Beatles Remasters on USB

[Ammonite Audio]

Courtesy of Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-2009-Digital-Remaster-Version/dp/B002VH7P4O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295295478&sr=8-1) at a reasonable price, I have just taken delivery of the complete Beatles remasters, on USB. I do not have the albums on either vinyl or CD, so it was a good deal at a shade over £150. I'm sure most of you reading this will know that the USB stick contains FLAC 24 bit 44.1 kHz music files, but I was certainly hoping for great sounds, through my old HP laptop, running Foobar and Asio4all, via a HiFace Evo into my Lyngdorf digital amp. I am not disappointed! What stunningly natural, vibrant, colourful sounds! The remasters themselves have clearly been done very well, but I really am chuffed to bits at how good they sound. I'm a beginner with this computer audio stuff and was a bit worried about 44.1kHz as opposed to a higher sampling rate, but I needn't have worried. For some reason, Asio4all outputs the data as 32bits, rather than 24bits, but the amp doesn't seem to care.

All in all, for Beatles fans who need the whole album set, this is a really good buy.

[UV101]

Firstly, let me point out that I am not suggesting that you infringe copyright.......

I'm am interested tho, is there any copy protection on the USB? If they are std FLAC files, there is nothing to stop you copying them onto every PC you wanted?

I guess this is also true of CD also but it just seems that a USB stick is almost begging you to transfer files about!!!

[magiccarpetride]

Courtesy of Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beatles-2009-Digital-Remaster-Version/dp/B002VH7P4O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295295478&sr=8-1) at a reasonable price, I have just taken delivery of the complete Beatles remasters, on USB. I do not have the albums on either vinyl or CD, so it was a good deal at a shade over £150. I'm sure most of you reading this will know that the USB stick contains FLAC 24 bit 44.1 kHz music files, but I was certainly hoping for great sounds, through my old HP laptop, running Foobar and Asio4all, via a HiFace Evo into my Lyngdorf digital amp. I am not disappointed! What stunningly natural, vibrant, colourful sounds! The remasters themselves have clearly been done very well, but I really am chuffed to bits at how good they sound. I'm a beginner with this computer audio stuff and was a bit worried about 44.1kHz as opposed to a higher sampling rate, but I needn't have worried. For some reason, Asio4all outputs the data as 32bits, rather than 24bits, but the amp doesn't seem to care.

All in all, for Beatles fans who need the whole album set, this is a really good buy.

I was initially reluctant to go for this USB (especially since I've already bought the remastered CDs). What was holding me back was the fact that the sampling rate is only 44 kHz (I was hoping for 96 kHz).

However, after taking the plunge and getting the 24 bit remasters on the USB, I was forced to change my opinion. Bit depth seems to make more of a difference to the sound quality than sampling rate. Going from 16 bits to 24 bits is a big step in the right direction. The resolution definitely increases. Some people claim that bit depth would be similar to the number of pixels on a TV screen, while sample rate would be similar to increasing the color depth on the screen.

Whichever the case, with 16 bit we have 65,000 possible levels of detail, while upgrading to 24 bit we jump to dizzying heights of all of a sudden having over 16 million levels of detail. Huge difference in mathematical possibilities. And it makes clearly audible difference. These 24 bit remasters indeed outperform the 16 bit CD remasters in the clarity and level of detail.

[UV101]

Is the USB taken from the same master as the CD? If it is, you are just guessing the additional bits based on what's either side. I'm absolutely sure this will translate to an audible difference, but it would be better if it was 100% accurate in the 1st place.

[Stratmangler]

Is the USB taken from the same master as the CD? If it is, you are just guessing the additional bits based on what's either side. I'm absolutely sure this will translate to an audible difference, but it would be better if it was 100% accurate in the 1st place.

The CD masters were number crunched down from the same source as the USB FLAC files, so the USB FLAC files are closer to the original digital masters.
The project commenced with transfer of the analogue master tapes to digital at 24/192 resolution.
Everything released so far has been number crunched down from these 24/192 masters.

[Rare Bird]

Let me get this right you paid £150 USB stick !

[Stratmangler]

Let me get this right you paid £150 USB stick !

:D

I think you have to look beyond the packaging to the intellectual property :lolsign:

[chris@panteg]

Nice one Andre ' :)

[Ammonite Audio]

Let me get this right you paid £150 USB stick !

No, I paid £150 for 12 Beatles albums (ignoring the other things on the USB stick) that I did not have beforehand, in a higher resolution format than CD. That, to my mind, compared favourably with buying CDs (lower resolution, though) or downloads.

[Rare Bird]

Well looking at it that way i suppose you got a bargin :D

[sparrow]

Why did they not putout the CD's with this superior sound quality ?? I bought the mono & stereo boxes and am interested to see if they will release the lot again some time down the line.

[Reid Malenfant]

Why did they not putout the CD's with this superior sound quality ?? I bought the mono & stereo boxes and am interested to see if they will release the lot again some time down the line.
You'd need a DVD to hold the extra information ;) A CD will hold a maximum of 700Mb.

[sparrow]

You'd need a DVD to hold the extra information ;) A CD will hold a maximum of 700Mb.

Ahhhhhhhh I know hardly anything about bit rates and all that jargon..If it sounds good to me it is good. I am continuously buy remasters looking for the best sound. I've even bought original CD presses to compare..:scratch: