Digital Music Fundamentals

There is nothing like attending a live performance. But there's much to be said for exploring music on a home audio system. And if one is serious, it makes sense to assemble the best equipment one can afford in the pursuit.

 

Of course, afford-ability is in the eye of the beholder.

Digital Music - Downloading and Streaming:

• All of us of a certain age have gone through the experience of LP records, Cassette tapes, maybe even 8-tracks, and CD's.
• Now the era of the CD is giving way to digital music.
  
• Actually, a CD is a form of digital music. Every second of music on a CD consists of (about) 44,100 16-bit numbers. (*).
  
• Now, with the Internet, we can experience a new means of accessing digital music. There are essentially two ways to do so:
• Locate and download the music, and store it on a hard disk drive somewhere in your home. Later, you can play it as often as you like using appropriate software without needing to use the Internet.
  
• Using an appropriate program, access the music somewhere on the Internet and play it directly through your computer speakers or some other, perhaps more capable equipment in your home. This is called "Streaming".

About Downloading:

• I prefer to do things legally, so I choose to pay for music downloads.
• You can buy music through Apple iTunes, but it is not CD quality.
  
• Here is a website that lists a number of sites from which you can pay for and download music.
• I have used HDTracks in the past, but became frustrated that they often said the album was unavailable in Canada.
• My preference has now become ProStudioMasters which is in Canada.
• Look here to see how you could choose to download Shania Twains Greatest Hits for $17.59. The options AIFF 96.0 kHz | 24-bit and FLAC 96.0 kHz | 24-bit need some explanation. AIFF is for Apple. FLAC is for non-Apple. I use FLAC. The 96.0 kHz | 24-bit part refers to resolution. This is higher-than-CD resolution, which would be 44.1 kHz | 16-bit.The difference between CD quality and higher-than-CD quality is subtle and you won't notice it unless you have audio equipment that is capable of playback with sufficient resolution. When you are able to hear the difference, it will show up as cymbals that are more detailed, bass that is punchier, etc. You won't hear any difference through the speakers on your laptop or even through a fairly run-of-the-mill sound system. ProStudioMasters only offers albums in Hi-Resolution format. And sometimes albums are available in even higher resolutions, such as 192 kHz | 24-bit as as seen here. You can get CD resolution at HDTracks, but like I say, they too often claim not available in your country. Here's an example.

About Streaming:

• Streaming comes in a few flavours:
• You can play streams that are like radio stations ... you hear what they are playing. If you don't like it, change stations.
• You can play streams where you choose what you want to listen to right now.
• You can find free streams, or streams that you must pay for to hear.
• Here are some you can try (or consider paying for):
• TuneIn Radio. I like TSF Jazz in Paris. It's free. Here is Mix 106.5 here in Owen Sound. Click the links to listen
  
• Spotify. Here you get to pick what you want to hear. The free version has ads ... see Or sign up for our free service in small print . For about $10/month, you can avoid the ads. See https://www.spotify.com/ca-en/premium/?checkout=false. The music is in less-than-CD quality.
• Tidal. Here too you get to pick what you want to hear.This is the one I subscribe to. Costs me $20/month. The music is CD quality, and perhaps higher than CD. Remember, you need the right equipment to hear the difference.

About Playing the Music:

• You can play the music through your computer.
• For TuneIn, just click the play button and you should hear it through the speakers.
• Same for Spotify if you signup for a free account.
• To play downloads, you may need to do a bit of research. Try Google'ing flac playback windows
• But listening through your computer speakers is not very rewarding for two reasons:
• computer speakers are pretty small.
• Digital audio must be converted to analog before it can be played through speakers. This requires a component called a digital to analog converter, or a DAC. The DAC inside a computer is not the greatest.
• Also, if you are going to play a lot of music, you might prefer to have equipment dedicated to that purpose rather than tying up your computer.
  

About Dedicated Equipment Options:

• I will go into this in more detail in another post, but in summary:
• If you have the bucks, you can buy equipment to do this off-the-shelf.
• For example Sonos has options for wireless speakers, TV and upgrading your stereo.
• Another product range, this one from a Canadian company is BlueSound. They have similar offerings.
• This can get expensive. See Toronto's Bay Bloor Radio here for Sonos and here for BlueSound.
• If you don't have the bucks and aren't afraid of a bit of tinkering, you can use a Raspberry Pi with HiFiBerry addons. There are a lot of examples of how to do this here.
  

Cheers!

• (*)A bit is a binary digit, a zero or a one. Picking a number out of a hat, our number 25,167 expressed in 16 bits is 0110001001001111. So in playing a CD, the player rips off 44,100 such animals and converts the numbers to a sound wave.

• There is nothing magic about 44,100 nor 16-bit numbers. These numbers were chosen so that a CD could contain about 70 minutes of music. Just as with pictures and videos, if you have more pixels in a square inch, the picture will be crisper. And if each pixel can be one of millions of colours, the picture will be brilliantly coloured. The 44,100 is the sound equivalent of pixels per square inch and the 16-bit part is like the number of colours each pixel can be. Less bits means fewer colours or sounds.