Good news! prices of lossless music at saregama.com reduced ..

amit_s

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Hi,

May be lot of members already know this, but, I found this yesterday. Prices of lossless tracks (HD) have been dropped to from 50/- to 10/- per song and MP3 320kbps are now at 2/- per track. I downloaded couple of HD tracks of old hindi movies.
 
Hi Amit
Thanks for the information

Can you please let me know how is the quality of the lossless tracks or its juts 320 kbps mp3 converted to flac ?

What is the resolution of hd ?.
Thanks
 
To my ears, quality is quite good. Much better than mp3s i had downloaded from internet. I felt HD is better than 320kbps, it might just be my perception. I downloaded both 320kbps mp3 and HD for 'O-Mere-Dil-Ke-Chain', liked HD more, felt slightly smooth and fuller, it might just be a psychological effect of paying more ;). But, vocals of all the old songs are very good for both mp3 and HD versions. HD is 1411kbps wav file.
 
70% to 80% files shows definite improvement over downloaded files from unknown source. Still 20% to 30% files strangely to my ear lifeless even sometime compared to free download. This small portion of files downloaded from saregama sounded like the speaker covered with double bed cover.

Quality difference is apparent even with different titles of same album (or film). Still the price and quality of most tracks are attractive. So do not forget to preview every single track before add to cart. Those HD files which are sounding great, their MP3 version also sounding quite close to wav files. So no great harm if one (Except the Purists) collect MP3 versions which are all 320Kbps.
 
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Yeah, rightly said. Preview is must! I ended up dumping my money into few bad tracks e.g 'Mehboob Mere Mehboob Mere' of movie 'Pathar ke sanam' and album 'Ram Teri ganga maili'. Even Youtube versions of these are tracks are better than HD of Saregama. I have written to Saregama regarding this but no response. Anyway, cost is not so much that would hurt. So, overall it was a good deal for me.
 
Please download 'Spek' app to check the quality of the downloaded files. By that app you can make out if its orignal flac file or converted flac file.
 
hi all

Downloaded a song @320kbps and checked with SPEK. The frequency cuts off at 16khz whereas the description of the file says 320kbps. A clear case of upscaled file to 320kbps from 128kbps or may be 192kbps but definitely it is not 320 kbps.

Regards
 
hi all

Downloaded a song @320kbps and checked with SPEK. The frequency cuts off at 16khz whereas the description of the file says 320kbps. A clear case of upscaled file to 320kbps from 128kbps or may be 192kbps but definitely it is not 320 kbps.

Regards

Indian companies will never learn
They think all are fools and no one will notice their trick
Thanks for pointing this out and glad I did not download any
 
@pakecc - How old is the song?

Most music from the 80s and prior peaks at 20 kHz and I even have some that stop at 16 kHz.

One in particular, a Grateful Dead album stays at 16 kHz for the entire album.

All are genuine rips, and ripped from my own CDs, so unless the label itself is selling MP3s as CD, I know for sure the material is genuine.

The reason is the ADC (Analog-to-digital converters) back then were limited... and even today some recording engineers use them. I've a couple of albums from Linkin Park (IIRC) that stop at 20 kHz.
 
I just checked a few tracks from the good old rafi/Kishore era in their samples section.
Some have crackle pop like ripped from LP's and some have outright distortion.
What is up with that?
 
@pakecc - How old is the song?

Most music from the 80s and prior peaks at 20 kHz and I even have some that stop at 16 kHz.

One in particular, a Grateful Dead album stays at 16 kHz for the entire album.

All are genuine rips, and ripped from my own CDs, so unless the label itself is selling MP3s as CD, I know for sure the material is genuine.

The reason is the ADC (Analog-to-digital converters) back then were limited... and even today some recording engineers use them. I've a couple of albums from Linkin Park (IIRC) that stop at 20 kHz.

May be. It is from a Film of 1981 and the spec. cut off flat at 16khz. Need to check with the same song from iTunes.
 
I just checked a few tracks from the good old rafi/Kishore era in their samples section.
Some have crackle pop like ripped from LP's and some have outright distortion.
What is up with that?

The masters are probably analog or transferred from LP.
 
May be. It is from a Film of 1981 and the spec. cut off flat at 16khz. Need to check with the same song from iTunes.

I even have some old Ilaiyaraaja CDs that are cut off at 16 kHz or go to max of 18-19 kHz.

Some of them are actually too bright... extended listening gives headache. Not entirely sure if its cause of the limited spectrum though.
 
Ok the story goes like this.

Saregama priviously HMV doesn't have master tapes. There was a big fire in their Dumdum warehouse in 90s and most of it was lost.

They use any source material they can lay their hand on that is why some of their old songs have pop and crackle as vinyl was used as source and in some cases god knows what they used.

Now coming to the sound of their lossless audio.

yes it sounds like someone has placed a bed sheet over the speaker because they use preset noise reduction and filters. They use a vinyl as source, batch apply the preset filter and NS and bam ! it's done pa.

They are sitting over a goldmine but all they dig out is dirt.

I ripped a vinyl of 80s movie and compared it with the version available on their website.

Even a vinyl ripped on my 30 years old TT was sounding way better then Saregama lossless offering.

So imagine if a novice like me can rip great sounding music with such basic equipment what this big corporate can really do with their state of the art and TOTL equipment.

But sadly that is not happening.

So we can't do anything but fume or rip our desired music from vinyls which are as near to source as it could ever get.

inputs FMs ?
 
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