New York City — Chesky Records, the music label that produced the first music-only DVD-Video discs in the 96kHz/24-bit PCM format, is bringing 96/24’s better-than-CD fidelity to downloaded music.
Chesky launched 96/24 DVD discs in the late 1990s, and although it no longer markets such discs, it is resurrecting 96/24 music for the post-physical-media age by adding 96/24 music to its new download store. The 96/24 files are in the losslessly compressed FLAC format at Chesky’s HDtracks.com site, which launched a few months ago with CD-quality tracks in the FLAC format and in the uncompressed-PCM-based AIFF format. Songs are also available in the lossy 320kbps MP3 format.
All songs are free of DRM (digital rights management) technology, downloadable to PCs and Macs and transferable to any portable device supporting the store’s formats.
The site offers “thousands” of CD-quality albums at $11.98/album or $1.49/track, Chesky co-founder David Chesky told TWICE. About 60 96/24 albums are available at $15.98/album or $2.49/track. Consumers who purchase complete albums get a PDF file containing cover art and liner notes.
Music from audiophile labels such as Chesky, 2L, Dorian, and Reference Recordings are available on the site. Artists include Johnny Winter, Chuck Mangione, McCoy Tyner and The Kinks.
“High-res files on hard drives are a major step forward in sound,” Chesky said. The 96/24 tracks, he said, sound “exactly like the master recordings I was accustomed to hearing in the studio.”
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