And it's curious how it's ignored by the same people who review equipment.

But let me step right back from that broad brush I just slathered.

Michael Fremer goes out of his way to make comparisons (when able) between releases. But that's on his personal site, musicangle.com

I'd prefer Stereophile took an active role here and have hinted as such. Don't give me press releases. The web does that better. Tell me you listened to the original LP, the MFSL, that rare UHQR, the Classic, the Friday Music, the HD Tracks, whatever.

I don't want and cannot afford 4 copies of something. I want them ranked, thanks.

Who's responsible? No one seems to know. Unless a producer or an engineer explicitly has taken a stance against brickwalling it will happen by default today. Paul Simon's latest from HD Tracks is brickwalled. Yep, that's Roy Halee apparently asleep, doesn't care, or doesn't know. Zzzzzzz.

Regarding what "to do" --- it certainly ain't HD Tracks fault, nor should they filter or police this necessarily. Frankly, I don't think any retailer belongs in that position although I concede that advertising something based largely on the notion of better sound forever opens you up to criticism when the shit hits the fan. So I expect them to be my partner here and not turn a blind eye.

Raise a stink. Demand a refund or at least another title. If none is provided go to another seller if possible. Money talks.

The bigger problem---and this is a serious flaw---is that there's essentially zero opportunity to complain to the labels or even question the "quality" of the sound. Artists' sites usually offer no help and often can't even be bothered to include discographies or (and this is where it gets bizarre) mentions of vinyl when it's available. A few have forums, and that's a possibility for assistance or venting.

Let's flip this equation upside down (or inside out) and ask – in how many of the music reviews we read *wherever* do we know what the music reviewer is using to listen through? Is their room properly treated? All nodes adequatley erased? Are they upsampling, down sampling, painting the sides of their discs green (with envy), tracking with the correct amount of down force?

I know the answer for the sources I enjoy but I'll keep that to myself for now ;-)

On the whole I love HDTracks, but my experience with the downloads has been decidedly mixed. Some sound great; others no better than the CD. I wish there was some audit trail for the origin of the hires content. Is this a newly made hires master derived from the original tapes? Is it derived from a previously released DVD-Audio or SACD? Or (heaven forbid) was it just upsampled from a CD master, as has happened in some cases?

Malcom, it's my understanding that you can run a song file through an app and see if there's information above a certain frequency. It's late so my details are hazy.

But if something's source was 16/44 there can't be any information, good (music/harmonics etc.) or bad (distortion) above that format's Nyquist frequency of 22kHz.

So if you have a 24/96 file and it's friggin' blank above that figure, oops.

Someone will correct me if I've borked and confused the above.

But back on topic, it's the noticable lack of dynamic thump usually first noticed, if brickwalling occured.

Of course, these two phenomenon are independent offenders. Once HDTracks was made aware of a few fake-hires releases snekaing through a while back, they got correct versions from the labels involved. And although its an easy thing to test for, I doubt HDTracks actually does analyize what thery're provided.

And its free. "Spectrum" view shows you how much energy exists at various frequencies. Here's a piece of the HD Tracks 24/96 version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit":

I agree Malcolm - knowing the original source would be useful information but it would not address the issue with this particular remaster. It appears as if the dynamic compression that we can see and hear on Nirvana’s Nevermind was applied during the remastering process to what was otherwise a more dynamic original recording.

I will also say that downloading Audacity and opening a file does not make anyone, including me, an expert in interpreting the results. While some issues are visually obvious, I see a growing tendency for people to judge musical quality by simply looking at a waveform, which makes about as much sense to me as judging a book by its weight.

Reminds me of when CDs first came to the market. The word then was to not buy the CD version of The Police's Synchronicity and buy the LP instead, it sounded way better.

But let's try to keep things in perspective. We're talking about a handful of releases among a few thousand? 

We also should keep focused on the issue at hand which is we have Record Companies putting out products and people wanting to hold distributors accountable for their quality.

