Nine Inch Nails Releases Free Album In High Definition Audio

[icon57]

excellent idea...

[Kobalt]

this maybe offtopic .. but how do u actually hear a difference between the normal cd quality and the high def audio?

what actually benefit having high def audio? they sounds same to me though

It also depends on the quality of the original source material. It's much easier to hear the difference on an album recorded in the 70s or 80s than today due to the beloved loudness war.

[clonez]

you need a (very) good sound system to hear the difference

but those guys usually dont hear music like NIN, more stuff like classic
(its the ultimative goal of not hearing the diffrence between the sound system and a really good orchestra, even as someone with the absolute pitch)

[grimREEFER]

lame question:
is vbr quality 0 better than constant 320kbs?
cause if so, then the FLAC i just downloaded and made 320kbs constant is worse than the mp3 one they have for download there lol.

[Chewbenator]

Downloaded, and appreciate what they are doing, but not really a fan of the music. Just cool having 1.4gb of 10 songs though

[Donnie27]

It also depends on the quality of the original source material. It's much easier to hear the difference on an album recorded in the 70s or 80s than today due to the beloved loudness war.

QFT! I'm listening to Reel to Reel recorded with my Phase Linear Series 11 set up and was slammed with this after the first recordings. Even the Tapes with Analog Range Expansion and Noise Reduction showed just what the diag at Wikki showed

[Verisimilitude]

kk, here are a few examples for some of the "quality" questions being asked.

This is a comparison of a complete different album: The wretched.

The top version is the Vinyl copy (16/44), the bottom version is the flac rip from cd (also 16/44). The replaygain difference is enormous and as someone pointed out earlier it has to do with the loudness war.



Now to the real difference. The top version on this one is the FLAC provided by NIN (16/44), the bottom is a FLAC I encoded from the 24/96 PCM's that came with the HD sound (.wav's are untaggable and there is no advantage to them). As you can see the replay gain on the HD's is slightly lower, but you can tell the 96kHz really plays a factor on the sound that is allowed by the track.




As far as needing "tens of thousands of dollars" of equipment to hear the difference, that used to be true. Nowadays you just need a HD sound card and a high quality headset from sennheiser or similar to pick up the difference.

LAME V0's are still the optimal compression/quality format for any music, and will be more than enough quality for 95% of users, I can't tell the difference between a V0 and FLAC most of the time, but vinyl vs v0 is night and day to me.

[Soulburner]

I actually use V1 because there is miniscule difference if any at all. My files end up usually between 200-270kbps.

[NickS]

Ended getting up FLAC anyway, forgot my sound card doesn't do 96kHz w/ASIO. Foobar biatched at me.

[ColonelCain]

Wait, so how does NIN gain a profit other than from concerts? If there isn't one, then I personally won't be holding my breath for a mass adoption.

[NickS]

Maybe the downloads have spyware

[Zorlac]

Here is my chain:

Vista 64 set to 44.1/16 --> Foobar w/ASIO plugin --> Prelude driver (set to bit perfect) --> Prelude stock DAC --> Upgraded OPAMP --> headphones

Now this normally works perfect for CDs ripped to .wav using EAC.

My question is will ASIO automatically recognize the 96/24 when playing these NIN HD .wav files or will I have to freaking change Vista 64 sound properties from 44.1/16 to 96/24 (which would be annoying)?

[[XC] Lead Head]

Wait, so how does NIN gain a profit other than from concerts? If there isn't one, then I personally won't be holding my breath for a mass adoption.

You think artists make money from CD sales? They hardly make anything from them. The real money COMES from Concerts and merchandise sales

[Revv23]

which ASIO plugin are you guys using? I have found ASIO to be buggy at best with no noticable quality improvement in sound... All i find its good for is recording in zero latency... which according to my understanding thats all that asio is anyway, just zero latency from your pc to your ear. having no tonal impact on sound at all.

[Zorlac]

I admit I may be wrong in my understanding of ASIO, but here is a section from Wikipedia:

"...an unmixed ASIO output is "bit identical", that is, the bits sent to the sound card are identical to those of the original WAV file, thus having higher audio fidelity."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Stream_Input/Output

[ZenEffect]

Probably not different at all unless you have the proper sound system.

x-fi elite pro + these=

Wait, so how does NIN gain a profit other than from concerts? If there isn't one, then I personally won't be holding my breath for a mass adoption.

as i recall pretty much every nin show for the last 10 years has been sold out within min. of ticket release.
i dont think trent cares about money anymore.

[lowfat]

Downloaded. Too bad the album isn't all that great. I miss the good ol' NIN albums.

[Soulburner]

x-fi elite pro + these=

X-Fi + AT World Map?

