● Music: Various Formats & Music Collections
Music is available in a variety of different formats. In addition to the various choices of formats, some people may wish to purchase collections rather than spend countless hours putting together a selection of titles one by one. What follows is an overview that you're welcome to peruse:
Music Formats
Aside from the ubiquitous libraries of millions of available titles of CD's, LP's, and lossy compressed downloads—there other formats that you might wish to explore:
Music Collections
Undoubtedly you already have some music. And you may wish to augment your collection of music in the format or formats of your choice, one by one, over a period of time.
If you are into classical music you might wish to look at the list of Grammy Award winners over the years in the realm of classical music as it might give you some ideas of new music to explore. You also might be interested in seeing which artists have been chosen over the years to receive the prestigious Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
While the most of the links below are for CD's, there are of course other format choices available for many of these recordings.
| A Few Timeless Classics | Classical Grammys | Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Winners | Favorites |
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Music Collections for Music Servers
If you have a CD collection already it can be ported to a music server as uncompressed files. That way you can retain true CD sound quality for your Music Server files.
If you have a Music Server there are also a variety of preselected collections that are available for preloading, so that way when your Music Server is installed you instantly have whole genres of music ready to play. You can of course add any of those collections after your Music Server is installed too—and combine them with your present library of music.
| ReQuest Music Server - Music Collections | Kaleidescape Server - Music Collections | Music Collections - Preloaded on NAS RAID |
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Shakespeare once said, "If music be the food of love; play on."
As everyone knows there is a vast library of recorded music titles available mainly in CD form—and also on lossy compressed downloads like MP3 or AAC (which Apple uses). And for most people, one or both of the above will be what they stick with for the foreseeable future.
However you can also build a vast library of vinyl records too. In fact we now live in the golden age of analog, as many of the records being pressed today are better than ever in terms of pressing quality. In addition the level of refinement of turntables, tonearms, and cartridges is higher than ever. Unless you've heard a high end turntable setup with an excellent pressing, you probably wouldn't believe how good vinyl can sound!
Another potential analog source is open reel tape. Though the selection of high quality titles that are available is very small, which definitely makes it the proverbial niche format for most anyone—(unless you are a recording engineer and make your own that is!)—for those aficionados who wish to be able to listen to them there are a handful available. To learn more click here.
There are some other niche formats that actually have a goodly amount of music available on them—namely HDCD, DVD-A, and SACD—which were all designed to offer higher sound quality than standard CD's. If you would like to build a library around one or more of these formats we have assembled title listings so that you can see the breadth available in each format. You might be surprised at how many excellent recordings have been released in these formats! To read a bit more on high resolution formats click here and here.
But there are other ways to listen to music too. For instance, rather than play compressed formats like MP3 or AAC (Apple lossy compressed files) on a music server, you could instead play WAV or AIFF (Apple) files which are both uncompressed PCM files. You can obtain WAV or AIFF files by simply doing direct transfers from CD’s without doing any compression—which obviously has the benefit of being true CD quality. Or you could use a lossless compression scheme like FLAC or M4a (Apple lossless)—as in theory lossless compressed files only use about half of the storage space and don't lose any data as compared to any lossy compressed format. There is a possible theoretical disadvantage to lossless compressed in that they do use more computing power to compress/decompress.
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However with hard disk space being so inexpensive these days and the capacities becoming so enormous, there really is little reason today to do any compression. The only exception being if you wish to have 10,000 songs on an iPod where (until portable capacity increases at some point in the future) you’ll have to make the tradeoff between quantity or quality. In the case where you have both a home music server and an iPod or MP3 player however, what we recommend is that you assemble your library in uncompressed WAV files, and then do whatever compression you wish for your portable. That way for your home music server you won’t be reduced to playing lossy compressed files. If you don’t wish to do your own ripping and metadata culling, we do offer the service of ripping your CD collection in WAV while at the same time making a separate compressed duplicate library of your music for your portable player. One thing is for sure—with any sort of good quality playback system, whether it be heard through speakers or headphones—as compared to lossy compressed files, uncompressed or lossless compressed files definitely sound better!
The newest format is what is now being called High Resolution files which you can obtain either via download or on DVD-R's. These are usually available as either WAV files or FLAC files. Essentially these files can be (and ideally should be!) bit-for-bit copies of the master recording.
The best example of these high resolution files are the HRx files from Reference Recordings which are the real deal, as they are in the original recording format of 176.4/24 and are bit-for-bit copies of Keith Johnson’s master recordings—and in addition are otherwise superb recordings in terms of sound quality. High Resolution files are playable on a properly specified Music Server—and are best heard through a high quality outboard DAC. However while most all Music Servers today can play lossy compressed or uncompressed CD format (44.1/16 WAV) files, as of mid-2009 only a very few can also play high resolution files. And even fewer can play high resolution files with the ultra-low jitter necessary to obtain the best sonic results. But that is in the process of changing as more models of music servers that can do all PCM resolutions—low resolution (lossy compressed), medium resolution (true "CD quality" 44.1kHz, 16 bit), medium-high resolution (including HDCD and other 44.1 and 48kHz files at 20 or 24 bit), and high resolution (such as 88.2, 96, 176.4 and 192kHz / 24 bit)—will soon be available. For more info here is a link to learn more about the components capable of playing High Resolution files as well as a listing of links where you can obtain these files.
If you would like to learn more you're welcome to call us for more information about any of these formats!
● Music Collections for your ReQuest Music Server!
If you already have or are planning on having a ReQuest Music Server installed in your home—you can have various classical and jazz collections preloaded on to your music server. Here are 4 collections of classical music and 4 collections of jazz to choose from:
- Silver Classical Music Collection
- Gold Classical Music Collection
- Platinum Classical Music Collection
- Diamond Classical Music Collection
- Silver Jazz Music Collection
- Gold Jazz Music Collection
- Platinum Jazz Music Collection
- Diamond Jazz Music Collection
● Music Collections for your Kaleidescape Media Server!
If you have or are planning on having a Kaleidescape Media Server installed in your system, you can have one or more of the following music genre collections preloaded on to your music server.
● Music - High Resolution Files - Downloads or DVD-R - HRx
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An
excellent example of High Resolution
files are the HRx files from Reference
Recordings. They are available as DVD-R
data discs which means that (with the
exception of a few disc players) that you will load them onto
your computer music server in order to
play them. HRx DVD-R data discs contain
exact, bit-for-bit copies of the
original Reference Recordings 176.4 kHz
/ 24-bit digital masters. From a
technical level they have achieved a
very high level of fidelity for
two-channel sound. So when you listen to
them in a proper setup you are hearing
true high-resolution audio. If you would like to hear music at the absolute highest level of
fidelity possible, then you owe it to yourself to experience some
Reference Recordings
CD
titles marked "
Although
no longer being supported by Sony, well over
8000 SACD's have been released to date.
And especially in Europe and Asia there
are a number of smaller labels
continuing to release new albums. So it
looks like SACD will continue as a niche
format.
● Classical Music - Grammy Winners
For your edification and listening pleasure we have compiled the Grammy Awards winners in the various classical music categories. It is interesting to see what was chosen—and you also might find some interesting music to explore!
In addition here is a link to the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award Winners and, once again, it is interesting to see who was chosen and when. You can usually figure out why of course!
● More Music - Some recordings to expand your musical horizons!
Last but not least, here is a variety of music that has been recorded over the years for your listening pleasure!
- A few timeless classics
- A few favorite recordings
- A starter Classical Collection
- A starter Classical Collection II
- Jazz Standards
- Brazilian Jazz
- Jazz Vocalists
- Classic Rock
- Indian Classical