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Finally, music we can buy in 768 khz sampling rates.

KSTR

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Perhaps you know your customers and they want those technical names? It seems overly complicated to me.
I would think a group of customers might be the typical audiophiles for whom both the choice of musical styles and the tech-speak seems fit. Manufacturers in search of nice high-res "showroom music" might also be a target group.

You know, the type of audience to whom talking about and listening to the gear and the recording might actually be more important than listening to the music but of course you can file that under imputation from my part ;-)
 

BeerBear

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What do all of you prefer 16bit or 24 bit?
I think 16bit is good enough or even overkill for most (popular) music. Same for old recordings that come from an analog medium, like tape or vinyl.

But if your music has a lot of dynamic range and it has actual music content in the lower bits (rather than just noise), I don't think it's wrong to distribute it in 24bit. That is, assuming you're targeting audiophiles/enthusiasts — I wouldn't push 24bit on the general population.
If you really want to optimize bandwidth, you can even choose any in-between bit depth, by dithering or zeroing out the lower bits.

And I agree with some others... don't bother with WAV files. It's just not a good format for music distribution. At this point FLAC is pretty well established and anyone who hasn't been sleeping under a rock for the last 20 years should know how to deal with it.
 
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maarten

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Yes, proper 768 khz music. From Sound Liason which does make very high quality recordings. I'm not aware of commercial offerings at this rate before though maybe I just missed a few. Alas it is only 24 bit instead of proper 32 bit recording.

You can download a free sample track which clocks in just under a gigabyte in size. Pleased to see if you've purchased it at a lower rez, they offer to deduct the cost of that from buying again in the higher rez format. Of course they are transcribing the master tapes from their Studer A80 RTR.

Here is a quote from a promotional email as I'm on their mailing list.

Ray! in 768kHz
The RME company is highly regarded by audio professionals.

Before we started working with Merging, RME was our converter of choice. So when we got offered to test the RME ADI-2 FS, a compact 2-channel AD/DA converter we gladly approved.

The first comparison with our Merging Anubis was immediately positive. Lots of definition, a beautiful soundstage with perfect placement. And after powering it with the Ferrum Hypsos external power supply, a sense of calm and control was added to the experience. This is clearly a serious converter. The RME has a maximum sample rate of 768kHz. To really see what the RME ADI-2 is capable off, we created a 768kHz/24bit file straight from our Studer A80 tape recorder playing the ¼" reel to reel master tape from our latest release.

Listening and A/B comparing with the Studer the result is quite convincing. In our opinion the sound is very close to the analog master tape.
We would like to share the results with you.

Therefore we have made one 768kHz track from the album available for free for a limited time period.
The only favor we ask in return, is that you give us a bit of feedback; Is this a way forward?

Do you also hear an even greater sense of realism compared to the lower formats or are you perfectly happy with the formats you have been using so far?
For anyone who would like to purchase the entire album in 768kHz but has already purchased the album in a lower resolution in the past week, the price difference will be refunded. Send us an email and you will receive a refund within a few days.

Happy New Year and best wishes!
The Sound Liaison team; Frans & Peter
"Lots of definition, a beautiful soundstage with perfect placement. And after powering it with the Ferrum Hypsos external power supply, a sense of calm and control was added to the experience."

The bullshit bingo is here again. Do these guys really believe themselves?
 

Mr. Afternoon

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Seeing snake oil like 768Khz files REALLY makes me want to upsample some music to DSD2048 and release it.
Who knows how much money I'll make? :facepalm:
 

Killingbeans

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I wouldn't call it snake-oil. Sound Liaison probably have (Had?) no idea that they are selling a massive waste of ones and zeros.

The person who originally decided to name music files with high sampling rates "High-resolution Audio" instead of "High-frequency Audio" deserves a kick in the balls. Soooo much expectation bias can be attributed to that little trick.
 

mhardy6647

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"Lots of definition, a beautiful soundstage with perfect placement. And after powering it with the Ferrum Hypsos external power supply, a sense of calm and control was added to the experience."
See -- prose like this always gets me wonderin'... in this case, is the sense of calm and control linear or logarithmic... or is it one of those complex quantities like impedance: sense ∝ calm + i * contol (or something like that)?

EDIT: Oh OH! and... so what if one is listenin' to, e.g., Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring? Or John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band? Are THOSE rendered in a calm and controlled manner? If so, can one get one's money back?
 
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Robin L

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See -- prose like this always gets me wonderin'... in this case, is the sense of calm and control linear or logarithmic... or is it one of those complex quantities like impedance: sense ∝ calm + i * contol (or something like that)?

EDIT: Oh OH! and... so what if one is listenin' to, e.g., Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring? Or John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band? Are THOSE rendered in a calm and controlled manner? If so, can one get one's money back?
Not to mention:

 

KSTR

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The bullshit bingo is here again. Do these guys really believe themselves?
I don't care what they believe... the end result is what counts. The recording quality is really outstanding (from what I could judge from the snippet, for some reason I didn't manage to get the full demo download), these guys know what they are doing.

@Sound Liaison,
It would be interesting to compare a direct recording with the RME vs. with the A80 inserted. That is, split the feed to both the RME and the A80 and record with both at the same time, then record the A80 playback so one could directly evaluate the influence of the A80.
Or similarily, use the RME with stock supply vs. that other supply...
 

solderdude

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Do these guys really believe themselves?

