Gimell Records' New Website Offers Professional Quality Downloads

The new website for Gimell Records, www.gimell.com, the specialist recording label for The Tallis Scholars, now offers downloads in up to 4 levels of audio quality. Customers can choose between MP3, CD, Studio Master and Studio Master Pro Downloads. Steve Smith, the label's co-founder and producer for the Tallis Scholars' award-winning recordings says:

"Why should download stores only offer MP3 and other formats with quality that is audibly inferior to the original recordings? MP3s are fine for portable players but they lack the quality of Compact Disc when listening on decent loudspeakers or headphones. Even Compact Disc is not ideal - the format was developed back in the early 1980s when the best home computer was a Sinclair ZX 80! Compact Disc is a 16-bit format. Gimell made its first 24-bit recording in 1993. It is always disappointing to hear the quality of the recording degrade as it is converted to fit onto CD. Now at long last there is a way for our customers to enjoy better and more convenient audio in their own homes."

So how can we play these 24-bit recordings? Many computers now have 24-bit sound-cards that can be connected to your Hi-fi system but Steve Smith believes that the Network Music Player is the true successor to the Compact Disc Player.

"A Network Music Player is a Hi-fi component that you connect to your existing system. No music is stored on the Player - downloads and other recordings are stored on your computer and the Network Music Player ‘pulls' the music from the computer over a Wi-fi or Ethernet Network. With the ever decreasing prices for Computers and Hard Discs and increasingly faster Broadband connections this just has to be the way to go."

Of course things are never quite as simple as they sound - to get started you need a basic knowledge of computers, files and folders and some cheap Network Music Players are audibly inferior to similarly-priced CD players. Steve Smith was so impressed by the Network Music Players made by California-based ‘Slim Devices' that Gimell will now be selling these Players on the new website.

"The Squeezebox, at around £200 or $300, is a true 24-bit player that will faithfully reproduce our Studio Master Downloads. The Transporter will also play our Studio Master Pro Downloads*." 

Steve Smith and Gimell's co-founder, Peter Phillips, have an uncanny habit of predicting future developments. They founded Gimell in 1981 solely to record and market recordings by The Tallis Scholars. Single-artist labels have become commonplace in recent years: Gimell was the first, predicting the trend by at least a decade. Gimell and the Tallis Scholars together have devoted their careers to the sacred a cappella music of the Renaissance era. The result, built up over many years, has been a world-wide market for both their recordings and their concerts, now acknowledged as one of the UK's most impressive exports in the arts. In 1984 Gimell placed the first commercial order for Compact Discs with a UK manufacturer. In 1987 Gimell won the Gramophone Record of the Year Award - the first independent label to receive this prestigious award and still the only recording of Early Music to have won this valuable accolade. This was the first of many awards - the most recent being the 2005 Gramophone Early Music Award.

* The Transporter is currently not able to reproduce Studio Master Pro Downloads sampled at 88.2kHz. We understand that a firmware update will soon be provided to resolve this problem.