2015/2016/2017 Reissues Available as Downloads

Captain Bacardi

Well-Known Member
Just noticed that the 26 titles due for release are now available at iTunes. I guess this is the first way to release these titles. They do include Summertime, The Brass Are Comin' and Main Event Live.
 
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SOURCES

For high-res lossless downloads, you can find these at HDTracks, Acoustic Sounds, 7Digital, and at Qobuz (for EU/UK customers).

For CD-resolution lossless downloads, these are found at Qobuz, 7Digital, and the Tidal Store (you do not need to be a Tidal subscriber to purchase.)

Lossy downloads (MP3, M4A, etc.) can be found at the usual places like Amazon, Google Play Store, iTunes, etc.

Streaming versions are available on Tidal, Spotify, Google Play Store, Apple Music, and others.

If you find other digital onlines sources, feel free to add them at the bottom of this thread, and I will update this post.
 
They are starting to appear at other download sources, including Amazon, today as well. It is taking them a bit to get up to speed, but, they'll be there. Today is the street date for these reissues.

HDTracks is getting a trickle. Here is what they have so far. More to follow. With high-res, I won't even be bothering with CDs. It's the best way to hear all of the hard work @badazz and everyone else did on these albums.

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It would be interesting to know, in say a year from now, which albums sold the best and which formats did the most business. I'll bet the Whipped Cream CD is the #1 product.
 
It would be interesting to know, in say a year from now, which albums sold the best and which formats did the most business. I'll bet the Whipped Cream CD is the #1 product.

It always has been the top seller. And so, surprisingly, is Definitive Hits. This is going back a decade or more on the Amazon sales through this site that I have monitored--both are the top two Herb titles. (If I had to guess, Going Places would be third.) It is quite an honor for a 50 year old album to be the one that Herb is associated with!

Vinyl has actually been on an uprise, really the only physical format showing any sort of growth. As far as selling units of vinyl, they are going to be a limited edition so when they sell out, sales will likely have trickled off, and I could see maybe Whipped Cream getting a repress, but the other ones may not generate enough volume to make it worthwhile. In short....if you see it, buy it!

I know the average consumer will go for the lossy downloads. But I know others are tired of lousy sounding downloads and hopefully will learn about HDTracks and download lossless from there. I am doing my part via this forum and the tijuanabrass.com site to educate the public about the availability of the lossless versions. Given all the hard work @badazz and company put into these, it is great news to be able to hear what they heard, in the studio, when restoring these. You don't get that with lossy files from itunes or Amazon.
 
I just looked at the HDTracks site. Seems kind of high priced for these - $17.98?! I'll just go with CDs. (Or do the HDTracks sound better than CDs?) I'm curious though, why different sample rates? Come Fly With Me has the lowest sample rate, 44.1/24,and Whipped Cream the highest at 96/24. The other three old albums are at 88/24. Why the differences?
 
I just looked at the HDTracks site. Seems kind of high priced for these - $17.98?! I'll just go with CDs. (Or do the HDTracks sound better than CDs?) I'm curious though, why different sample rates? Come Fly With Me has the lowest sample rate, 44.1/24,and Whipped Cream the highest at 96/24. The other three old albums are at 88/24. Why the differences?

No idea. I am going to try to find out, though. I know it depends on the sampling rates and bitrates that they were originally digitized at. The low-end standard for most pro studio equipment today is 24-bit/96kHz. Although in some cases, 88.2kHz or 176.4kHz are used since they are even multiples of the CD-spec 44.1kHz sampling rate.

$17.98 for high-res is not a bad deal IMHO--try buying an audiophile SACD or BluRay for anything under $25. Yes, they sound noticeably better but you really need to have the equipment to play them back (especially, some sort of device that will play these without downsampling them, as many of them do). I could go into it but it'd take several long, boring paragraphs. :D (Short version--they are a truer representation of the original analog signal, and once you know what to listen for, it sounds more natural and far less fatiguing.)