How any sane, rational group of professionals can produce a remastered reissue that is in some critical ways inferior to the original and then pass this piece of ill-considered engineering to a distributor who specializes in audiophile quality recordings to sell to people who care about sound quality is nearly a bad joke.

What I’m trying to get at are some reasonable ideas relating to how we can avoid this kind of thing going forward. Do people believe the onus is rightfully on the distributor, HD Tracks in this case? If so, what do you recommend they do about it? And if not the distributor (the sitting duck in this equation), then who?

I'm convinced that deckeda is right in this respect. The only way to make clear that we don't want this brickwalled crap is not to buy it. If no one's gonna buy it from the distributor, the record company won't produce it (no loss here, because better sounding versions readily available in most cases).

So my idea for a "real world" solution: request the seller to publish a DR (dynamic range) value for each track on offer, using some de-facto-standard software.

That software would be licensed by those possibly earning revenue from it and would be free to us (consumers) so we can check - not only against the sellers' claims, but also upon alternative versions of the same music, be it a CD rip, a needle-drop or download.

So - no DR value for the items on sale (or a really poor one) means: no sales.

I know, DR is not the only measure, but the more computer audio becomes standard, the more criteria of digitally performable quality control will be developed. Audacity is surely not a bad start: Why, for example, is there energy just below and above 30 kHz thru the sample of "Teen Spirit" above? (that is the horizontal blue lines). Probably some machinery issue (no other good reason comes to my mind).

And this is where I disagree with deckeda: If there is no information beyond 22 kHz in a 16/44.1 track, I can easily conceive that same track to have energy beyond the 22 kHz limit once upsampled - just from the hardware and/or software used for upsampling.

Then again, I agree very much with deckeda's request to get different versions of the same track/album ranked or compared - but: Who's gonna do it? No money can be made on that because it will tend to curb sales on the majority of versions - which brings us back to the start ...

If we don't buy, will the record companies get the correct message?

We are talking about the same people who release music that no one who is concerned with sound quality would ever buy which indicates to me they are either relatively clueless or plain careless about addressing this market.

Which gets us to the next question – are there enough people interested in high definition downloads to make the record labels take notice of what we do or do not buy?

7digital has recently started to sell 24bit and 16bit flac downloads. There is currently only a few albums available but at least it's a step in the right direction. Prices are about $12.00 for an album. http://ca.7digital.com/cms/flac/flac.aspx

If less records are sold, record companies will just attribute it to illegal downloading. That's their new catch phrase. Illegal downloading probably has hurt them a little bit, but the constant reissuing and repackaging of the same material hurts them worse. And when they remaster a classic title like "Nevermind" and make it sound much worse than the original, what hope is there? I heard this reissue and it is no less than a sonic assault.

If the original recording is in digital, why not offer it as it is without processing?

 This is a company founded and run by David Chesky, so I kind of thought that high end recording standards would just automatically come with the territory. But every time I download a 24/96 $18.00 bummer(around 30%of the time and almost always rock), it becomes harder and harder to continue taking that chance. Thats just basic economics...

   I should say though, that you almost can't go wrong with  24/96 jazz and classical recordings downloaded from HD tracks. The rock recordings for obvious reasons are by nature not "audiophile quality". If you expect them to be, you will more often than not, be dissapointed.

At the prices HDTracks I expect them to do more than just pass through whatever files the record company sends them, in other words HDTracks should listen to and test the material that they receive from the record companies and determine whether or not it is 1) truly high resolution and not merely an upsampled CD master and 2) whether or not the music has been dynamically compressed. Anything less is totally unacceptable.

We're looking for solutions/suggestions as to how to actually deal with them.

For example, are you suggesting that HD Tracks refuse to sell something that they feel is overly compressed? Or should they provide average dynamic range scores for an album or for each track and let the buyer decide? The latter seems like the better solution since I've seen people commenting on forums that they actually like the sound of this Nirvana Nevermind release. And as I said, I own music that is dynamically compressed that I very much enjoy listening to.

As far as your first point goes - "determine whether or not it is 1) truly high resolution and not merely an upsampled CD master" - could you clarify exactly what you mean by “CD master”?