Channel Classics Storewide Sale on 380 Albums including Surround SACDs - 15% Off

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bmoura

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Channel Classics is testing a new website which is now in beta. To celebrate, Channel Classics is offering 15% Off all of the music (CDs, SACDs, DSD downloads and FLAC downloads) on the beta site - 380 albums to date - with offer code BETA2017

New Channel Classics Beta Website Sale.jpg

http://beta.channel.nl/catalogue/
 
So, I'm going to be the jerk who says this, but I find the model of offering DSD downloads for twice the price as SACDs to be seriously frustrating. I understand it's expensive to produce recordings, but look at the model BIS uses with eClassical - much lower pricing and frequent half-offs, leads me to spend a lot more money there.

And then there's the whole issue that Channel only provides DSF files that are only useful with a very specialized playback setup. I went through a serious rigmarole with the (excellent, btw) Ivan Fischer Composer's Portrait DSD download getting it to play in multichannel, finally figuring out that there's an undocumented ability to burn a dual-layer DSD disc and then play it in multichannel via a PS3. I know this would be controversial, but it would be very handy to provide a compiled SACD image file to purchasers so they can create a non-spec SACD that will play in older machines like the Oppo 83 and 93.

Also, the site seems to have a bug - I tried to purchase 4 SACDs, and when I select credit card or paypal, in both cases I suspect the site is supposed to reveal a place to enter that information, but nothing happened.

Edit to add: oh, also, the checkout page is not secure. That probably needs to be fixed ASAP.
 
So, I'm going to be the jerk who says this, but I find the model of offering DSD downloads for twice the price as SACDs to be seriously frustrating. I understand it's expensive to produce recordings, but look at the model BIS uses with eClassical - much lower pricing and frequent half-offs, leads me to spend a lot more money there.

I agree 100% with you. This is why I like buying online from NativeDSD, BIS and Chandos.
 
I agree 100% with you. This is why I like buying online from NativeDSD, BIS and Chandos.

Yes, you do have to compare pricing and features on the different music download sites.

With NativeDSD, they offer special pricing when you buy the Stereo and Multichannel DSD downloads together (the "ST+MCH" option in their store) and they throw in the lower DSD bit rates (DSD64 and DSD128) for Free when you buy DSD128 and DSD256 editions of albums.

Those features/options aren't offered at most music download sites.
 
So, I'm going to be the jerk who says this, but I find the model of offering DSD downloads for twice the price as SACDs to be seriously frustrating. I understand it's expensive to produce recordings, but look at the model BIS uses with eClassical - much lower pricing and frequent half-offs, leads me to spend a lot more money there.

And then there's the whole issue that Channel only provides DSF files that are only useful with a very specialized playback setup. I went through a serious rigmarole with the (excellent, btw) Ivan Fischer Composer's Portrait DSD download getting it to play in multichannel, finally figuring out that there's an undocumented ability to burn a dual-layer DSD disc and then play it in multichannel via a PS3. I know this would be controversial, but it would be very handy to provide a compiled SACD image file to purchasers so they can create a non-spec SACD that will play in older machines like the Oppo 83 and 93.

Also, the site seems to have a bug - I tried to purchase 4 SACDs, and when I select credit card or paypal, in both cases I suspect the site is supposed to reveal a place to enter that information, but nothing happened.

Edit to add: oh, also, the checkout page is not secure. That probably needs to be fixed ASAP.

There are sites that offer DSD downloads - and other music downloads - for more than the price of an SACD. And others that offer them at a very reasonable price.
A good comparison is the difference in price between the same album in Stereo and Surround DSD on the Primephonic ($49.98) and NativeDSD ($25.61) web sites in Stereophile magazine.
http://www.stereophile.com/content/primephonics-hi-rez-classical-downloads

On playing DSF files, DSF64 files work fine on over 500 DACs and Players including the Oppo 103 and 105 disc players.
So it's not that specialized.

There are sites that offer DSD Downloads in .ISO image format, like Pentatone, which also operates the Primephonic download site for listeners who prefer their downloads in a file by file format.
There are free apps that convert ISOs to DSF files. Even so, Pentatone received many complaints when launching their download feature for only offering DSF files as ISOs.
Bottom line: when it comes to music downloads, some people like ISOs but most do not.

I'll send your tech issue and beta site feedback over to the Channel Classics support folks ([email protected]) http://beta.channel.nl/general-info/contact-us/
I'm sure they will look into these issues.
 
An update of sorts - a friend had a Sony BDP-6500 that was acting funny, and he gave it to me. The optical drive has a problem but the USB port works fine - I listened to the multichannel DSD Fischer Composer's Portrait off a USB stick, and the Sony successfully fed the DSD signal over HDMI to my AVR. I put the AVR (Yamaha RX-A3000) in pure direct, and the sound was glorious.
 
An update of sorts - a friend had a Sony BDP-6500 that was acting funny, and he gave it to me. The optical drive has a problem but the USB port works fine - I listened to the multichannel DSD Fischer Composer's Portrait off a USB stick, and the Sony successfully fed the DSD signal over HDMI to my AVR. I put the AVR (Yamaha RX-A3000) in pure direct, and the sound was glorious.

That's great news.
The Channel Classics Multichannel DSD recordings are excellent. Always worth a listen.

This also shows one of challenges with Optical Disc players (CD, SACD, DVD, Blu Ray, etc.)
The most common issue with them, by far, is trouble with the optical disc player mechanism vs. the player's electronics.

One reason why some audio hardware makers haven't been saddened at all by the decline in optical disc sales.
Moving to all-electronic products (without dealing with optical disc player mechanisms) makes their jobs much easier.
 
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