POPULAR STREAMING AUDIO FILES COMPARISON TABLE & SERVICES (see below)

Note: Lossless is better than Lossy or the higher the numbers the better the audio quality

COMPARISON OF NAXOS, PRESTO, SPOTIFY MUSIC STREAMING SERVICES (2023)

Music streaming services on demand in the form of digital audio have been available since at least 2000 but became popular after 2010. Back then the fans of streaming music were listeners of pop, rock and roll, and new wave music and they were satisfied with lossy music quality (usually MP3 formats) as they mainly listened to the music through earphones. Classical music listeners who also listened to other genres of music they soon found out that those fist popular streaming services did include classical music. However, as they were used to high quality sound with music played through home audio systems, they refused to stream and continued buying music CDs. After 2014 though lossless (usually FLAC file format) audio streaming became more and more popular and by 2019 the first classical music only streaming service had appeared in the market. In 2023 all major streaming service companies offer large catalogues of classical music works but there are differences. There are two questions asked about music streaming among classical music fans: audio quality and search results. Classical music is a collection of works that usually consist of more than one music audio tracks as opposed to other music genres that consist only of individual song tracks. Therefore, it is a requirement by classical music lovers that they easily search for and find a specific whole work not just a track (movement) of it. The simple song-singer search type for other genres, in classical music must become a combination of searches such as composer-work, composer-work-orchestra, composer-work-conductor or even work-orchestra or work-conductor and may other possible combinations. This means that all this information found on the back cover of a music CD must be entered as meta-data in the streaming services search box so that they are searchable.

For our 2023 classical music streaming comparison we chose Naxos Music Library, Presto music Streaming and Spotify. They were compared with the use of a laptop connected to the Internet via a fiber direct house to Internet provider connection in Europe and for a period of one month with daily listening sessions (morning, afternoon, evening). The Firefox embedded web player was used and not the special desktop players offered by the individual streaming services so that the comparison is done on equal terms. The laptop was connected via HDMI cable to a TV equipped with digital audio output. A digital audio output cable connected the TV to a Home Theater system of a 5+1 speakers (four column speakers, one flat center speaker and one subwoofer). The listener was positioned between the back set of column speakers and had the ability of enriching the music sound by controlling the audio settings of both the Home Theater system and the TV, which was also equipped with two attached speakers. The streaming services are compared below on content, audio quality, search results, album and track information, personal library, additional features, price, general impression.

Naxos Music Library

Content: Mainly classical music although main stream jazz is also included as well as symphonic arrangements of pop and rock and roll music. Possibly the most comprehensive classical music Catalogue but very recent additions of certain labels might be missing.

Audio quality: The maximum available streaming for all content is at 320 Kbps AAC lossy (Premium option) but the Standard option at 128 Kbps AAC (lossy) was used for the listening sessions. Both options offered are obviously a lot below the CD standard (1411 Kbps) but they are both generally acceptable for general listening. The Premium option is much better and comparable to Spotify 320 Kbps below. There has been no streaming interruption during the listening sessions.

Search Results: Generally, the search results through the general search box are both accurate. The Advanced Search feature allows for the search of a specific recording as the searched for items must be placed in special search boxes (composer, title, soloist, conductor, label etc). The general search from the main page for Bach-Huberman resulted to 7 albums where Bach and Huberman match. The Advanced Search is more accurate and produced only 4 albums of the Bach-Huberman search, all included in the above general search. The additional 3 albums of the general search included one of the performances of the Huberman Festival (Huberman not performing) where Bach was one of the composers performed, and two albums that included both Bach and Beethoven works but Huberman plays in Beethoven performances only.

Album & Track Information: Album cover, back cover (where available), booklet (where available), work title and detailed track information of composer and artists. Playing begins at the first track chosen and continues to the end of the album.

Personal Library: The Favourites feature allows a list of recordings (composers and titles) to be saved for later with album general title and date added. This saved list is non-searchable and can not be sorted or divided into groups (e.g. by composer, artist, music work etc). This Favourites feature is allowed only to students/library card users and is protected by the user's own username and password.

Additional Features: Featured albums, Recent Additions, New Releases per label, News, Categories of classical music (orchestral, concerto, opera etc), content per label, Resources (Dictionary, Musicology, Work analysis per composer), playlists.

Price: Free through an academic library, free with a subscription to a local library, very expensive individual subscription even for Standard quality.

General Impression: The Naxos Music Library is mainly an educational tool and the bulk of its subscribers are academic institutions or libraries. Connection is stable, search results are accurate, personal library feature is basic, a plethora of additional features is available. Firefox web player works fine and audio quality at 128 Kbps is acceptable. The overall listening Experience can be rated at 8 out of 10 with the 320 kbs Premium audio quality enabled.

Notes: A connection will automatically be reset (that is, disconnection) if the user is inactive for 1 hour or after continuous listening of about 2 hours. The user may immediately reconnect.

Presto Music Streaming

Content: Classical Music and Jazz recordings only.

Audio Quality: The full streaming music quality is set at 1411 Kbps (or 44,1 KHz at 16 bit) lossless (full CD-Quality) and up to 9216 Kbps (or 192 KHz at 24 bit) lossless (Hi-Resolution audio quality). This is the highest quality among the three and many other music streaming services. Presto Music Streaming Service uses the “truly scalable MPEG4-SLS codec” which allows for uninterrupted listening under any Internet connection circumstances. In other words. although the actual music streaming is done between 1411 Kbps and 9216 Kbps (or 44,1 KHz and 192 KHz) the audio streaming quality may lower either for a moment or for longer time in case the user's connection bandwidth is less than the required for CD-Quality or higher streaming. However, this reduction will probably never be notice by the listener.There has been no streaming interruption during the listening sessions.

Search Results: The Explore button on the main page can be used for general and specific searches. The Bach-Huberman search produced just one result, Bach played at the Huberman Festival but not by Huberman. This is because Presto Music Streaming Service does not include any Bach works played by Huberman. Violinist Bronisław Huberman (1882-1947) recorded in the historical era of recordings, that is before the 1950s, and therefore his recordings are among those tagged as Historical Recordings. It seems that Presto is not very strong in this part of recordings. However, the search Beethoven-Huberman produced 9 albums and the correct ones, Beethoven played by Huberman. Presto search results are accurate when the user's input is accurate. Just a Huberman search produced works played by Huberman, works played by the Huberman Philharmonic, works played at the Huberman festival and in short any album with Huberman's name among the artists or in its title. The full artist name Bronisław Huberman produced albums with works played by the violinist only. Moreover, the Huberman-Naxos search combination produced only Huberman albums released by Naxos. Moreover, the Huberman-Friedman search combination produced only those albums in which Huberman played the violin and Friedman the piano together. In other words, the Presto general and simple search are very accurate.

Album & Track Information: The album cover and the composer and artist information in the search results pane is complete and easily readable although the layout of the results pane could be improved. The music web player page of an album shows a big album cover picture, composer and artist information, the streaming audio quality of the album (lossless, 44.1 kHz, 16 bit or Hi-RES 44.1 kHz, 24 bit or Hi-RES 96 kHz, 24 bit or Hi-RES 192 kHz, 24 bit) and the individual tracks including composer and artist information along with information regarding the album label and date of release (About button). Booklets (where available) can be downloaded from the individual album page and the user may also choose to read reviews (where available, Review button) or purchase the CD or download the files of the specific album (Purchase button) from Presto Music online shop. The Explore button on the individual album page guides with direct links the listener to similar compositions of the same and other composers, specific genres within the classical music general genre, and to series and labels that point to similar music.

Personal Library: Presto names “Collection” the user's personal library. The heart symbol on every album from the results pane leads to the album page and a click on the heart symbol on that page places the album in the user's personal library. The Collection is divided by Presto into categories: Albums (where all chosen albums are listed), Composers (chosen albums by composer), Artists (chosen albums per artist), Labels (chosen albums per label), Articles (saved Articles from the main page), Purchases (purchased CDs or downloads from the Preston online shop). The user can search the Collection (personal library) and sort it (recently added, titles A-Z or album covers).

Additional Features: The Home page includes New Classical Releases, Classical Articles, Jazz Recordings of the Week, New Jazz releases, Jazz Articles. The Articles button on the main page includes Interviews, Recordings of the week, Recommendations. The Explore button on the main page includes popular composers and the ALL button leads to thousands of composer individual pages with their works available to the user to listen to. The All button on the labels section of the same page leads to a great number of individual labels and their releases and the ALL button of the Classical Genres sections leads to 12 separate sub-genres (orchestral, concertos, chamber, instrumental, opera, ballet, vocal, choral, film, musicals, wind-brass, other) of classical music and relevant recordings.

Price: The subscriber chooses to be charged either monthly or annually and there are special subscriptions with discounts on purchases from the online shop.

General Impression: The CD-quality and Hi-Res music streaming does make a difference in the listening experience and the music streaming industry will definitely go that way in the years to come or even sooner. The connection was absolutely stable and the streaming continuous thanks to the SLS codec used. No deterioration of audio quality was experienced. The search results are accurate and it seems that Presto is very strong in both old and new releases but less so in historical recordings available. The personal library (Collection) categorization method and its search capability is very functional and useful. The overall listening Experience can be rated at 9 out of 10 as there is space for improvements in the presentation part of the search results.

Notes: The test album “Audiophile Hi-Res System Test - Great Sampling Tracks Included” available at Presto can help you test the music quality of samples included in steps of audio sapling from 10Hz to 96000 Hz.

Spotify

Content: Any music genre including a very large collection of classical music recordings

Audio Quality: The monthly renewable subscription is named Premium Individual and comes with the maximum available audio streaming quality of 256 Kbps AAC lossy (browser web player) to 320 Kbps AAC lossy (Spotify desktop application). Some inexplicable music interruptions, a second or so and sometimes longer, were experienced from time to time during the afternoon and evening listening sessions in Europe that were definitely not due to the fiber Internet connection used as it worked fine with the other streaming companies.

Search Results: When it comes to classical music the search results of Spotify are rather disappointing when specific matches are sought for. Although the composer and the artist can be found and some relevant and irrelevant albums are shown, the whole range of relevant results is not shown. It seems that because in the other genres a song could have been released in tenths or even hundreds of versions, the first few are shown and the rest of the matches are left to the user to discover by playing song after song and see the suggestions at the end of the list. The Bach-Huberman search produced as top result the album named by Spotify as “Bach, Schubert and Others: Violin Works” and the cover album image of the actual album “Bronislaw Huberman. The Columbia Recordings with piano”. After the last track of the 2-CD album there is a “More by Bronislaw Huberman” category that points to four additional randomly selected albums (various composers including Bach) in which Huberman participates (some albums shown are excursively devoted to Huberman). The “See Discography” link points to 10 additional to the above 4+1 albums of various composers including Bach. However, at the artist's (Huberman) Spotify page and at the Discography-See All” section there are only 12 albums of various composers including Bach and some of which are not shown in the previous 10+4+1 album list. Remember that the search was specifically for Huberman playing Bach. In other words although it seems that the Bach-Huberman performance and albums are there at Spotify, it is not easy to be discovered. What I found useful was a Google search of "Spotify composer-artist" or Spotify album" that pointed to a correct relevant page.

Album & Track Information: Album cover (small size not expandable), work title and detailed track information of composer and artists are included, some of which may not be visible unless the "Your Library" feature is shrank by the user in case it has previously been expanded. Playing begins at the first track chosen and continues to the end of the album and to other randomly selected by Spotify albums.

Personal Library: The feature is named “Your Library” where you can easily add and subtract albums. It can be sorted by Recently Added, Alphabetical (Album title), Creator (composer). It can also be seen as a list (list view) with thumbnails and album information or as a list of album covers and album title first words and composer full name (grid view). It uses a lot the playlist idea that may or may not be useful to a classical music listener who wishes to listen to whole works and albums instead of individual tracks (songs in the Spotify terminology).

Additional Features: Random recent, Jump Back (previous played). Made for You (Spotify created playlists), Recently played, Your top mixed (Spotify created), a number of other categorized lists from various genres. User created folder playlists and playlists may categorize selected music genres and albums.

Price: There is a free version supported by ads but the user streams music at a low audio quality. Also, it has a lot less functionality compared to the paid version. The monthly charged Spotify Premium Individual is very affordable and the exact amount of money paid depends on the user's location (country) on the globe. There are other student, duo and family paying plans.

General Impression: Spotify is a music and audio (podcasts) streaming service of all music genres including classical music. It may be difficult for the user to find the exact classical music recording sought for as the search feature is oriented towards the song-artist approach rather that the detailed search approach required by classical music fans. The serious classical music lover is not buying any Beethoven symphony 5 recording but specific symphony 5 recordings in order to compare them and the same idea should prevail in the search results of music streaming services that include classical music. This is also true for the tracks that compose a classical music work as the classical music fan is usually interested in a whole work rather than individual parts of it. On the other hand, Spotify is very good at allowing the user to create folders and sub-folders of playlists and categorize favorite music in many ways. The classical music listening experience at either 256 Kbps or 320 Kbps is satisfying. The overall listening Experience can be rated at 7 out of 10 at either the 256 or 320 Kbps mode mainly due to Spotify's difficulty with search results of classical music recordings.

