Tag: CD

Spotify to stream at CD quality

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Last week we told you that Spotify was planning on a new range of services for its premium users. Well music lovers, the first of these services is being launched this week – CD quality streams.

Currently Spotify streams the songs in its catalogue at 160kb/s but this will be doubled to 320kb/s using an ogg vorbis q9 codec. Premium users need to change their preferences in order to benefit from this upgrade by ticking the box that says ‘enable high bitrate’ in their options menu.

To begin with the improved quality will only be available on the most popular tunes but will be rolled-out to the whole database within a few weeks. Spotify CEO and founder Daniel Ek says the upgrade means an “unparalleled listening experience” for premium users.

Spotify also claims that the upgrade means they will be offering “the highest streaming rate for any digital music service”.

It will be interesting to see how the market responds to this news. Will the amount of subscribers to Spotify’s premium service increase? Will you be upgrading your account?

Paul Lamkin Digital Music

Denon announces 'entry-level' premium Blu-Ray player

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If this is ‘entry-level’, then I’m mildly terrified to see what Denon would describe as ‘high-end’. Oh wait. Now I’m scared. Anyway, back to the DVD-1800-BD. It’s a Blu-Ray player. It’s got HDMI 1.3a, full bit stream output of Dolby and DTS-HD audio, and 1080p upscaling of DVDs and 2-channel audio. It’s also got a stereo output, if you want to use it as a very expensive CD player.

There’s an SD card slot, too, and it incorporates a secondary audio and video decoder for picture-in-picture functionality, if you can handle watching two things at once. It’s going to be available at the start of December, and cost a whopping ‘entry-level’ £600. It’ll be available in Black and Silver.

Denon

Related posts: Denon shows off super-high-end DVD-3800BD Blu-ray player | Denon DP-200USB turntable – the stylish way to turn your records into mp3s

Duncan Geere Blu-ray, Home audio, Home cinema

Wake up to music – lots of music – with the Sound 40 alarm clock by Roberts

When the people at alarm clock manufacturer Roberts wake up in the morning, they like to do so to a choice of music. Not just some random bleepy-bleeping bleep alarm, or some scratchy FM radio static.. No. They want music. And they want to be able to specifically choose the track to wake up to. Something like ‘Beautiful Day’ by U2, perhaps.. or ‘Wake me up before you Go-Go‘ by Wham, maybe. Anyway, they appear to want us to have the same level of choice too, because they have invented a machine which allows us to do that very thing.

Step forward the ‘Sound 40’, an all new ‘bells and whistles’ alarm clock designed for the 21st Century individual who likes bells and whistles. Check out it’s impressive audio array: DAB radio. In-built CD player. SD media card player. MP3 and WMA playback. An input source for your iPod (or other such music player). And oh yeah, it still has a buzzer, presumably for those poor lost souls who can never decide on anything.

Ryan Weir DAB, Home audio, Reviews