Roland Waddilove shows where you can download lossless studio-quality audio files and hear music the way the artists performed it
How good is the music you listen to? This is not a question about your favourite artist, whoever that may be, but the quality of the audio. You might think that the music you listen to sounds okay, but it’s surprising how poor most music is. You would be amazed at the difference if you heard how music really sounds.
For some people, only the best quality music is acceptable, and they want to hear it like they were in the same room as the singer or musician. The pursuit of music perfection has two components: the physical equipment the music is played on and the quality of the audio itself.
Some people do not notice the audio quality, or lack of it, and if you listen to your music from the tiny speaker on your mobile phone, then music quality is not an issue. Even if you listen on reasonably good earphones or a home stereo system, the audio quality is not perfect.
CDs are regarded by many people as representing the best audio quality, but even these are a compromise. For some people, often called audiophiles, only the best is acceptable. They invest in top-quality audio hardware and seek out studio-quality music files. The combination of the two produces the perfect audio experience, and you may be surprised to discover it sounds nothing like the audio you normally listen to on your phone, computer or music player.
This article is not about the hardware you need to reproduce the studio sound experience, but will look at the other issue: sourcing high-quality audio files. There’s no point in spending lots of money on top-end audio equipment if the files you play are less than perfect. Upgrading your music library and replacing low-quality files with high-quality ones is the first step to getting better music.
Where can you download studio masters? Who sells better-than-CD quality audio? Can you stream it? Is a CD not a perfect reproduction of the music?
There are two types of music file, which can be categorised as lossy and lossless. You could argue that all digital music is lossy, and the act of digitising it loses some of the analogue information in the original audio, but some file formats are a lot worse than others.
Audio quality can be measured by the number of bits, the sample rate and, in the case of streaming music, the bits per second (bps). More bits and higher sample rates produce better quality audio. The downside is that files are very large: around a gigabyte per album. In the early days of portable music players and the internet, device storage and bandwidth were limited. In order to store music or stream it, compression was required, and it wasn’t possible to work with raw audio files.
MP3 was one of the first popular audio file formats, and it reduces the size of audio files partly by compression and partly by discarding information. Bit rates of 96Kbps were common for audio files, and quality suffered. You might not realise by how much unless you listen to a 96Kbps MP3 and a CD of the same music. Even now, 96Kbps music is still used – for example, if you listen to streaming music on a mobile phone.
Lossy audio file formats like MP3 are avoided by audiophiles because of the way they mangle the music, so lossless file formats like WAV and FLAC are sought. These are better because no audio information is lost, discarded or compressed. There’s a direct comparison in photography, with JPEG images, which save space by compressing and discarding image information, while .bmp, .tif, .png and other lossless formats are pixel perfect. MP3 compression has a similar detrimental effect on audio.
Increasing the bitrate improves the audio quality, and 128Kbps became the standard for music downloads and streaming, then 196 and finally 320Kbps. If you’re listening to streaming music or audio downloads that are 320Kbps, you might think that the music is perfect, but it’s not. In fact, it’s a quarter of the bitrate of a CD.
A CD offers 44.1 kHz 16-bit samples per second, and it sounds pretty good, but audiophiles want even better. Increasing the number of bits to 24 and the sample rate to 96KHz or even 192KHz produces noticeably better quality audio, provided of course that you have the audio equipment to faithfully reproduce this.
Let’s take a look at some of the places you can find high-quality music downloads and streaming.
Deezer
Deezer (deezer.com) is a popular music streaming service, and if you subscribe, you have access to music at 320Kbps. This is good enough for the masses but not audiophiles. However, there is a way to stream Deezer at 1,411Kbps (CD quality), which is a huge step up, as can be seen in the fourfold better bitrate.
The streaming music company offers an Elite service, and Sonos (sonos.com) wireless hi-fi systems are compatible with Deezer Elite. This enables you to play high-quality audio in your home. Deezer’s massive streaming library of 35 million tracks, which covers every genre in depth, is actually stored in lossless FLAC format and can be streamed to Elite subscribers with Sonos kit. The company says a survey showed that 91% of Elite users can hear the difference and that 65% of users would never go back to ordinary MP3 audio after having tried it.
