Buying and Playing Lossless formats

A handsome acknowledgement, Vic, and a thought-provoking link. I'm going to have to print the whole thing off and go through it in detail. Just cannot get used to reading long texts on a computer screen.

As I've said elsewhere, to my ears the difference between Decca's old cd issues and those they've chosen to remaster at 96 kHz in 24-bit stereo for their Legends series, is demonstrable. But as others have quite rightly pointed out, this could be down to all kinds of other factors that were part of the remastering process. The first cd issues of works like Peter Grimes tended to dry-out the sound in comparison with the original lp, a common problem in the early days of analogue to digital transfer, of which the Karajan Falstaff on EMI was perhaps one of the most notorious examples.

With the benefit of better technology and accumulated experience, a return to the original analogue masters has yielded results far closer to, perhaps even better than, the first vinyl issues. However, I can accept that the improvements have little or nothing to do with a switch from 16 to 24 bit. Cynics might say that's just a marketing angle to account for the fact that they're simply doing a better job of transferring.

I was also interested in the points made re. mp3 in your link. A couple of years back I side-by-sided some mp3 downloads of Perahia's Mozart PC cycle with the originals and had no trouble distinguishing which was which. Since then I've listened to many mp3 recordings - mainly cd burns, gifted by my son, of music intended to postpone the fossilisation of my tastes, and I'd hestitate to try to identify any shortcomings. Perhaps the odd transient fizz on cymbal work, but that's debatable.

We live in interesting times.