[GRH]

Now that we are entering the digital age and CD’s in a few years will be a thing of the past I had a few concerns on how to approach this. I am in my mid. 50’s and have always been listening to my music through either CD’s or analog radio. I’ve just recently invested into a good digital front end / DAC (NAD-M51) and have updated my 2 channel amp to a good Bryston SST2 and have been looking to soon purchase a good music server / CD ripper to listen to my music through. I’ve already looked at WYRED 4 Sound and possibly Antipodes among others. Unfortunately I started a library in I tunes over the last several years which has cumulated to over 150 of my favorite songs only to find out now when I play them through my  I Pod Nano through a Pure I pod dock onto my new system they sound very compressed, and nothing like the do through my Klipsch ear buds or on my CD’s. So I started to look into this and found out all the different formats that music files can have and only to find that all my files in I Tunes are in AAC Format, which played  back on a high end system pretty much suck!  Hopefully in the near future the will convert them to at least a FLAC format so when downloading them to another source you can at  least un-compress your music files to an equal CD quality sound. So my question is has anyone here put a list of high quality recordings / songs together in either SACD / 16 bit or 24 bit and where can they be purchased at to download. I want to start a high quality library of very good recorded songs and save them in either WAV or FLAC formats.

Many Thanks,
Gary

[JLM]

Will your future system be PC, linux, or Apple based?  That would determine the appropriate format for ripping your CDs.  I'm of similar age and just ripped my collection via my iMac using ALAC format via iTunes (as per JohnR's tutorial posted under the Apple Circle entitled "Getting Started").  ALAC is the Apple equivalent to FLAC and allows for album art to be displayed within iTunes.

Seems that you've got things a bit backwards, should have done some research ahead of you to sort out formats first, then looking for a compatible software and DAC. 

Check out the Hi-Rez Music circle for advice on good quality recordings.

[steve in jersey]

Gary,

You might be slightly overestimating the attraction to switch "completely" over to Computer Audio based
music playback in a "few". It is only a few years now that Computer Audio is really even on the radar of
many music listeners. A more realistic estimation of when CDs won't be a widely used format may be 10
to 15 years down the road.

Now to your question about High Resolution download sites 2 come to mind off the top of my head (which seems to be getting lower everyday!). HDTracks & Linn Records. There are many other download sites out there but a vast majority of these only carry compressed format downloads. It's kind of surprising that even
iTunes still offers  no lossless formats (even compressed lossless) as of yet.(that I'm aware of. As any interest
in iTunes is very low on "my radar")

[smargo]

So my question is has anyone here put a list of high quality recordings / songs together in either SACD / 16 bit or 24 bit and where can they be purchased at to download. I want to start a high quality library of very good recorded songs and save them in either WAV or FLAC formats.

Many Thanks,
Gary

 http://www.hdtracks.com/

http://store.acousticsounds.com/superhirez

http://bluecoastrecords.com/store

https://nativedsd.com/

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=125168.0

[steve in jersey]

Oh yeah, Sony is supposedly going to be opening a High Resolution download site soon. When ,I don't know what the projected start of this will be, but I'm pretty sure it will be well publicized when it does happen !

[carmagff]

In terms of quality I prefer to store my music collection in WAV format. I could clearly hear the difference between WAV and FLAC files. I suppose this is due to the fact that the fly decomprassion of Flac files loads the computer.
Among labels Reference Recordings seems to be superior.

[GRH]

Thanks for all the input, has any put together a list of some of the best recorded songs and what albums they are from. For example, I know that some songs sound so much better off of different albums then others?

[toocool4]

Like steve in jersey said don’t under estimate CD, it’s not going away soon. Remember what they said about vinyl, well that is not going anywhere too it’s here to stay and I think CD will be the same.

[smargo]

don’t under estimate CD, it’s not going away soon.

the thing is i dont care - because now i would rather download (wirelessly) the album/song and have at least the same quality on my modded sony hap 1es

i didnt think it was possible about 6 months ago - but i trust my ears - i dont even want to purchase another cd

[paul79]

Well, do try ripping cd's with programs such as DB Poweramp for PC, and XLD or MAX for Mac. You might be surprised at how good a CD can sound when you get the spinning transport out of the equation.

I will always purchase CD's. Big picture, that's where the best music is.

[toocool4]

the thing is i dont care - because now i would rather download (wirelessly) the album/song and have at least the same quality on my modded sony hap 1es

i didnt think it was possible about 6 months ago - but i trust my ears - i dont even want to purchase another cd

It does not matter if you care or not, we all like different things. Plenty of people like physical media.