Muse The 2nd Law 24/96
I notice Muse have released their new album in 24/96 FLAC, £11.99 from muse.mu, anyone listened to it before I take a punt?
Twelve quid for a 24/96, that's more like it, props to Muse - hope it sells by the yottabyte-load and other artists take note.
FWIW, iTunes samples sound promising, but hope there're no cheesy slabs of Chopin and 'odes to Queen', a la The Resistance 
S*d it, for £11.99 it's worth a punt...
Sigh, something tells me their site's not really set up for hi-res music...
Well, I suppose this is the day of release, maybe I'll leave it a week or so! Or order the vinyl version...
Muse's PR rolls up sleeves:
"Unprecedented demand for new Muse album crashes band's website..."
Just having a listen on CD and sounds promising, I have all their albums and yes The Resistance is my least favourite. This seems to have something a little bit different about it. Still a massive bag of prog, but he is a talented git.
A little bit more subtle and restrained than their previous album, maybe less is more. Will listen again later.
Edit : with the exception of track 12 where it appears more is in fact more, and a straight jacket is required as dubstep meets prog!
No need to take a punt, it's on Spotify. Try it, then buy it. By which time the download should be working a bit better as the early birds have been satisfied.
And yes I know it's not at 24/96, but surely no one would buy a high quality version of music they don't like? (Ok, maybe some will 
)
Silll downloading, although at last (on about 5th attempt) getting a vaguely reasonable down-speed.
No need to take a punt, it's on Spotify. Try it, then buy it. By which time the download should be working a bit better as the early birds have been satisfied.
And yes I know it's not at 24/96, but surely no one would buy a high quality version of music they don't like? (Ok, maybe some will )
I've heard a number of the tracks already, and I like what I've heard so far, it was more a question of whether the extra quality of the 24/96 is worth the effort as it won't play on my Sonos (but will on my phone!) unless I down-wossname it and keep two copies, so I just want to know if I need to bother or just go with the CD.
Had a brief blast of it on the Naim NDS this morning and it certainly sounds big and impressive, though I didn't have the 16/44.1 version for comparison. Will try to find time to do some more listening and report back.
Be interesting to know if there's significant differences in the mastering, such as dynamic range and all that.
I'm waiting for the remaster........
The Resistance was my least favourite from their albums and I saw them before they had even released Showbiz.
I've listened to the snippets and won't be bothering.
Kudos for the 24bit release tho.
This from Muse customer service:
"Yesterday we understand some users experienced issues with the HD download freezing up or timing out and acting erratically. Essentially our Digital Service Provider (who support the downloads on the webstore) had a bug in their system (related to allowing the downloads to be pause/resume-able) that ended up erroneously maxing out the download server, and ultimately leading to all the freezing/dropouts. We would like to apologise unreservedly for any issues you may have experienced and the frustration this may have caused. They are bringing on additional resources and trying to sort out the bug to address the issues, but in the meantime, you will be able redeem your HD download via another service using this page..."
Andrew, how big was the zip file? Just curious to know how long this is going to take...
All I can say is be prepared for a very long download - it's currently running at about 30kbps!
Consulting Editor, What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision/whathifi.com Audio Editor, Gramophone