Which audio format has good quality on Saregama?

sunder

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Hi friends, Saregama offers two types of audio formats ( MP3 & HD ) for downloading their music files. Which one will be in fine audio quality when we buy the Old Indian film songs of 1960s & 70s? Is HD very unpleasantly as harsh as with poor audio quality? Or which format will be better? Samples are available for 30 seconds to hear the song, but I don't know that sample is from which format. Please share your experiences. Thank you . Regards.
Sunder.
 
I found them both to be equally bad ..and thought they had just upsampled the mp3 for the HD when I bought it. Has the same hollow sound as though the soul is sucked out of the music
 
Hi Sunder, my downloads have been from the Hindi OST classics and some Ghazals from the 70-80s. As arj pointed out, irrespective of the bitrate, they sound dull. There are exceptions though, but rare to find. The odd part is that in some instances the 30 sec samples sounded good, but the downloads (both WAV and MP3) sounded bad. My suggestion would be to pay for a streaming service like Gaana.com, they sound better on many occasions compared to Saregama (assuming you're not keen on taking the Vinyl route).
As FM Naturelover had mentioned once, just labeling a file as WAV doesn't make it high quality :D
 
Saregama quality varies from excellent to bad. More towards bad.
I think Gaana and iTunes might be better options. I haven't tried any other services.
There is no sure way to know other than buying and listening.
Gaana has subscription. iTunes has both options, subscription and individual album purchase.
Although, with Gaana you can hear all songs at 128 kbps for free before subscribing and downloading at 300 kbps. But you can play only in the app or through their website.
Again, these bit rates are probably just numbers if the original available itself is low quality.
It's a sorry state for old Hindi music.
 
@arj
@sandeepss
@Naturelover

Thanks for the reply. Sorry to hear about that Saregama's irresponsible service. From EMI , HMV and now Saregama, They are doing this business for many decades and have plenty of own rights, but they didn't care about the technical perfection and they did ridiculously very bad recordings of the Precious Gem like Indian Musics. So, we are unlucky.
 
Hi friends, Saregama offers two types of audio formats ( MP3 & HD ) for downloading their music files. Which one will be in fine audio quality when we buy the Old Indian film songs of 1960s & 70s? Is HD very unpleasantly as harsh as with poor audio quality? Or which format will be better? Samples are available for 30 seconds to hear the song, but I don't know that sample is from which format. Please share your experiences. Thank you . Regards.
Sunder.

In the last 3 months, I have downloaded 150+ hd songs from Saregama as they have been running promotions. I have found the songs from 90s and later to be really good. They are worth the 1411 kbps!
However, things turn to indifferent as you move backwards. There are exceptions like Masoom, Umrao Jaan, a few songs from R.D Burman, Asha and Kishore. But in most of the older songs, there are almost no differences apart from the volume level. The instrumental category is far better than old Bollywood songs.
 
Hi
Sunder
I shall echo what friend sandeep and nature lover have already suggested. Personally I have never downloaded songs from saregama but I have heard from a friend of mine that the songs ,specially the old Hindi movie songs are not good. Better use some streaming services available these days. Gana.com as suggested here is a nice option. You can subscribe, download and listen to music of your choice. There are some other streaming services like Spotify but gana has a vast collection and curated playlist . I like it and have been subscribing though my primary route is vinyl.
Happy listening
 
I have downloaded 150+ hd songs from Saregama as they have been running promotions. I have found the songs from 90s and later to be really good. They are worth the 1411 kbps!
Braun7, yes, you are right. The songs' of 90s sound quality is really good. But, as you said, the recording quality of the olden years songs , is below the average. Thanks .
 
I have different views about the original track MP3 files. I usually play these retro music via my usb of my Marantz Blueray player, and found most of the bought Saregama wav and mp3 file to be of excellent quality on par or better than current recordings. If something is not sounding good then you should relook at your setup or your audio chain imo.
 
Tidal also offers good hindi collection ( both classical and bollywood i was surprised ). Quality is good as well.
 
I have different views about the original track MP3 files. I usually play these retro music via my usb of my Marantz Blueray player, and found most of the bought Saregama wav and mp3 file to be of excellent quality on par or better than current recordings. If something is not sounding good then you should relook at your setup or your audio chain imo.
Hi Hari, could you please share the album names you have bought in which the SQ was good. I had downloaded around 20 albums from the 60-90s and found many to be of poor quality. The new releases post 2000 are good.
FM venkatcr had posted a while back about the quality of the Saregama revival series CDs and the respective spectrum analyzer plots here: https://www.hifivision.com/threads/saregama-revival-series.56576/post-641638
I stand to be corrected, since this is the music I like the most and sadly the one that was ruined by poor digital transfer :)
 
Hi Hari, could you please share the album names you have bought in which the SQ was good. I had downloaded around 20 albums from the 60-90s and found many to be of poor quality. The new releases post 2000 are good.
FM venkatcr had posted a while back about the quality of the Saregama revival series CDs and the respective spectrum analyzer plots here: https://www.hifivision.com/threads/saregama-revival-series.56576/post-641638
I stand to be corrected, since this is the music I like the most and sadly the one that was ruined by poor digital transfer :)
mp3 - Bazar, Umrao Jaan, Swami, Silsila, Razia Sultan, Arth
WAV - Most oldies title from 1952 onwards - mix

If the above sound bad in your setup, you know where to look other than the recordings.
 
mp3 - Bazar, Umrao Jaan, Swami, Silsila, Razia Sultan, Arth
WAV - Most oldies title from 1952 onwards - mix

If the above sound bad in your setup, you know where to look other than the recordings.

