Do high-res audio sites like HD Tracks have digital watermarks?

[Drew 590]

I read about digital watermarks being a thing and that has made me want to still get CDs even though some albums can be bought at a higher bitrate now. Do these sites have digital watermarks on their albums? Have they made them subtle enough to not be heard?

[Arpy 4,145]

7 hours ago, Drew said:

I read about digital watermarks being a thing and that has made me want to still get CDs even though some albums can be bought at a higher bitrate now. Do these sites have digital watermarks on their albums? Have they made them subtle enough to not be heard?

My guess would be the watermarks would be inaudible, and instead part of the code, like tags?

[Chewy 2,372]

8 hours ago, Drew said:

I read about digital watermarks being a thing and that has made me want to still get CDs even though some albums can be bought at a higher bitrate now. Do these sites have digital watermarks on their albums? Have they made them subtle enough to not be heard?

I think it depends on the record label the albums were released on.

 

For example, it was proven that Universal Music Group digital releases come with a watermark affecting directly the audio data (though it's made so you can't really notice it). See this: https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark.

 

These watermarks are applied to all of the digital releases (for downloads and also streaming). As for UMG, it seems like they stopped using the watermarks for their new releases (thinking of TROS) but tons of their older releases still contain that watermark on Spotify for example (thinking of TFA and TLJ OSTs).

[Richard Penna 3,665]

Amazon has a disclaimer for 'record company mandated unique identifier' or some such thing, for most/all mp3 purchases. I've never noticed anything wrong with the audio with their files (although they're my last resort, if I can't buy in flac).

 

Strikes me that it's a remnant from when the industry was terrified of mass file sharing, which I would suggest isn't the problem it used to be due to streaming.

 

I don't see how a watermark would go in tags, as you can erase those; unless we're talking about some part of the tag that typical tagging software doesn't look at.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,889]

I did some tests (mostly with Star Wars music) and there were no watermarks present in any of my HDTracks releases. They were identical to the CD releases in every way, minus the higher frequency of course.

[Marian Schedenig 8,154]

10 hours ago, Arpy said:

My guess would be the watermarks would be inaudible, and instead part of the code, like tags?

 

They wouldn't be real watermarks then, would they? Just custom metadata.

 

1 hour ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

I did some tests (mostly with Star Wars music) and there were no watermarks present in any of my HDTracks releases. They were identical to the CD releases in every way, minus the higher frequency of course.

 

Not identical in every way then?

 

I don't know much about watermarks, but I imagine a basic audio watermars would just be a single bit every couple of frames. Inaudible, and less difference to the original file than pretty much any other form of manipulation you could apply.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,889]

4 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

 

They wouldn't be real watermarks then, would they? Just custom metadata.

 

 

Not identical in every way then?

 

I don't know much about watermarks, but I imagine a basic audio watermars would just be a single bit every couple of frames. Inaudible, and less difference to the original file than pretty much any other form of manipulation you could apply.

 

Yes I'm aware. There is no watermark present. If there was then my process would have detected it immediately.

[Faleel 5,326]

1 hour ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

 

Yes I'm aware. There is no watermark present. If there was then my process would have detected it immediately.

[Chewy 2,372]

On 8/3/2020 at 5:23 PM, Manakin Skywalker said:

I did some tests (mostly with Star Wars music) and there were no watermarks present in any of my HDTracks releases. They were identical to the CD releases in every way, minus the higher frequency of course.

Even TFA and TLJ?

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

There is a noticeable hissing on the AI and AOTC OSTs.

[Jurassic Shark 12,008]

That's likely background noise from the studio, like a ventilation system or something.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,889]

7 hours ago, Gruesome Son of a Bitch said:

There is a noticeable hissing on the AI and AOTC OSTs.

 

That's part of the actual recording, not a watermark. A watermark would be more of a quiet artifacty/pulsing sound.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,889]

10 hours ago, Chewy said:

Even TFA and TLJ?

 

For TFA anyway, as I hadn't tested TLJ yet. However I did notice for TFA that they are not the same edits. The waveforms aren't quite as compressed on the HDTracks version, and the takes aren't edited together exactly as they are on the CD, causing both versions to desync every time a new take begins.

 

EDIT: Uh oh guys, looks like the HDTracks version of TLJ does have a watermark. 

As far as I can tell none of the other films are watermarked, just TLJ.

 

Here's an example of TLJ's watermark: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DCIGpDGCa_f2gQApL1N8s5mxH9-AahpP

[Pando 141]

Fascinating! Here's what it looks like in a spectrum analyzer; the imprinted watermark code in two distinct frequency bands starts at 1.5 seconds in.

 

 

On a related note, Jean Michel Jarre embedded his face into one of his tracks

 

 

[Jurassic Shark 12,008]

Pando, what a great username!

[Marian Schedenig 8,154]

2 hours ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

Here's an example of TLJ's watermark: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DCIGpDGCa_f2gQApL1N8s5mxH9-AahpP

 

[Chewy 2,372]

4 hours ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

EDIT: Uh oh guys, looks like the HDTracks version of TLJ does have a watermark. 

As far as I can tell none of the other films are watermarked, just TLJ.

 

Here's an example of TLJ's watermark: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DCIGpDGCa_f2gQApL1N8s5mxH9-AahpP

So that proves UMG apply digital watermarks even on their high resolution releases. But the good thing is that TRoS seems to be 100% exact to the CD.

Hopefully the new releases are free of watermark but kind of annoying for people like you who spent money on digital downloads... shame on Universal!

[Manakin Skywalker 4,889]

I feel as though there's a secret message to be decoded.....

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G3tNWNO1IXWxPiLNGFxXZWkqNxDxDnQv/view?usp=sharing

 

[Pando 141]

11 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

I feel as though there's a secret message to be decoded.....

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G3tNWNO1IXWxPiLNGFxXZWkqNxDxDnQv/view?usp=sharing

 

 

That's JW tweaking his modular synth.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,889]

47 minutes ago, Pando said:

That's JW tweaking his modular synth.

 

I think there's something more... secretive... about it. As if he was trying to send us a message........... perhaps someone should check the spectrogram.

 

[Pando 141]

15 minutes ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

 

I think there's something more... secretive... about it. As if he was trying to send us a message........... perhaps someone should check the spectrogram.

 

 

[Drew 590]

The Last Jedi was re-posted on HDTracks after being gone for a while. Can someone check if it has a digital watermark anymore?