This post will probably be of a lot of interest to audiophiles with high-end audio equipment, but I think that just about everyone will be able to hear the following pieces on whatever player that they've got, albeit with a lesser sound quality than the files are capable of providing.
I've learned of some
freebies of high quality classical audio pieces. There's a lot that I don't know yet, but I think that I know enough to tell you about them, and for you to download and listen to them.
They come courtesy of Channel Classics Records, a music publishing business. It appears that they offer these
freebies periodically--they call a download of this kind the "free (test) download of the moment, in 44.1, 96, 192 kHz & DSD." It will be necessary for other MobileReaders to do any explaining of the latter part of that might be necessary--it's way above my pay grade. But one thing that I do understand is that it's talking about high-quality audio.
You may see something about this being a
free "track." This is not talking about a sample, excerpt, preview or anything like that--the
free track is a complete piece, that comes from an album. It's just like the other free classical music pieces that we get and are posted on this thread, in that regard.
I don't have any idea how long a "download of the moment" typically lasts, but at this moment the download is of a J.S. Bach piece -
The Art of Fugue, performed by Rachel Podger (on the violin), and is described as "track one," which possibly means the first track of the album. I may have to monitor the website to find out about when a "download of the moment" changes. The information also may be included in a newsletter that Classical Records will offer to sign you up for.
The download is in zip form. Let me list the files that I now have on my hard drive, after unpacking the zip file:
01_Bach Art of Fugue-Contrapunctus 1-192.flac
01_Bach Art of Fugue-Contrapunctus 1-44.flac
01_Bach Art of Fugue-Contrapunctus 1-96.flac
01_Bach Art of Fugue-Contrapunctus 1-dsd.dff
So, you get the same Bach song, with the same violinist performing and all that, only that Channel Classics gives the song to you in four different qualities of sound (I suppose that that is why Channel Classics Records calls this a "test" track--it is for you to test and see which one sounds the best to you on the equipment that you've got). In addition, there is, in the zip file, a PDF of a booklet that is chock full of information about the artist and other stuff.
Here's how to download the zip file for yourself:
1) Navigate to
the Channel Classics Records homepage.
2) It will help you if you will expand your window fully, if it isn't already, to fill up your whole screen.
3) On the righthand side, you should see a dialogue box about the download. It may look attached to the main content of the webpage, or it may partially cover it. Either way, I don't think that you can miss it. It is possible that all that you will see is a vertical column of four plus ( + ) signs; if so click on the top plus ( + ) sign.
4) You should see a bright red button that says, "Free (test) Download of the Month." Click on it. The download should begin immediately.
5) Unzip the file. You should see a list of the four pieces, along with other things that you might be interested in.
BTW--Channel Classic Records says that they will send you other free download offers if you sign up for their newsletter.
Hope this is helpful to one or more MobileReaders. If you run into any problems, let me know and I will see if I can help fix them.