Yesterday I did a little experiment with a few files(WAV) downloaded from Saregama to check the spectrum. By keeping this an objective exercise, we can get a better understanding of what is happening under the hood. As my laptop is running ChromeOS, I used a web application for the Analysis

https://academo.org/demos/spectrum-analyzer/

Personally I’m not so keen on dissecting music and turning it into a theoretical exercise, but with Saregama we’ll make an exception so that we can get to know ‘The Good, The Bad & The Ugly’ :)

1. Translation of Tagore’s poems released in 2016, so we expect a good quality output and it is indeed lossless.
EWhdoyrM9vARqQehGjF_hYkTucvp3RDw-m3BE_aj3FBacZcGRHqrCIwBxCKLXIZv1ikwDB9hTnfAu2_RsRdCqD350f4Syp9vI6QjVGGhjOuOyBaAROY9WQYDE3SN3BJSIXzdEaT1


2. From Masoom(1983). This album sounds good, but is the file really lossless?
C0ZPPzCZTY12cNbL2gQNvx8odnrGC0xGA3WRr3lThsiUP9um716ovSfv2Bya50CJL8w5Q7b2sOyjXRku6tPGiQpTnTfQI8Pg9loT_gf57YsOltpJpmrZNRYmznLYx7gXn4LpM0bR


Nope. It’s an upsampled MP3, masquerading as a WAV file!

3. From Lekin(1990). The album sounds dull, interestingly the Gaana version sounds much better. This album, I believe must be digitally recorded, so this anomaly is perplexing!
Hy85w-QqHySD4j3LMRr8CoUEbNp_2D6bxs1U3iArvRLZ8Q5leaO2ddV9i21brDlAkBO1LFtOW51olSLma3FdNMyX0HHnEKlC5OOvvqlzHJ3s6f2aGeDZEUt7WrMpHjn-5JCVFHvs


Unsurprisingly it’s like an empty playground, no wonder it sounds so bad :)

This proves misrepresentation by Saregama and being here in India, they’ve gotten off with this act of deception for quite some time. For music aficionados like us, this is very sad :(
 
When it comes to old music (pre 60's), the best quality is found on the movie DVD (although it's running at a 4% speed gain), it contains music from the actual score. But the actual source (in the form of spools) is lost to create the movie audio and all other formats like vinyl record or CD are analogue mastering and copying from the DVD audio. And there's a hell lot of meddling in that.
Sometimes the tuning is bad, pitch is increased, Speed shift 2-4%, digital tempo cleaning etc.
And that highly depends upon the mastering engineer and what the team deemed suitable for listening at that time.

I've purchased around 550+ HD music files from saregama. My purchases can probably go as a test case here that the music quality is very dynamic with majority of it on the worse side. (Jagjit Singh's Kahkashan is much, much better on the CD, so are songs from hum kisi se Kim nahin)
Check this post by Venkatcr: Click here

Some timeless classics are very well mastered and you may feel that they are better in quality at Saregama, but wait till you hear the DVD audio, you'll start identifying the differences... Instruments and the natural grunge/heaviness/subtly in a singer's voice are clearer and more recognisable in the DVD audio of even Sholay.

As described by prepress here, A good example of this is the movie "Daag" (Rajesh Khanna). All songs has double echo/vocal which is very annoying (Mere Dil Mein Aaj Kya Hai)
But in video, all are in single vocals and sounds amazing

So as far as buying from Saregama is concerned.
Simple avoid and forget about it. It's pathetic and a waste of your money.

The same amount of money invested in CD or Vinyls will provide you a much more satisfactory listening experience (even if you're not keen of HiFi listening system)
 
On Gaana.com, a subscriber can download the songs and can keep the files with him, only as far as he continues as a subscriber. If he stops the subscription, then he couldn't listen the downloaded files. So, for the songs , the payment should be done for years as long as we live! Is it worth?
 
On Gaana.com, a subscriber can download the songs and can keep the files with him, only as far as he continues as a subscriber. If he stops the subscription, then he couldn't listen the downloaded files. So, for the songs , the payment should be done for years as long as we live! Is it worth?
Hi
Sunder
You can play downloaded songs using internet when you stop subscribing. I had tested it when the pack with gana got exhausted. But I like it's services so want to continue .one thing I have forgotten to mention. You can't download any song when you are not a subscriber any more. But then you can play songs if you have data pack in your mobile or computer.
Regards
 
Hi
Sunder
You can play downloaded songs using internet when you stop subscribing. I had tested it when the pack with gana got exhausted. But I like it's services so want to continue .one thing I have forgotten to mention. You can't download any song when you are not a subscriber any more. But then you can play songs if you have data pack in your mobile or computer.
Regards
After stopping subscription, are you playing downloaded version (300 kbps) or off the internet (128 kbps)?
 
After stopping subscription, are you playing downloaded version (300 kbps) or off the internet (128 kbps)?
Hi
Nature lover
After stopping subscription I played the downloaded songs but don't know whether those are 300kbps or 128 kbps. Even can't remember the sq difference. Besides I want to go off topic here.If you are a gana user please download Tagore's Bhanusingher padavali .Today I have downloaded it and enjoyed it a lot. So want to share this info for the Tagore enthusiasts like you ,sandeepss,Hiten and so on. The sq of both the part of the song narrative is very good and is better than the CD that also I have.
Enjoy listening
 
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