musictoday.com

There are others if you look.

Also, try doing a proper double-blind comparison, not just side by side. Can you really do better (statistically) than random guessing? You might surprise yourself. I know I did, and I can hear things that most people I know can't.

'It's been, what, 25 years since the CD came out? If digital distribution is to be the new standard, surely we can reasonably expect there to be some improvement in sound quality over the previous technology?'

Already happening, at least with some specialised labels, e.g.:

http://www.gimell.com/catalogue.aspx?filter=Studio+Master+Pro+5.1

http://www.linnrecords.com/linn-formats.aspx

http://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=staticpage&pagename=audiophile_96khz

why not offer songs in .wav or flac format ?

http://hdtracks.com/