We were looking at the website of the Retrospect Ensemble (previously known as the King’s Consort) and noticed that their recordings are to be published by Linn Records, a Glasgow-based record label.
It looks like Linn publish some great artists as well as Retrospect, but what’s particularly exciting is that they offer much higher-quality downloadable music than any other label I’ve seen. If you’re like me, you’ve been resistant to buying downloadable music because of the low sound quality. It’s always stored in MP3 format, which is lower quality than CDs, so it makes more sense to buy CDs — and then if you want the convenience of keeping the music on a computer, you can copy them over using a CD-quality “lossless” format like FLAC.
Linn make this messing around with bits of plastic unnecessary. They offer not only MP3s, but (for a small premium) downloads of FLAC or lossless WMA recordings. But the icing on the cake is that for a bit more — quite a bit more, to be honest — they sell what they call “studio master” quality downloads (24 bit, 88kHz), which are even higher quality than normal CDs (about the same as SACD, maybe slightly higher).
We’ve bought Retrospect’s recording of Purcell’s Sonatas in IV parts in full Studio Master FLAC quality, and it’s gorgeous, worth every penny. So now the only thing limiting our record collection is our internet connection and our bank balance…