No doubt, they go by ear.
The end result (a well captured recording) is what it is all about. Made by professionals that care about the sound quality.
Who cares if they believe in fairies and pixies. Their customers want to read these things. As long as pricing is not absurd I am fine with it.
 

Sound Liaison

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No doubt, they go by ear.
The end result (a well captured recording) is what it is all about. Made by professionals that care about the sound quality.
Who cares if they believe in fairies and pixies. Their customers want to read these things. As long as pricing is not absurd I am fine with it.
Thank you Solderdude.
That's it.
Kind regards Peter
 

Sound Liaison

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And 48/24 FLAC is on the site now.
 

Geert

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Who cares if they believe in fairies and pixies. Their customers want to read these things. As long as pricing is not absurd I am fine with it.
And than we have these customers coming over here telling us where a bunch of fools because we don't hear any difference while record companies supporting ultra high res probably don't do so without good reason. Another circle of confusion.
 
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solderdude

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Everyone is free to buy whatever they want, Sound Liaison offers various formats including non-sensical ones for most ASR members (why reproduce a tape recorder's bias frequency and noise ?) but those that believe they can hear it can buy the most expensive downloads.

My hearing cuts out at around 15kHz (old fart) so 48/24 already exceeds my limits... cheaper for me.
 
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Sound Liaison

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I don't care what they believe... the end result is what counts. The recording quality is really outstanding (from what I could judge from the snippet, for some reason I didn't manage to get the full demo download), these guys know what they are doing.

@Sound Liaison,
It would be interesting to compare a direct recording with the RME vs. with the A80 inserted. That is, split the feed to both the RME and the A80 and record with both at the same time, then record the A80 playback so one could directly evaluate the influence of the A80.
Or similarily, use the RME with stock supply vs. that other supply...
Hi KSTR
The vast majority of our albums are straight to DXD or 96khz recordings, made in the box. A couple has the A80 used as mastering tool.
The A80 ads tape compression and slight upper harmonics distortion and the sound of the A80.
But your suggestion could be interesting to make and put on a sampler. We will look into it.
Thanks!
 
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MakeMineVinyl

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why reproduce a tape recorder's bias frequency and noise ?
Including the bias and noise of the original machine would be interesting for me because I could possibly tell what type of recorder was used to make the original master.

:cool:
 

DSJR

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I have an old friend who for many years worked for a (once) London based record company as a mastering and remastering engineer of a chunk of their analogue back catalogue. He used an A80 almost exclusively I gather and the way it worked, was to adjust the alignment test tones on each tape as best as possible as a first step after the regular basic maintenance on the machine. As the playback heads wore, the 15kHz tone level would be wound up and up on the controls to a 'flat' level until there was no adjustment possible. Only then were the heads replaced or re-lapped I gather. I very much doubt these professional machines went much over 17 or 18kHz really (1/4" tape at 15IPS, not sure if a standard or custom playback 'curve' was used), so the red book 16/44 standard was easily as good or better than needed.
 
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TunaBug

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Including the bias and noise of the original machine would be interesting for me because I could possibly tell what type of recorder was used to make the original master.

:cool:

Any chance the ~150KHz signal noticed in the files is the bias signal?

I do recall reading of a remastering project that starting with locating archived studio tapes and digitizing them. The article mentioned that they used a high enough frequency that they could pick up the bias signal. They further bragged that they could detect wow and flutter that way, and ran it through software to correct for that. Or at least that's what I think they claimed, memory is fickle and I forgot the link to the article. I'm guessing the topic would have been technical details of the recent (most recent) re-releases of Beatles or Led Zeppelin.

Being able to do that would be a legitimate reason to digitize and archive at otherwise silly frequencies. But, as others have noted, hopefully down-sample to 48 or 96 before the final release.
 

MakeMineVinyl

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Any chance the ~150KHz signal noticed in the files is the bias signal?

I do recall reading of a remastering project that starting with locating archived studio tapes and digitizing them. The article mentioned that they used a high enough frequency that they could pick up the bias signal. They further bragged that they could detect wow and flutter that way, and ran it through software to correct for that. Or at least that's what I think they claimed, memory is fickle and I forgot the link to the article. I'm guessing the topic would have been technical details of the recent (most recent) re-releases of Beatles or Led Zeppelin.

Being able to do that would be a legitimate reason to digitize and archive at otherwise silly frequencies. But, as others have noted, hopefully down-sample to 48 or 96 before the final release.
Using the bias frequency to eliminate wow and flutter is how The Planget Process works. Its been used on quite a few releases.

According to this article, the Studer A80RC recorder uses a 150kHz bias frequency, so if this is the model of machine used in the original recording, then that could well be the residual bias signal seen in the file.
 

MakeMineVinyl

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heh -- I wasn't thinkin' analog, so I didn't think of bias.
outstanding! Thanks @TunaBug and @MakeMineVinyl
PS and I didn't know that the bias on an A80 was 150 kHz -- that's up there.
Little known fact - the bias residual is how the examiners determined that the Watergate 18 second gap tape was repeatedly erased. Of course politicians aren't nearly so sophisticated so they get caught. If I were in charge of this conspiracy, the authorities would have been confounded to this day. Goes to show you they didn't hire the right person to do their dirty deeds. :cool:
 
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