$9 for 730 classical tracks (111-years-Deutsche-Grammophon) @ HMVdigital.ca

[berryb]

An iTunes limited-time-only deal was reincarnated at HMVdigital.ca in slightly improved form.
HMVdigital now carries the 55-cd, 730 track, 2-day-11-hour-30-minute 'album' that was top-selling at iTunes last week. It is priced at $8.99.

It seems like a better deal than iTunes:
* it's one dollar less,
* arguably, it is encoded as 320 mbs mp3 which hopefully sounds better than the iTunes 256mbs AAC/m4a encoding (which I found sounded disappointing)
* it might qualify for the BOGO deal at HMVdigital.

Linkie: http://www.hmvdigital.ca/artist/various-artists/111-years-of-deutsche-grammophon.
Linkie to the iTunes deal in the expired deal forum: http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/itunes-store-canada-price-error-805425/. Lots of discussion there over the artistic quality of the box set.

[lpsaad]

oh no i just recently bought the itunes deal...damn

[Aerius Zension]

Thinking about it. Anyone know how much space this would take up?

[hollywood115]

Thinking about it. Anyone know how much space this would take up?

through iTunes it takes 6.7gb

[berryb]

Thinking about it. Anyone know how much space this would take up?

Don't think too long. This may well be another 'limited time only' offer.

[jory29]

I'm so in on this... I was kicking myself for missing out on it last time due to hemming and hawing.

Thanks, OP!! :)

This will take a while to d/l all the tracks I think. 153kbps is my speed now. Listening to it already though, and think I will really love this.

[lpsaad]

I'm so in on this... I was kicking myself for missing out on it last time due to hemming and hawing.

Thanks, OP!! :)

This will take a while to d/l all the tracks I think. 153kbps is my speed now. Listening to it already though, and think I will really love this.

Can you verify that the bitrate is indeed 320?

[jory29]

Can you verify that the bitrate is indeed 320?

I just checked on a couple of songs, and yes, bitrate is 320. I just looked under properties of the file to find out - would that be accurate enough to know?

[Roll]

This is great..Thanks, will order

[mc_molineux]

Is there DRM on this?

[bkbkbk]

Is there DRM on this?

same question :confused:

[ibanker]

who gets paid for this? The artists are getting like 2 cents per 'album' sold........ granted theyre all dead.... whos getting the profits of dead guys?

[berryb]

Is there DRM on this?
same question :confused:

There is no DRM on mp3s


who gets paid for this? The artists are getting like 2 cents per 'album' sold........ granted theyre all dead.... whos getting the profits of dead guys?
Oh, most of these guys are still very much alive. The composers are dead, the performers are (mostly) not. They get their performer fee for the download. Even for the decomposing composers, if the work is still copyrighted (e.g. for West Side Story, I suppose), the estate receives payment.
Then DDG gets a bit, too.

[mc_molineux]

There is no DRM on mp3s

Nice. So I guess if I've already bought these on AACs from the iTunes deal, it wouldn't be a huge deal morally if someone shared these with me in the mp3 format? Anyone willing to help me out? PM if possible.

[aos007]

I doubt 320kbps mp3 would have better sound quality than the 256kbps AAC seeing as the second is a much newer and more advanced algorithm. I'm basing this off a commonly quoted comparison between 128 AAC and 192 mp3. Anyway I didn't find any obvious issues with my AAC's sound quality, did you have a complaint against any track in particular?

At any rate I don't think format is much of an issue, the last deal was easily one of the best deals on RFD ever, this is more of the same. At this price if you were disappointed by AAC you may as well buy these too and find out if you're correct.

[berryb]

I doubt 320kbps mp3 would have better sound quality than the 256kbps AAC seeing as the second is a much newer and more advanced algorithm. I'm basing this off a commonly quoted comparison between 128 AAC and 192 mp3. Anyway I didn't find any obvious issues with my AAC's sound quality, did you have a complaint against any track in particular?

At any rate I don't think format is much of an issue, the last deal was easily one of the best deals on RFD ever, this is more of the same. At this price if you were disappointed by AAC you may as well buy these too and find out if you're correct.

Just today I came across this quote: "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is." (Yogi Berra). Funny how that applies here.

In theory, AAC should trump mp3. But poor codec settings or other screwups could easily produce a poor sounding AAC file (what if they re-coded the mp3 version to create the AAC files.. - shudder). I often listen to eMusic mp3s that sound awesome so I was disappointed in some of the iTunes tracks.

I noticed it first in the Dudamel Mahler-5 and then again in several other tracks including the Beethoven 'Tempest' sonata by Grimaud. There is a pulsating effect in some of the notes/tones that sound like the hall or the piano has resonating elements in it. I cannot imagine that the recording engineer would have allowed that so I have to blame the encoding for now.

