Stereophile: Music Giants Promotes Distributed Hi-Rez Digital

I missed a call when I was showering this morning. It was producer Elliot Mazer (right) asking me to visit him at the Music Giants booth, where he and Halcro’s Philip O’Hanlon (left) had something they wanted to me to see (and hear). Music Giants specializes in hi-rez music downloads and Elliot, it turns out, has been spending a lot of time working on transcoding SACD masters to 24/96 or 24/88.2 LPCM for record companies who are starting to realize that they might not ever get back their investment in the new formats from sales of physical discs.

At CEDIA, the two had a system based on Windows Media Player running on an inexpensive PC feeding a Wadia DAC, which in turn fed a headphone amp driving Shure’s new E500PTH in-ear headphones. The hi-rez files were encoded as WMA lossless files and sounded very sweet. Even with variable bit rate lossless encoding, the bit rate for Miles Davis’s "Blue In Green" was, according to the WMA display, a thumping 2609 kbps.

With current music servers providing CD quality music around the home, Music Giants feels that it’s time to take the hi-rez step, and has signed contracts with a number of high-profile custom-install companies.

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Reader Comments

Posted Sun Jan14, 2007, 10:58 AM — By Wayne Drazek

Hello Big Brother!! This is from their Privacy Policy: "... If you have registered with us, we collect information about what music files you possess on the PC you use to sign up with our service and any other PC's networked to that PC. We also collect information regarding where you obtained that music. We may collect information concerning licenses to access music obtained from third party providers. We collect information concerning the bit rate of the encode of music files contained on your PC and/or any PC connected to that PC." I wouldn't trade with these rats if they were the only online source out there. And yes, all my music is legal.

Posted Sat Jun23, 2007, 9:31 AM — By Christo Barnard

We're sorry, only Microsoft Internet Explorer is supported. I'm sorry, then I do NOT support you!

Posted Mon Dec31, 2007, 10:53 PM — By Mark Holli

DRM protected, will not play on computer fed server's (Slim etc) That will sink the ship, rather buy the CD.

Posted Sun Jan20, 2008, 8:10 PM — By VAM

I just went to their site. There was absolutely no help that I could find - no FAQ, no "Support" or "Customer Service" link, nothing. I have no idea what I will actually be buying. Also, the fact that they only support IE is pretty sad. You know, I'd LOVE to find a way to buy high-bitrate music legally off the Internet. Apparently this ain't it - or maybe it is and I can't tell 'cause there's no info! Sigh...

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