Downloading

The CD is slowly disappearing.
You don't buy a CD anymore, you download from a website.
Most website's offers MP3. Slowly the bit rates are rising as bandwidth and the cost of storage becomes less of an issue.
The availability of lossless formats is rather limited.

 

Beside MP3 they offer WMA lossless, WAV, FLAC and AIFF.

The lossless part is by and large the Chandos catalogue.

 

DRM

Chandos does not use any Digital Rights Management (DRM) encoding to protect its music from illegal file sharing. Your agreement with Chandos Records Ltd on the purchase of an MP3 is that it is for personal use only and not for further distribution. DRM would allow for only one copy to be made and any further copies would be ‘digitally spoilt’, but this would not allow for copies for the car, for example, to be made. The only protection that Chandos wishes to use is the conscience of the purchaser.

 

Linn Records
One of the few ‘traditional’ audio brands who recognized the impact of computer audio early.
Not only do they have UPnP media players but they offer lossless recordings for quit a while.
You can get various formats (WMA, FLAC, MP3) in 16/24 bits and sample rates from CD (44.1) to 192 kHz depending on the recording.

 

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Their recordings are available in 320 kbps MP3, 24/88.2 AIFF,WMA and WMA surround (5.1)

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Bower & Wilkins Music Club
16/24 bit FLAC at 44.1 kHz.
They suggest you get the studio masters but I wouldn't be surprised if the real masters are recorded at a higher sample rate.

 

Deutsche Grammophon

DG is making its catalog available in FLAC.
No technical details found on the website but it is probably CD audio (16 bits/44.1 kHz).

 

HDTT

High Definition Tape Transfers specializes in rare classical recordings mastered with the best mastering equipment available. They are available in Redbook CD, 24/96 DVD and HQCD and 24/96 Flac.

24/192 is also offered. Make sure your system can play back 24/192 resolution files, so you hear them at the correct resolution without them being down sampled.

 

ARE THESE RECORDINGS INFRINGING ON COPYRIGHTS?

ALL of the recordings we use for our transfers are in the Public Domain - which means that the public is free by law to openly use and distribute them - and have all been thoroughly researched by Government Liaison Services, Inc. ( http://www.trademarkinfo.com/ ).

There are two criteria that these recordings must meet in order for us to offer them as HDTT releases:

1) the compositions must have been published before 1924 (this is why most of our transfers are from the Classical genre), and

2) the recording must have been made prior to 1972.

In addition, many copyrighted works published between 1923 and 1964 would have had to have their copyrights renewed at the end of their normal 28-year terms; however, if the copyright owners failed to renew these copyrights, the works by law automatically revert to the public domain.

Highres

In many forums you can find claims like
‘High bit rate MP3 is indistinguishable from CD’ or
‘High resolution recordings (anything > 16/44.1) sounds better than CD’
Some draw the conclusion that high bit rate MP3 therefore sounds the same as 24 bit/192 kHz recordings.

The only way to find out is to try.
Accousense offer a couple of samples in 16/44.1 (CD) , 24/96 and 24/192.

MusicOnLine also offers some samples.

 

HDtracks has 88 kHz/24 bit and 96 kHz/24 bit files in FLAC.

They offer no information about the resolution of the source.

Lowres

The Internet Archive: Listen to this collection of 78rpm records and cylinder recordings released in the early 20th century. These recordings were contributed to the Archive by users through the Open Source Audio collection.

Artists available here include Ada Jones, Caruso, Eddie Cantor, Edison Concert Band, Harry MacDonough, Len Spencer, Paul Whiteman, and many others.

 

If you like this, pay a visit to Sounds like Shellac too.