For the best comparison, I'd have to get the FLAC versions but in the mean time, a fellow RFDer has gifted me the HMV mp3 version so I'll do some critical comparison listening tonight. Hope they sound better. Would be really bad if they sound worse.

I'll post my findings tonight.
At any rate, a low price is no excuse for poor sound quality.

[ofdoom]

the last deal was easily one of the best deals on RFD ever, this is more of the same.

Clearly the last deal wasn't that great because a better deal has emerged for the same (or somewhat better quality) product only days later. This thread isn't going to generate thousands of replies though because it isn't wrongly claiming to be a price error.

[Jon Lai]

So I guess it wasn't a price error after all?

[wiebecj]

oh my goodness is hmvdigital slow.... I'm downloading at 50 kb/s. Off newsgroups I get 2.75 MB per second. Apparently this is going to take 30 hours

[bsp]

Has anyone been able to successfully download the track named

4. Andante ma non troppo e molto cantabile - Più mosso - Andante moderato e lusinghiero - Adagio - Allegretto - Adagio, ma non troppo e semplice - Allegretto

I keep getting an error on it and I'm guessing the name is too long for their system to handle (kind of an obvious guess isn't it?).

[ubcturkey]

Do you get 10 free downloads for buying this? I can't tell if counts as at least 10 tracks, or not, since it's an album (..well multiple albums).

http://www.hmv.ca/microsites/hmvdig/eng-hmvdig-freetracks-09.html

[berryb]

I'll do some critical comparison listening tonight. Hope they sound better. Would be really bad if they sound worse.

Did some listening and so far there seems to be very little difference between AAC (iTunes) and mp3 (HMV) versions. Could only do a bit of side-by-side comparing because I have only a few of the iTunes tracks here at home.

To my ears, the mp3s sound a tiny little smoother but certainly not enough of a difference to repurchase them at HMV if you already have the iTunes box. Overall I'm not blown away by the DG sound quality, in contrast with tracks from Chandos, BIS, Analekta and some other labels, e.g. on eMusic.

By the way: good luck to you non-Windows users. No download manager for you so you'll be downloading all 730 tracks one by one..

Now, did anyone receive the bonus tracks from the BOGO deal?

[aos007]

I noticed it first in the Dudamel Mahler-5 and then again in several other tracks including the Beethoven 'Tempest' sonata by Grimaud. There is a pulsating effect in some of the notes/tones that sound like the hall or the piano has resonating elements in it. I cannot imagine that the recording engineer would have allowed that so I have to blame the encoding for now.

Just listened to Tempest, could not find anything objectionable in 2nd movement but I am noticing something in the 3rd as there seems to be some resonance on certain high notes. Quite noticeable, and as if there is something metallic in the recording studio that is made to oscillate. Heaters in my apartment do that but on very low frequencies. Listening further... yeah there is definitely something going on. Perhaps it's just a bad recording that's been pushed into clipping. But the same thing happens to a lesser extent to the Ashkenazy recording (which was from the other $10 sale album). I agree, 3rd movement does not sound as good as I'd expect. I do have a few other recordings of Tempest that I ripped from CD to FLAC and they do not seem exhibit this effect. But without having the same recording in FLAC it's hard to determine where the fault lies.

[Triad]

Got it since I missed out on the iTunes one. I prefer MP3 since that is the only one that I can use on this netbook.

[RogueRed]

I missed the iTunes deal because I refuse to download that bloat ware on my PC and couldn't figure out a different means of getting it. Was able to get this deal.

Appreciate the post!

Cheers

[harpoon]

Did some listening and so far there seems to be very little difference between AAC (iTunes) and mp3 (HMV) versions. Could only do a bit of side-by-side comparing because I have only a few of the iTunes tracks here at home.

To my ears, the mp3s sound a tiny little smoother but certainly not enough of a difference to repurchase them at HMV if you already have the iTunes box. Overall I'm not blown away by the DG sound quality, in contrast with tracks from Chandos, BIS, Analekta and some other labels, e.g. on eMusic.

By the way: good luck to you non-Windows users. No download manager for you so you'll be downloading all 730 tracks one by one..

Now, did anyone receive the bonus tracks from the BOGO deal?


Just my opinion/experience (and I work in audio pretty heavily if that qualifies me more, whatever): AAC files are friendlier for dynamic range and don't quite compress as much as mp3 files, AAC also gives you more quality for a smaller file size (like mpeg 2 vs mpeg 4) and AAC compresses/expands better if you have to say, pitch shift the sound or something.

You're totally right in saying that encoding is imperative (LAME codec for mp3, vbr etc) but I've had better results with AAC usually. 'Usually' being the key word, sometimes it depends on the music style and how it was mixed.

I got the iTunes deal on this stuff and it sounds really good considering it's compressed AAC. I bet it's tough to hear a difference between it and mp3 but it's perhaps there on a super nice system or something by say, 5-10%.

[who_ca]

The price now appears to be $137.99. I guess I missed the deal :-(

[Aske001]

Yup, looks like it was a 1-day deal, now dead.

[ishagi]

Yup, looks like it was a 1-day deal, now dead.

:(

[Triad]

Got it at 4am in the morning, it is already $138 in the afternoon!:evil:

[ilikecheapstuff]

download speeds with the download manager are incredibly slow.

it'll be faster if you download the individual tracks.

plus the download manager has no 'resume' function that i know of.

I had to restart my computer for an update, and it started downloading the entire list again.

edit: and noticed i got a bunch of errors from the download manager files.
eg. 2nd download: Hungarian dance #2.. around the 13-14 second mark there's an error in the music from download manager, redownloaded the track separately (was getting 170kb+ from the individual download) and it was fine

gonna have to listen through a lot of these and see which ones need to be redownloaded.
plus there are a few tracks that seem to not be able to download.

[Kwirky]

I'm not at all impressed with HMV's digital store; the download manager sucks; several errors means I'm going to have to go through a list of 730 tracks and see what didn't work, while scrolling through the list is terrible thanks to the way the flash application was made, and the speed is constantly 126KB/s. Not going to be getting anything from them again, sadly.

[Triad]

HMV's program is HORRIBLE, no redownload options, no continue option and lots of errors! Arghhh! Not impressive...

[wiebecj]

yup i tried to download it 4 times already... always fails. Trying again

[jory29]

I've downloaded 457 of the songs so far, (not trying too hard to d/l the rest, I keep forgetting) and yes, I agree, the d/l manager isn't very good. I suspect it isn't compatible with windows vista, though I believe I am running it in windows xp compatibility mode as well as administrator mode. I don't like that there is no resume function, either!!

Song 2201 is incredible! A classic song, but so well played.

Song 2407 is abruptly cut off! GRRRR! I'll have to take a careful look-through, too. Thanks for the heads up, ilikecheapstuff.

[Brolly]

Damn I would have loved to have got this. Too bad I missed the boat on this one.

Great deal, enjoy it all you who snagged it.

[edsy2k]

Now $137. Just bits and pieces anyway.

[rjp123]

It shows $137.99 for me. Maybe a pricing error that was then corrected?

[Triad]

I was able to download with FLASHGET now! 50% and going :D! Please do try to download with the above program. It will appear as a .txt doc in the beginning then it will somehow change to an RAR file.

[wiebecj]

well, after my 3rd try downloading the full zip package (~8GB's) it looks like it's going to complete! Only 200MB remaining to go......

[Triad]

What do you mean by 3rd try it takes only one try with flashget! :) It looks like you have ditched the HMV downloader.
well, after my 3rd try downloading the full zip package (~8GB's) it looks like it's going to complete! Only 200MB remaining to go......

[wiebecj]

What do you mean by 3rd try it takes only one try with flashget! :) It looks like you have ditched the HMV downloader.

yeah i know.. i never really download stuff off the web though so i didn't have it installed and was kind of lazy..

[Roll]

I was able to download with FLASHGET now!

Ok...I'm going to try that...what a pain to download with their system...thanks

[Taiphun]

dammit, missed it. $137 now.

[board123]

Damn it! Deal's gone.

[jory29]

I was able to download with FLASHGET now! 50% and going :D! Please do try to download with the above program. It will appear as a .txt doc in the beginning then it will somehow change to an RAR file.

Thanks, am d/l'ing now. For those of you who want to try this, just copy the download link by right clicking on the 'download' button, [which is hard to see all the time, it's fleeting; for me it shows up just after logging in, but then sometimes disappears as the whole list of tracks is then shown, without my clicking on anything.] You do not want to be clicking on individual tracks. Just make sure that the one 'download' button is there, right click on it and then select to copy the URL. When you are in flashget, you can then paste the URL in. Speeds are very slow though - anyone else having it show around 29 hours to get all of the tracks? At least I will be able to resume when need be, right?

[ilikecheapstuff]

I've downloaded 457 of the songs so far, (not trying too hard to d/l the rest, I keep forgetting) and yes, I agree, the d/l manager isn't very good. I suspect it isn't compatible with windows vista, though I believe I am running it in windows xp compatibility mode as well as administrator mode. I don't like that there is no resume function, either!!

Song 2201 is incredible! A classic song, but so well played.

Song 2407 is abruptly cut off! GRRRR! I'll have to take a careful look-through, too. Thanks for the heads up, ilikecheapstuff.

Etude in C sharp minor? seems fine to me, but I did download the track individually (starting CD 15)

full track is 2:39 for me, ending with some of the audience members coughing lol

[Roll]

I was able to download with FLASHGET now!

Well, I did try..and I just notice it re up again from the start when the net went down and re started again. Ah, looks like I better download each song..like 24 plus hours to download

[Triad]

Dang! Oh well try it again unless you have internet limits. Well, I did try..and I just notice it re up again from the start when the net went down and re started again. Ah, looks like I better download each song..like 24 plus hours to download

[Roll]

Re Flashget...I'd experiment with her to see if I can continue...and it does not seem so for me...it just restarts as in the beginning. This is also with HMV download manager. Currently I'm trying Chrome..and using Firefox for my emails, etc-just in case it crashes and hopefully not cause a problem with Chrome..if all fails, I'm going to have to download the songs a couple at a time. Man, is she slow

[jory29]

Etude in C sharp minor? seems fine to me, but I did download the track individually (starting CD 15)

full track is 2:39 for me, ending with some of the audience members coughing lol

Yep Etude in C Sharp Major ends at 1:48. Probably just as well, what with audience members coughing! :razz:

I've been d/l'ing all day using Flashget and have 20% done. It's still going, but not fast at all. Oh well. For a kick a55 deal I really can't complain.

[wiebecj]

&%(*$@&%* this is never going to finish. I've been up to 98% downloading the whole zip file. It failed, so I tried flashget - it won't resume... HMV download manager is a pos.. I want my money back already - i've sused at least 30GB of data in the last couple days trying to get this on 2 different computers.

[Roll]

Yep...this is crazy...4 gigs and it just stop...restart and off course, it starts from the beginning..

Going to have to email them: how one can resume from where it left off..ya, two days and a waste of my bandwidth..but I want this..

[Triad]

Dang, I think their server does not allow resume download. They don't for sure on those upload sites. (MU, RS etc...) Someone should give FDM - free download manager; it says it supports resuming. Give that a try?

I haven't downloaded anymore as I paused it and I just started again so I hope that my connection doesn't break. If it does, we should just split up the file into whoever wants to join, download the individual sections and then we can all collaborate our resources.

We should definitely complain to HMV. FLASHGET really isn't the problem. It could be their ftp servers that don't support resume download option.

[BinaryJay]

I love how it's far more convenient to torrent something than it is to buy it.

[Bastich]

I love how it's far more convenient to torrent something than it is to buy it.

QFT. Although I'd still place iTunes as slightly more convenient than BT for music.

[BoxsterS]

I love how it's far more convenient to torrent something than it is to buy it.

Actually, it's not. The iTunes experience is really a no brainer.

[berryb]

Yep...this is crazy...4 gigs and it just stop...restart and off course, it starts from the beginning..


you're not using a FAT32 formatted drive to store the ZIP file on are you? Might be hitting the FAT32 4-gig file size limit.

Maybe HMV put this up for the special price to do a stress test on their servers and to find weaknesses in the DL-manager. If so, they've got their money's worth.

[jory29]

&%(*$@&%* this is never going to finish. I've been up to 98% downloading the whole zip file. It failed, so I tried flashget - it won't resume... HMV download manager is a pos.. I want my money back already - i've sused at least 30GB of data in the last couple days trying to get this on 2 different computers.

Flashget seemed to be the solution but I assumed it resumes downloads - it doesn't. After over 4 GB and half way done last night I paused it, then shut down the pc for the night. This morning I have started from scratch with a whopping 6% done so far, and hours upon hours to go.

Arrrgggggh! I hear you! :)

Edited to add: I agree with Triad, flashget is not the problem, it could be HMV's ftp servers that simply don't support resume.

[Roll]

you're not using a FAT32 formatted..Maybe HMV put this up for the special price to do a stress test on their servers and to find weaknesses in the DL-manager. If so, they've got their money's worth.

No, I'm not using FAT32..just downloading on my laptop...Thanks anyways..Yes, special price to stress me out. I did email them last night, no answer yet. Gee, I'm afraid to use my laptop in case my connection stops..Yep, giving her another chance to dl since this morning...

[Roll]

Just received a reply from HMV that they logged my error with the developers and - hope to have a solution for me shortly as they continue to develop their new digital site....oh well an extra beer for me tonight..not into asprins

[ilikecheapstuff]

the songs are all downloadable (at least individually)

not sure if it's just for me tho, but it seems Dixit Dominus a 6 can't be downloaded anymore due to the "download limit reached".

maybe i accidentally clicked it too many times when i was downloading it.


however the issues regarding songs that couldn't be downloaded have now been fixed..

730 tracks, 7.83GBs

[Roll]

I did stop trying... HMV did email me on Friday that they reset my account to re-download...Will begin again on Monday

Did they change their system...so one can 'resume' download?

[shanaya]

Wow! I can't believe it is at 137.99 now! Glad I ordered it before that. I got 683 files so there are some missing using the downloader. Will try re-downloading after I save the folder in another area just in case something happens. ;)