Unless the X-Fi is modded its only "good" as far as audio quality goes.

[cadaveca]

I admit I may be wrong in my understanding of ASIO, but here is a section from Wikipedia:

"...an unmixed ASIO output is "bit identical", that is, the bits sent to the sound card are identical to those of the original WAV file, thus having higher audio fidelity."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Stream_Input/Output

That's some creative editing.

ASIO bypasses the normal audio path from the user application through layers of intermediary Windows operating system software, so that the application connects directly to the soundcard hardware. Each layer that is bypassed means a reduction in latency, the delay between an application sending sound to the sound being reproduced by the soundcard. In this way ASIO offers a relatively simple way of accessing multiple audio inputs and outputs independently. Its main strength lies in its method of bypassing the inherently high latency of operating system audio mixing kernels (KMixer), allowing direct, high speed communication with audio hardware. Unlike KMixer, an unmixed ASIO output is "bit identical", that is, the bits sent to the sound card are identical to those of the original WAV file, thus having higher audio fidelity.

You still don't understand..ASIO has NOTHING to do with bit-matching....other than that it doesn't modify the source material. It allows for direct acces to hardware, with little-to know latency, using MIDI.

ASIO was developed by Stienberg(Cubasis) as a cross-platform multi-channel driver for audio. There are many instances where ASIO would NOT be bitmatched(such as with ADAT devices) although ASIO 2.0 should have solved this(X-FI should be ASIO 2.0 compliant). ASIO 2.2 works well with ADAT devices.


ASIO is a standard for communication, and nothing else. MIx an ASIO stream, and it can be unmatched, quite easily. Using ASIO for audio only allows you to bypass software audio processing, and was used for Creative cards in Vista before WaveRT was fixed. WaveRT is now fixed, and using ASIO prvides no benefit over WaveRT, unless using MIDI devices. It was a bypass for Vista's audio stack...which works quite fine now. You really have no need for ASIO, and now have added extra latency to your audio stream due to the foobar plug-in.

[Papu]

pretty awesome album and the fact that i downloaded it free and legal makes it even more sweet.


This is how music should be!

[Zorlac]

That's some creative editing.


You still don't understand..ASIO has NOTHING to do with bit-matching....other than that it doesn't modify the source material. It allows for direct acces to hardware, with little-to know latency, using MIDI.

ASIO was developed by Stienberg(Cubasis) as a cross-platform multi-channel driver for audio. There are many instances where ASIO would NOT be bitmatched(such as with ADAT devices) although ASIO 2.0 should have solved this(X-FI should be ASIO 2.0 compliant). ASIO 2.2 works well with ADAT devices.


ASIO is a standard for communication, and nothing else. MIx an ASIO stream, and it can be unmatched, quite easily. Using ASIO for audio only allows you to bypass software audio processing, and was used for Creative cards in Vista before WaveRT was fixed. WaveRT is now fixed, and using ASIO prvides no benefit over WaveRT, unless using MIDI devices. It was a bypass for Vista's audio stack...which works quite fine now. You really have no need for ASIO, and now have added extra latency to your audio stream due to the foobar plug-in.

So how do I make sure that I am hearing 24/96 through my headphones? Do I set Vista to 24/96, driver to bit perfect output and Foobar to 24/96? I understood that Vista would always mess with the audio source unless you used ASIO or an application supporting Exclusive Mode (foobar does not have this). I wish there was some sort of application that would tell you the sound signal info that was leaving the sound card's analog out or at least the info that hits the DAC in the soundcard.

Also, where can I find a dedicated analog volume control so as to bypass the digital volume control in Windows (or does such a thing exist)? Would look something like this:

Vista 64 --> Foobar --> Prelude driver --> Prelude DAC --> Prelude OPAMP --> analog out --> analog volume control box --> headphones

[ZOMGVTEK]

Torrenting 96/24 and apple lossless now..

Barely hitting 1mib/s down... Im disapointed.
SEED THIS!

[ZOMGVTEK]

The album art is nice, but the music.... sucks.

[Donnie27]

as i recall pretty much every nin show for the last 10 years has been sold out within min. of ticket release.
i dont think trent cares about money anymore.

QFT! NIN can afford to! I even have most of their Quake 2 and add on music. As a fan club member some were shown how to Rip the MP3 from the Games. At least 7 of the tracks are as the young folks say, "Da Bomb." It is sweet that some groups can afford this.

To the other guys, please stop the BS about bands or performers not making money off CD's. Please try to make yourself not feel guilty for stealin' some other way LOL!

[Papu]

The album art is nice, but the music.... sucks.

you may dislike the music but that does not however mean that it sucks , plenty of people like it , it may not be their best album but it is a very good one