You could use a VPN service to access the American services like Pandora. Some VPN services are free, others cost a couple of bucks per month. The free ones can be spotty with usable bandwidth so they are not always the best for streaming audio/video.
I wouldn't get too hung up on HD media. Concentrate instead on well mastered media. A CD can provide Astounding audio quality. The problem is that not all CD recordings are created equal. It is the mastering choices and methodologies that determine how good it will sound.
Many CDs, especially in the rock/pop categories are mastered to sound loud at the expense of quality. The compression used to do this (compression of the dynamics, not the data) produces terrible results that when listened to on a quality sound system, will reproduce it exactly the way it was mastered, crappy.
This is giving CDs in general a bad name but it's not the CD's fault. It's the music producers' & music labels' fault for trying to make the sound stand out on crappy ipod earphones via loudness alone.
A well mastered CD can and will sound amazing and will be digitally as true to the original production sound as you're ears can detect. Check out the "Stunning Recordings" thread for hundreds of CD choices that will not leave you wanting more.
For more samples, AIX is a record label that prides itself on quality recordings and just about any of thier stuff will make your jaw drop. They record on all media, CD, DVD, Blueray etc. They have a sampler BluRay that I love for demoing purposes to my friends because it has almost every music genre on it going and the 5.1 sound stage it produces is amazing. If your speakers are aligned and calibrated well, every single musician can be heard in thier own space in the room.
Last edited by Murph; 04/01/14 05:56 PM.