At the moment, Deezer Elite is only available for Sonos hi-fi owners (deezer.com/offers/elite) and not for regular users streaming to PCs, phones and other music players. Sign up for a Deezer Premium+ account and buy a Sonos system, and you’ll receive an email offer to upgrade to Elite. When paid for annually, Elite costs no more than regular Deezer, which is a bargain.
7digital
7digital (7digital.com) offers a variety of services, including business to business, but also among them is an online music store that provides high-quality audio downloads to the consumer. The company has a catalogue of 32 million audio tracks, but it does not say how many of these are in high-quality lossless format.
Is your favourite artist available? You will just have to search and see. There seems to a mixture of regular 320Kbps downloads and high-quality FLAC in 16-bit and 24-bit 44.1kHz formats. Out of six Taylor Swift albums, three were 16-bit FLAC, and three were 320Kbps MP3 downloads. Olly Murs was similar, with a mixture of regular MP3s and 16-bit or 24-bit FLAC downloads. So not everything is available, but there are certainly some current artists and lots of older albums and artists.
The prices vary from album to album, but to give an example, Olly Murs’ Never Been Better is £5.99 for 320Kbps MP3, £7.49 for 16-bit 44.1kHz FLAC (CD quality) and £10.49 for 24-bit 44.1kHz FLAC (better than CD). For an extra £1.50 on the price, it makes sense to go for the CD-quality download.
The website is dull but easy to navigate, and the menu bar at the left enables you to access featured music, deals of the week, new albums and all the music genres. Albums and tracks in 16-bit or 24-bit FLAC are clearly marked. Music previews are available, and there’s a search facility to find your favourite artists and albums. This is a useful source of high-quality audio.
HDtracks
HDtracks (hdtracks.co.uk) specialises in high-quality music downloads, and it doesn’t bother with MP3, because it just isn’t good enough. The audio formats available are all lossless FLAC, ALAC (Apple’s version of FLAC), WAV and AIFF (another Apple format). The audio is at least 96kHz 24-bit, but some of it is in 192kHz 24-bit, which is classed as studio quality, and it goes up to 9,612Kbps. Compare that to the usual 320Kbps that you get with MP3 downloads and regular streaming services. It’s seven times better than CD quality. It’s the sort of audio that professional sound engineers use, and it contains much more information than regular music.
A free 11-track sample album in 96kHz 24-bit format can be downloaded, and it’s worth your trouble if you aren’t sure whether you’ll be able to hear the difference between regular and highquality audio.
The website’s insistence on high-quality audio only (the lowest is 24-bit/44.1kHz – better than CD) means there’s a lot less music than at a regular store or streaming music service. Search for popular artists, and you might find only one album. Prices are high too, reflecting the quality. This is bad news if you want the latest pop tracks, but if you’re into Russian violin concertos, you can download them in an astonishingly high 352kHz/24-bit file format. That’s amazing.
This is a website for true audiophiles, where only the highest-quality is available. The navigation bar on the left provides access to recently added, rock, jazz and classical best sellers, top hi-res female artists, a category called British Invasion, rock through the decades and more.
HD tracks is best for older albums rather than the latest charttopping releases, and there is a great selection of music from all genres. However, the prices are steep, and can be up to £25. For some people, though, price isn’t an issue, and if you want the best, this is a good website with high-quality downloads.
Qobuz
Qobuz (qobuz.com/gb-en) aims to be all things to all people, and it does everything. You can buy downloads or you can subscribe to streaming music, you can get regular or high-quality audio, and there’s both new and old music, classic albums and alternative. It has everything and mostly in high quality.
There are four streaming music service options, with a fifth coming soon. Qobuz Basic costs £4.99 a month and provides access to 24 million tracks MP3 tracks at 320Kbps, but it only works on desktop PCs. Add mobile access for phones and tablets and the price rises to £9.99 a month. Qobuz Hi-Fi Classical provides access to streaming classical music in 44.1kHz/16-bit FLAC CD quality for £14.99 a month, but for an extra £5 a month you can access all 24 million tracks on the service.
