Verve Music has announced it is making available recordings at 96/24 HD quality sound. This includes "many of the world's chart-topping and seminal jazz recordings". This is a huge jump from your standard CD rate of 44.1/16. While this sounds really exciting for new recordings, I wonder how effective the conversion from tape masters to HD quality sound will be. I have been on jazz sessions recorded at 88.2 and I must say there is a audible difference in quality. You can hear the individual quality of the bass, the shimmer of the cymbals, the air moving around the instruments. With an acoustic band this is wonderful. I just question the validity of creating HD recordings of Verve's classic catalog. I already own these recordings on LP & CD and other than the once convenience of the CD and its lack of skips and pops, this digital upgrade in my opinion added little if any improvement to the recordings. In fact to my ears it just highlighted the limitations of the recording process of the era.
So as for this announcement I see two things happening.
1. A whole lot of noise reduction.
2. A label trying to sell the same catalog for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th time.
78, 33 1/3, Mono, Stereo, Cassette, CD, MP3, HDTrack.
