David Elias: Guest Artist Thread - Ask About SACD, DSD, Surround and Downloads

fredblue said:

it's no surprise iTunes took off.. all this jargon of formats and technobabble is quite off putting to someone like myself who is just not that technically-minded. if some enterprising fellow/firm were to emulate Apple's approach, with a user friendly setup and standardisation for downloading and playing these SACD rip things to the point where you don't need a PhD in DSD just to hear some decent quality surround music, that'd be just wonderful!

Click to expand...

Well, there's certainly "technobabble" in the computer world as well. And with Apple, you are stuck with technobabble plus specialized cables, lack of USB support, etc. Fortunately that is not the case with music downloads. You buy a product with DSD support and voila, the DSD files play. No special Apple cables required...

As for SACD rips, or other rips, they are playable on DACs with DSD. But you generally find that the sound quality from the DSD Downloads are much better than the rips. So there is value in buying downloads. Not to mention the albums that were never released on SACD where rips don't exist.

And yes, Multichannel DSD is wonderful listening. No doubt about that.

fredblue said:

it's no surprise iTunes took off.. all this jargon of formats and technobabble is quite off putting to someone like myself who is just not that technically-minded. if some enterprising fellow/firm were to emulate Apple's approach, with a user friendly setup and standardisation for downloading and playing these SACD rip things to the point where you don't need a PhD in DSD just to hear some decent quality surround music, that'd be just wonderful!

Click to expand...

Historically iTunes rode on the back of many prior years of online music downloading in the MP3 format, mostly in my experience between musicians online. I was part of many online forums and music hosting sites between 1995/96 and 2001 which was the year the iTunes software (January) and jukebox (1000 songs in first iPod in October) came out.

During those 5 or 6 years there was endless technobabble about the best way to encode CD quality WAV/AIFF as MP3 using the right encoders (I still use LAME encoder for ripping CDs) and bit rates. Download speeds were in the dialup modem ranges that evolved to 56k. DSL was just getting started. Lots of issues to address just to get a song downloaded and played on a PC/Mac. Apple (Steve Jobs) saw that opportunity to turn all that FREE music online into a vending machine to sell track by track.

So I'm finally happy to see DSD get some of the same attention and yes it does have to go through similar hoops to become more mainstream but I hope that's what happens. In just one year we've seen places online popup with DSD downloads, many offering both stereo and multichannel. These include nativedsd.com, superhirez.com, highdeftapetransfers.com, highresaudio.jp, Blue Coast and others. Hardware (DSD DACs including portable battery powered) and software music players are also evolving quickly to support DSD.

In the past couple months the Sonic Studios Amarra version 3.0 product supports DSD playback (Mac only). This software player installs alongside iTunes and takes over the playback through its superior audio engine. So all the HRA formats above CD WAV/AIFF including DSD can be played through the iTunes user interface with Amarra running. Feel free to email me for more on this if you are interested.

Finally, ripping SACDs is not usually possible for extracting the native DSD layer on a hybrid SACD. If you rip a hybrid SACD using common PC/Mac software all you are getting is the CD Redbook layer as 16/44.1 WAV, not the DSD quality.

Aloha!

Today's Free DSD Download on NativeDSD.Com is the song "Crossing" by our guest artist, singer/acoustic guitarist David Elias. Available in your choice of Multichannel DSD, Stereo DSD or both!
Take a listen and save it to your music server to enhance your downloads collection. And, of course, you can always pick up more tracks - or the entire album there as well.



Crossing (Lonely Bells) - David Elias (Multichannel & Stereo DSD Downloads, Sketti Sandwich Productions 1661)
https://www.nativedsd.com
https://skettisandwich.nativedsd.com/albums/crossing

Here's a deal for fans of David Elias and his acoustic music. Buyers of the new Oppo HA-2 headphone amp + DAC will get a free copy of his sampler album "Coffeehouse DSD Playlist # 1" as a Stereo DSD download or a Stereo FLAC download. See details below.

Recording artist David Elias and OPPO Digital are happy to offer HA-2 customers a free download of the David Elias sampler, "Coffeehouse DSD Playlist #1". This sampler contains nine original compositions taken from three of his previous SACD and DSD download releases, all recorded in pure DSD.

To redeem your download, please visit http://davidelias.com/contact.html and send your HA-2 serial number via the "Contact" form to request the download link. Please allow up to 48 hours for the artist to respond.

Click to expand...

https://www.facebook.com/OPPODigital/posts/10152615348707136

Congratulations to David Elias for reaching the # 1 Top Seller Position on the Native DSD Top Vocals Sales Chart this week for his album "Crossing".



Crossing by David Elias (Multichannel & Stereo DSD Download, Sketti Sandwich 1661)
https://skettisandwich.nativedsd.com/albums/crossing