Music can be purchased and downloaded from the website too, and the quality is up to an excellent 192kHz 24-bit. It does vary a lot, though, and not every album is such high quality. Some are merely CD quality 44.1KHz/16-bit. There’s plenty for the audiophile looking for great music, though, and with 24 million tracks, there’s plenty of choice. Top artists are there as well as classic albums, with everything from Mozart to Ed Sheeran.
With CD-quality downloads as the minimum, prices are higher than for sites with regular MP3s and higher still for top-quality downloads. However, it’s cheaper than some stores. The website is excellent and well designed, with lot of artwork, album and artist information and so on. It looks great and is easy to navigate.
There’s a new service coming soon, which looks like it is offering discounted downloads for an annual subscription fee. Ed Sheeran’s ‘Make It Rain’ track is £1.69 as a 16-bit/44.1kHz download, £2.56 in 24-bit/96kHz format or £1.16 with a Qobuz Sublime subscription. Discounts of 30 to 60% are available for Sublime subscribers. There’s no Sublime subscription price information on the site yet, but keep checking. This could be a great way to save money if you buy a lot of high-quality music.
Tidal
Jay-Z’s new music streaming service Tidal (tidal.com/gb) was launched recently at a big event in New York and was supported by top artists like Madonna, Beyonce, Kayne West and others. Technically, it was a take-over and relaunch, now with the backing of top people in the music industry. It aims to provide fairer payments for artists than other streaming music services, some of which artists have pulled their music from. (There are some notable artist exceptions on Spotify, for example.)
There are two levels of streaming music. First, there’s a premium £9.99 a month subscription, which provides access to 25 million tracks at 320Kbps in AAC format (Apple’s lossy MP3 equivalent). However, there’s also a Hi-Fi streaming service that provides CD-quality 44.1kHz/16-bit streaming music for £19.99 a month. This is the same price as Qobuz’s Hi-Fi streaming music service.
This is a new service, but it has the backing to become a great one. True audiophiles would not listen to CD-quality music, and higher-quality downloads are preferred, but the bandwidth required for anything better would be too great. CD-quality streaming is about the best you can expect at the moment.
Tidal works on desktop PCs, phones and tablets, and the website is excellent, comparing well with streaming rivals like Spotify, Deezer and others. The dark theme looks good, and you can browse a What’s New section, Tidal Rising, explore all the music genres from classical to pop, create playlists and add tracks to favourites, listen to artist radio and so on. There are also 75,000 high-quality music videos to watch.
If you want streaming music rather than downloads and don’t mind the CD-quality audio, Tidal is the best service on offer. The music sounds very good, but you do need the Hi-Fi subscription and not the regular one.
Others
Once you start searching for high-quality music downloads, you’ll find lots of sources, but only the best ones have been featured here. There are many more, and some of them are worth exploring. For example, there’s Bleep (bleep.com), which offers vinyl, CD, 320Kbps MP3, 16-bit lossless WAV and FLAC, and 24-bit WAV. Genres include bass, hip hop, electronic, house and disco, techno and so on.
iTrax (itrax.com) is interesting, and it provides downloads in a variety of formats, including up to 96kHz/24-bit. It also provides some music and videos in Dolby Digital and 5.1 surround sound. This is perfect if you want to make the most of a home theatre setup.
Linn Records (linnrecords.com) has a downloads section, and you can buy studio masters that are top-quality 192kHz/24-bit files. There are only a few hundred tracks, mostly classical and jazz. Bandcamp (bandcamp.com) features new music and directly supports the artists that produce it. Artists must upload in lossless file format, and the site converts it to whatever you want to download, including FLAC. Click a Buy button, and you’re asked how much you want to pay, although sometimes the artist sets a minimum, such as $2 for an album.
Also check out Pono (ponomusic.force.com), Juno Download (junodownload.com), MusicZeit (musiczeit.com) and Naim Label (naimlabel.com).