Notes: Only the Spotify Desktop application which must be downloaded and installed on the user's computer has settings that can raise the audio quality to 320 Kbps AAC as well as other controls of the listener's experience.

Naxos, Presto or Spotify ?

A subscription to all three of them would ideally fulfill all music tastes of a listener who loves and is serious with classical music and jazz but would also like to listen to other genres of music. In simple terms and because audio quality should not be the one and only criterion in listening to music, Spotify is good for the all music listener, Naxos for the music academic, researcher and classical music serious listener and Presto for the serious classical music and jazz listener. The choice is always yours! Enjoy listening!

VIDEO PICTURE STREAMING QUALITY COMPARISON TABLE

COMPARISON of DIGITAL CONCERT HALL and DG STAGE+ and MEDICI.TV and MEZZO LIVE and YOUTUBE (2024)
The classical music audio streaming services are already well established in the market with high quality sound and offer a full variety of choices among composers, their works, and artists performing them. The new phenomenon is the classical music video streaming services with both high quality picture and sound. At the beginning of this century, the monthly BBC Music Magazine announced that instead of offering a free classical music CD every month along with the printed magazine it would offer a classical music video DVD. The reception of this announcement was strongly negative in the UK and one reader put it bluntly: "I want to listen to classical music not to view it". The magazine is even today accompanied by a classical music CD. But things have changed and they had already changed in 2008 when the Berliner Philharmonic opened its own video streaming platform The Digital Concert Hall offering past and live video performances to subscribers. The core fans of listening and simultaneously viewing classical music are definitely in Germany, Austria, France and The Netherlands with Italy and the other continental European peoples following form a distance. It does make a great difference when the work to be watched is an opera, oratorio, other choral works or a ballet but it may not matter much when it comes to an orchestral or instrumental concert. Although currently the majority of serious classical music fans prefer just listening to audio streaming, which after all they can carry with them on a portable device and spend limited internet data compared to video streaming, the future is with video streaming of classical music performances. Today, two obstacles prevent video streaming from becoming widely accepted and used: variety of works available on video and portability. Compared to the more than a hundred years of audio recordings of classical music works, the greatest majority of which are today made available by streaming services, the regular video recording of complete classical music works began in Germany in the late 1970s. Therefore, the works that have been video recorded are fewer compared to the audio only recordings. But nowadays almost every well known orchestra, conductor and soloist or less known or relatively new orchestras, conductors and young soloists have their performances video recorded because listening and watching is much more amusing than just listening. In homes, the TV set has already replaced the radio, large internet bandwidth is available and affordable in Europe, the USA and many other countries of the world, and I am sure the video streaming companies will soon offer audio only streaming for those with portable devices on and off the road. However, in contrast to the audio only streaming services, not all the currently available video streaming services offer the same classical music video recordings or transmit them in the same way.

Digital Concert Hall
The Digital Concert Hall of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the well known Berlin Philharmonic orchestra, was launched in 2008 and was the first classical music video streaming service. The service contains only performances of the Berliner Philharmoniker (about 700 by 1/2024) with all of its conductors since the time of H. von Karajan, who was the first to have been regularly video recorded during live performances with the orchestra. A variety of composers, works, conductors, and soloists are represented in the archived catalog of video recordings of the Berlin Phil orchestra. The uniqueness of the Digital Concert Hall is found in the medium to high quality streaming availability of streaming performances. The minimum audio/video quality offered is that of Full High Definition (Video 1920x1080 and Audio Stereo 48 kHz 320 kbit/s AAC) and it goes all they way up to Ultra High Definition and High-end audio (Video 4K and Audio Dolby Atmos) for TV and PC viewing and listening. On the other hand, video streaming can be adapted to portable devices and your car audio system limitations. The platform includes concerts (about 700 by 1/2024), films, and interviews. Apart from the on demand archive, concerts of the orchestra are transmitted live.

DG Stage+
The Stage+ streaming platform is owned and operated by the label Deutsche Grammophon and includes only recordings of that label. It includes streaming of both audio only and video classical music recordings. Its catalog is composed of concerts, documentaries and interviews, all related to classical music. Some concerts are offered in Ultra High Definition (Video 4K and audio Dolby Atmos). Generally, the user can adjust the streaming quality according to the quality and speed of its internet connection at home or on mobile devices. DG Stage+ was launched in 2023.

Medici.tv
Medici.tv was launched at about the same time as Berliner Philharoniker's Digital Concert Hall (see above) in 2008 and its first group of video recorded performances and artists were those who participated and played in  the Verbier Festival in 2007. It does have a very large catalog (numbers by 1/2024) of classical music concerts (1500), ballets (160), opera performances (360) as well as documentaries (1300), master classes (250) and jazz concerts (511) performed by well known orchestras, conductors, soloists as well as new on the classical music scene. The archive of historical video recording goes all the way back to the very early of 1960s. Medici.tv also partners with the Vienna Philharmonic and broadcasts its concerts including the annual New Year concert of the orchestra. Medici.tv site is very easy to navigate and be searched for specific performances (composer, work, orchestra, conductor, soloists). Apart from the on demand catalog, the service is regularly streaming live concerts from various world locations such as Montreal, New York, Dallas, Cleveland, Amsterdam, Baden-Baden, Denmark, Oslo, London, Liverpool, Aix-en-Provence, Opera Performance Stages, Verbier Festival, Jazz Festivals, International Piano/Ballet Competitions. About 3/4 of the whole catalog is available in Full High Definition (Video 1920x1080 and Audio Stereo 320 kbit/s AAC-LC) with some of them in Ultra High Definition (Video 4K). In any case, the streaming player automatically adapts to the best quality stream depending on the user's internet connection unless the user selects the desired quality by himself/herself.

Mezzo Live
Mezzo is the oldest European and possibly world satellite and later streaming tv classical music and jazz only channel/service. It was launched in 1996 as a tv by satellite channel and its satellite transmission/streaming service is currently available in over 80 countries of the world. Since 2010 it is composed of two channels, Mezzo ("the channel for artists and their complete repertoire") and Mezzo Live (the "concert hall experience in High Definition"). Depending on individual providers around the world Mezzo Live is offered by satellite or  by streaming or in some cases by both transmission methods in the same country. Mezzo Live is a Live service only without on demand content although performances are broadcasted/streamed a number of times during a year at different hours to suite viewers watching habits. At least two live performances are transmitted every month from lyrical stages such as "Opéra National de Paris, Milan’s Scala, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, London’s Royal Opera House, Madrid’s Teatro Real, Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, Saint Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre," from great orchestras and concert halls  such as "La Philharmonie de Paris, Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna’s Musikverein, Zürich’s Tonhalle, Orchestre de Paris," from "Classical festivals such as Aix-en-Provence, Verbier, Salzburg, Bayreuth, Glyndebourne, Beaune, Saintes, Colmar, Granada and Jazz Festivals such as "azz à Vienne, Jazz in Marciac, Montreux Jazz Festival, Festival International de Jazz de Montréal."

YouTube
YouTube is the only streaming service that is completely free with possible ads/commercials at the beginning or during the performances usually at music intervals. It should not be confused with YouTube Music which is a paid-for all music streaming service similar to the audio only services discussed in the pervious section of this page above. YouTube is an on demand only streaming service although its video content is generally live performances. It is an all music service but its classical music content is large and diverse. It includes televised performances from the 1960s all the way to the current year although do not expect to find the latest performances of great maestros, orchestras, soloists, opera or choral singers. Nevertheless, there are welcome surprises that may be available for a short period of time. Apart from video performances, YouTube also contains audio only recordings copied from LPs and CDs accompanied by photos. All material is legally available for free for you to listen and watch as in many cases it has been uploaded by the orchestras, conductors. soloists or the music companies themselves for advertising purposes or by other YouTube users who do not own the copyright of the content but YouTube pays the royalties. The only difficulty for the viewer might be that apart from full performances there are classical music clips (not performances of full works) but this can easily be seen beforehand as the total time length of every video is shown next to its thumbnail.

Which one is the Editor's Choice?
The casual or low-budget user who is not interested in the latest performances and just wants to explore classical music will definitely choose free YouTube to watch/listen performances on demand. The serious classical music viewer/listener should choose between Mezzo Live and Medcci.tv unless one prefers either the Berliner Philharmoniker only concerts or the Deutsche Grammophon only recordings.