If this is the "last ride" of the TJB, I have every intention of getting the best possible versions out there. If I ever wanted to burn them to CD, it's easy to downsample all to 44.1/16. (Or something like CD Architect will automatically do that conversion.)

I do plan on a high-res primer (to post in Off-Topic) so it all makes sense.
 
Just noticed that the 26 titles due for release are now available at iTunes. I guess this is the first way to release these titles. They do include Summertime, The Brass Are Comin' and Main Event Live.

Thank you so much for the heads up on this! I've been wanting a digital copy of MAIN EVENT LIVE for thirty years! Just downloaded it this morning, and I was blown away at how cheap it was ($6.99 for the whole album)!
Hearing "Foreign Natives" in full digital with no ticks, pops or white noise... LOUD, through the headphones... is a long-awaited joyful experience. And this album contains [what I've always felt is] the best version of "Besame Mucho" - ever. The whole album is top notch though. Definitely worth checking out if someone is just starting to explore Herb's post-TJB work.
 
My Amazon download of "Warm" lists "The Sea is my Soil" as "The Sea is my Soul"...but it sounds great.

I know what you mean, Steven. Of course, you can always change the title info after you download it. When I downloaded MAIN EVENT LIVE, I noticed that Hugh's name was misspelled as 'Masakela' instead of 'Masekela'. One letter off, but I couldn't leave it alone. That kind of thing would bug me from here to eternity!
 
It would be interesting to know, in say a year from now, which albums sold the best and which formats did the most business. I'll bet the Whipped Cream CD is the #1 product.

According to Capt. Badazz, before the release of the re-issues, the split was CD - 85% and download - 15%. We'll have to wait and see how HD and vinyl fits into the mix.
 
I will say that "The Sea is My Soil" still has the flawed (distorted) bass in the first couple of minutes of the track. At this age (45+ years), there is bound to be tape degradation and other issues that are beyond anyone's ability to fix. That is one reason that, despite my eventually getting the HDTracks versions, the original vinyl will still be my go-to version on how these albums originally sounded.

Please note that we have some "Official Review" threads in the works for these new releases, so you may want to comment there again once they are up.

Let me just say that I've pretty much exhausted my ears over the past two days, playing through all of the new digital remasters. (I did not yet touch on the Almo Sounds titles, but given their age and digital source, not much will change on those, if anything.)
 
I'm starting to get confused over what version is which on some of these albums. In the not so distant past, the only copy I had of Warm was a cassette that I had copied from an 8-track! Then later I found a "record search" outfit that claimed to be able to find anything, so I asked them to find me Warm on vinyl...which they did...for $40. But at least now I had a good clean copy, but it had a loud "pop" right in one of the silent breaks on "The Sea Is My Soil" which drove me nuts. To this day I still sometimes hear that pop when I'm playing one of the new pristine digital versions!
 
I'm starting to get confused over what version is which on some of these albums.

I hear ya. That is why I totally scrapped the old tijuanabrass.com discography and am rebuilding it to coincide with these new releases, and am also posting "official review" threads to match. I know Alpert's own site will do a great job with the current issues, but 50+ years of Tijuana Brass albums are out there in the wild, and the choices are many. If we can help clear up that confusion a little, and help someone find an album without having to spend a small fortune on it, then we've done our small part.
 
Excellent! (Although my wallet doesn't think so! :laugh: ) That doesn't leave too many to go. The first three TJBs, Xmas and SRO. If the three Almo Sounds come along also, that'll be 28 total.

Whipped Cream is in their top sellers list BTW. Nice to see that!
 
I'm tempted to shell out for these HD tracks and archive them in my safe deposit box or something. I probably don't have a stereo system that would take full advantage of them now but who's to say I won't when I'm in the retirement home? (Providing I still have hearing when I get there!)

But then there is the "packaging fan" part of me that wants to collect all the new packages.

Conflicts!
 
