High Quality Rock is here!

I’ve just spent a very pleasant forty minutes listening to Deep Purple’s classic rock album, Machine Head. Exciting on a good day, but today it sounds extra special as I’ve been listening to a brand new high quality re-release of the album in 24 bit / 96 kHz download format.

So, why is this so exciting?

High quality music, by which I mean, music recorded with a higher level of detail than can be held on a CD, has been around for a while now. Super Audio CDs were introduced in 1999, for example. Unfortunately you need a special player to play a SACD and worse, the choice of available music is limited and usually more expensive.

You still need a special player to play the high quality version of Machine Head, but at least that player can play music in regular formats, too, and due to the lack of moving parts in the player, do a far better job of it than a CD player can.

The player in my picture, btw, is the Linn Klimax Digital Streamer. If you’ve got £13,000 to spare you can buy one and have a bit of change left over to buy yourself a couple of albums. I own a “lesser” model, more suited to mere mortals and East London flats.

Aside from enjoying listening to my purchase, I’m also hoping that the release of this album is a sign of more to come. I’ve bought quite a lot of hi-resolution music since getting my player but a lot of it has been from less well known artists. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed listening to them and have acquired some new tastes in music (Bluegrass - yes, really!) but up until recently have found very little in areas I’d already been familiar with. Notable exceptions being albums from The Eagles, Steely Dan and Rush.

I’ve now got my fingers firmly crossed for some Pink Floyd (already available on SACD) and some Led Zeppelin. A bit of Jimi Hendrix wouldn’t go amis, or unpurchased, either.

It’s a shame that high quality format music isn’t more popular. Instead there seems to be a trend towards low quality music with downloadable mp3 files. To make the music take up less space on your phone a lot of the detail and musical nuances get mathematically squished out of the data by the mp3 compression algorithm. It is difficult to detect specific differences between music formats with the human ear but the end result of mp3 compression is music that sounds the same but lacks a lot of the life, vitality, timing and vigour of the original.

Quality is sacrificed for convenience - but when you see how many people still use the ghastly white headphones that came free with their iPhones, leaking tinny noise whereever they go it’s hardly a surprise mp3 is so popular. Do yourself a favour and have a listen to some proper well recorded music on decent quality equipment - your ears will thank you for it!

You can get yourself a hi-resolution digital copy of Deep Purple’s Machine Head here.

Or if you are still stuck in the eighties with your 16 bit / 44khz CD player you can buy it on CD from amazon for a third of the price: Machine Head: 25th Anniversary Edition