LISTEN OR WATCH AND LISTEN?
The audio only listener focuses on the music and this may be the reason why many classical music listeners avoid watching a performance, which may be the video recorded version of the same performance they just listened on on music CD or streaming. On the other hand, many viewers prefer an opera with subtitles on the screen as they can listen to the music, watch action on the stage, and understand the libretto, all at the same time without browsing a printed booklet of the libretto. Watching the maestro, the orchestra and the soloists and listening to their performance transforms the viewers living-room into a virtual concert hall. The audio only listener definitely prefers going to concerts rather than just listening to recorded music and this experience can be re-created to a major degree through the video performances. The only serious obstacles to just watching performances in a living-room setting is that video recordings represent a fraction of the audio only works of composers available on audio only recordings and that the large size tv along with the home theater/sound bar setting for viewing and listening is considerably more expensive than an audio only installation. Moreover, almost all of the pre-1980 concerts and operas have never been video recorded but the majority of the great public performances (concerts and operas) since 2000 have been video recorded and the sound only version is made available to the market along with the full video and sound version. Nowadays, it is obvious that the classical music studio recordings are diminishing along with music CD media and the live performances are streamed live or/and are available on demand. It is obvious that the serious classical music listener needs both an audio only streaming service as well as a video streaming service. For 2024 I have chosen Presto Streaming and Mezzo Live but any other combination is valid depending on one's preferences and personal budget.

AUDIO

The American Society of Professional Audio Recording Services (SPARS) has come up with a three-letter code (SPARS code) which is printed on many CD/DVD discs or their covers and denotes the quality or recording. The codes and their menaing is as follows:

DDD: Digital tape recorder (or digital medium) used during session recording, mixing and/or editing and mastering (transcription).

ADD: Analog tape recorder used during session recording, digital tape recorder (or digital medium) used during subsequent mixing and/or editing and mastering (transcription).

AAD: Analog tape recorder used during session recording and subsequent mixing and/or editing; digital tape recorder (or digital medium) used during mastering (transcription).

Nowadays, this may be entirely meaningless as studios may convert the original digital signal (music) to analog and then to digital more than once during mixing and editing. Therefore, although the disc may still bear the DDD code, the full digital sound processing is not absolutely true. Thus, take into account the three-letter sound quality code as just an indication of whether the recording was first made on a magnetic tape (AAD or ADD) or on a digital medium (DDD).

In some cases labels have come up with their own sound quality indications, such as 4D or 24 bit/96 kHz. As a lot of other factors play a significant role in the final acoustic result, these indications may not be used as the sole reason for buying CDs. The same holds true for DVD-Audio, Dolby Digital and DTS indications on DVDs

MP3 is a compressed (lossy) audio file format used with portable audio devices and computers. Lossy compression means that some of the music information is depressed in such a way so that the music piece will sound close to a music CD. However, by definition (lossy) the sound is of inferior quality compared to the original recorded music.

MP3 files come with different bit rates all the way to 320 kbit/s (kilobits per second). The higher the number the better the quality. However, an MP3 sound even at the highest bitrate of 320 kbit/s compared to a 1411.2 kbit/s of CD digital audio format is definitely of inferior quality.

On the other hand, MP3 files can be loaded on a portable audio device and listend to on the road.

A number of labels are offering an extensive selection of classical music MP3 files for downloading. Depending on your music system, the sound may be from fine to unbearable. You make the final decision on whether to invest on MP3 files insetad of CDs!

SACD and DVD-Audio or DVD-A are higher fidelity audio CD and DVD formats that have not been a success so far as they require a home theater installation in order to unleash theur full musicality. Despite their superior sound quality there are generally few releases on SACD or DVD-A.

A large number of recitals and opera performances are made available on DVD and on Blue-Ray discs (high definition=better picture). The great majority are old TV or Video-cassette releases that have been transferred to DVD sometimes without any image improvement. They are available on the old 4:3 screen aspect ratio and may have digital sound improvements. New productions use the modern high definition 16:9 screen aspect ratio to match the modern widescrean TV sets. The sound as well as the picture is digitally recorded at high definition (a lot higher than the normal TV standard). Once more, what matters is the performance preferabbly accompanied by a descent sound rather than the higher quality of the picture.

Don't be confused with dolby digital and DTS or any other digital surround sound format as they usually make no difference to a classical music listenet/viewer.

A good example of high quality live video streaming is The Berliner Philharmoniker's Digital Concert Hall.