One attractive feature of HDTracks is that you have the highest resolution available for home playback, but it can easily be downsampled in software to burn onto a CD, and can also be converted to your preferred lossy format for portable devices--WMA, MP3, AAC, you name it. Starting with the best possible copy does provide a lot of flexibility. So @Mike Blakesley if you ever decide to get copies for the vault :D , it's not like you'd be stuck with anything unusable.

I was just thinking this evening--the first titles I want to get are You Smile, Coney, Main Event and Fandango. It's so hard to choose just a few! I will of course watch to see if any deals ever come up, and will pass them along here.
 
First of all, I have started a series of articles on high-resolution music. The first you can find here:

http://forum.amcorner.com/threads/about-high-resolution-audio.14799/

In a week or three, I will have another that lists different ways to play back these files. Since this is uncharted territory for many of our visitors here, I feel it will be helpful to show exactly what is available in terms of formats, and hardware (and software) to play them back on.

Second...my daily torture. :laugh: Seeing all of these in HDTracks just boggles my mind. Wanting to get all of them, but the wallet says "Ummm, nope" for now. :wink:

http://www.hdtracks.com/music/artist/view/id/8400/

HDTracks is now up to 26 titles; In The Mood and Steppin' Out have been added. Here's a screen grab of today's choices:

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Also, I did not realize this but you can download the lossless FLAC version from Tidal. And from what I can tell, you do not need to be a Tidal member to purchase from the store. However, the cost is steep: $19.79 was the price that came up when I spot-checked a few albums. (You can also get the MP3 version for $10.99).

This link should list all of Alpert's albums on Tidal's store: http://tidal.com/us/store/artist/3607411

For a few dollars more, I think I'd go with the HDTracks. Or, wait for that price to drop, or for 44.1/16 lossless FLAC to appear elsewhere at a more reasonable price.

But at least if you really want one or two of the titles in lossless format, you now have the option to do so. I really wish Amazon would get on the lossless bandwagon.
 
Very helpful. Been reading the info on high-resolution music. I definitely want to get some of these but wasn't sure of the best way to store/play. (Only problem - Herb's been so prolific that we're all gonna end up in the poorhouse. :wink: Of course, I can think of much worse stuff to spend my money on.)
 
I think the key thing is to have a system where you know you can hear the difference between the high-res files and normal files. Otherwise, it's good to have the files, but if you aren't noticing a difference, it might not be worth investing in the hardware to play them back with. That is one reason I wanted to expand my articles--if some visitors feel they'll never have the equipment to play the files back and hear the difference, there is no sense in going that route.

Although even on my system as of about three years ago (before I got the Oppo), I was playing Moondance, side one, and a friend had entered the room and listened to it. They mentioned what was different, and guessed it was vinyl (it was the Hoffman/Gray 180g remaster) as it sounded more "natural" than the digital version I had played a few months earlier. The same can be said for higher-resolution files, whether they're 24bit/96kHz, or the DSD digital from SACDs, to me they sound more natural and relaxed.

Vinyl technically is the highest resolution you can buy, but also comes with the drawbacks that go along with it (it can be scratched, it can be noisy from dirt, it could get warped, it sounds different on all systems depending on the playback equipment, etc.). Aside from tape (which is no longer popular), vinyl is the only 100% analog playback medium out there, and analog is what digital uses as the source. Having Bernie's vinyl masterings of these TJB albums directly from the original masters is the closest we'll ever get to hearing what is really on those masters. :)

And yes, I'll definitely hit the poorhouse now that 26 titles are available on HDTracks. :laugh:
 
Since I'm upgrading my system anyway I figured what the hey. In for a penny in for a pound. I love the new turntable. I feel like I'm going backward in time with the records. This is my first experience with the 180g vinyl. It's different. Of course, you can't take that along in the car. (Nevermind the car turntables that were available for a while. I figure that got interesting when crossing the railroad tracks.) Off topic, but I mentioned getting new records to a friend who wasn't aware that Herb was still recording and he's now gone out on a mission to buy some stuff. :uhhuh:
 
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