I
launched Pristine Audio Direct in February 2005 as a sideline to our audio
restoration business, Pristine Audio, and to see whether my theory that
there might be something in this music downloads idea had any groundings
in reality.
After much
hard work and back-of-an-envelope calculations, we went officially live
online on 1st February 2005, with Internet advertising, press releases
and a full catalogue of 12 recordings to choose from!
Exactly one
month and three days later we made our first sale, and a grand total of
€5.23 rolled into our account. I was starting to have my doubts,
cancelled the limo and Caribbean holiday and got back to work...
By the time
I started writing this page, in November 2005, things were rather more
fluid. Our catalogue was much extended, and thanks to the work in particular
of Peter Harrison at disk2disc its growth it seemed to accelerate
every month. We'd joined forces with Chandos to offer our releases through
their own well-stocked web site, and some of my remastered historic recording
were also now available on CDs from Divine Art.
We'd been
well-reviewed in The Gramophone magazine, regularly featuring in their
new downloads section, and in 2006 featured on BBC Radio Three's CD Review
programme. We made new friends around the world - special mentions going
to Bill Rosen fir his regular insightful and educative reviews from California,
and from Don Petter in the UK for the use of his phenomenal LP collection
for forgotten and rare gems (not to mention his huge library of record
catalogues, magazines, books etc.).
Historic
restoration: As much as I enjoy working on early LPs, it's with 78s
that I'm most at home. I developed a general software chain for restoring
the recordings from these vintage discs through many months of research,
and although this undergoes constant refinement, I find I have a toolkit
flexible enough to get the best out of the wide variety of material I
work from. I'm glad there is no simple "press-the-button" answer
to this kind of work, despite what some software vendors may have us believe
- it is with great satisfaction, and often great astonishment, that hours
of painstaking restoration work can generate the results here. And if
you've read this far down, I trust you're enjoying them too (unless you're
only here for Pete's stuff!).
The future: As we come towards the end of 2006 and look into what 2007 holds in store,
it's clear that the whole business of downloading classical music has
come a long way since our rather lonely beginnings! As a result we are
now embarking on an ambitious plan of expansion -as Pristine Classical
- beyond our historical recordings into newly recorded material, both
exclusively through the Pristine Audio label and in conjunction with other
record companies. If you are interested in selling your classical music
downloads on our site, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me!
Andrew
Rose
Pristine Classical, November 2006
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Pristine Classical - bringing you DRM-free historic classical FLAC and MP3 download music since 2005
Save money when you buy several downloads together by using the following discount codes in the shopping cart:
Buy 5 or more - save 10%: Code: 85187052
Buy 10 or more - save 20%: Code: 12W07104
How To Use: Once you've made your selections, copy the correct code into the space marked Discount or Coupon Code in your shopping cart, then click the Update Cart button to apply the discount before heading to the checkout.
N.B. These discounts apply to all our FLAC and MP3 downloads only.
FLAC downloads are lossless - when played or transferred to CD they are identical to our original master files.
Not all players or encoders yet support FLAC, so you may need to convert to WAV or AIFF before playback. Converters are available for PC and MAC
FLAC downloads come as a series of tracks in a ZIP archive file and cost €2 more than their MP3 equivilent
Our MP3 files are encoded at very high variable bitrates using the LAME encoder, widely regarded as the best for this purpose
Each recording is presented as a single, long MP3 which can be split using the CUE sheet at the bottom of the page
CD writing programs such as Nero and Burrrn can write direct to CD using MP3+CUE - see our tutorial
Alternatively a cue splitter program can automatically cut and name the MP3 into individual MP3 tracks
There are also media players which use the MP3+CUE system, allowing gapless playback of all long MP3 files - essential for opera and many other classical works
Our CDs are made to order on highest quality Taiyo Yuden Watershield CD-R discs direct from our master files
CDs are shipped worldwide by Air Mail from France at no extra cost
Standard and Premium CDs hold the same quality of audio - the Standard CD comes in a slip case with no covers, the Premium comes in a jewel case with printed covers
Each page has downloadable covers for printing our at home
These are presented as PDF files for Adobe Reader
Always deselect any resizing options in the print dialogue of Adobe Reader before printing to ensure correct size covers
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