A question for David: you mentioned selling music on USB stick vs. downloads. Has that been popular with your fans as an alternate to downloads? I know that the price of USB jump drives continue to drop. But that sounds like a pricier option. True ?
David Elias: Guest Artist Thread - Ask About SACD, DSD, Surround and Downloads
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A question for David: you mentioned selling music on USB stick vs. downloads. Has that been popular with your fans as an alternate to downloads? I know that the price of USB jump drives continue to drop. But that sounds like a pricier option. True ?
davidelias
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FYI, NativeDSD.Com has just posted today's Free DSD Track of the Day. It is "Mend My Mind" from the album Crossing by our QQ Guest Artist, David Elias.
The free DSD track is available in Stereo DSD or 5 Channel Multichannel DSD. Your choice - or you can get both free! Just create a free account on NativeDSD.Com and you get the free downloads.
Happy listening...
View attachment 15188
Free DSD Download of the Day in Stereo and 5 Channel Multichannel DSD: Mend My Mind by David Elias
https://justlisten.nativedsd.com/
https://skettisandwich.nativedsd.com/albums/crossing
Bryan since this track on NativeDSD is not posted any longer, I'm happy to provide anyone on this thread with the same offer for either stereo, multichannel or both of the "Mend My Mind" track from the "Crossing" SACD.
Anyone can email me at [email protected] with this request and I'll send them download links for the mixes they prefer. These are DSF files.
Best Regards,
- DE
davidelias
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This is a higher cost due to both the USB stick price as well as the time to prepare and ship the whole thing. Still, many people do not have the time or inclination to download large files, or may have Internet issues with this. So the USB stick is an option I felt made perfect sense for some as a convenience. It also plugs straight into players like OPPO without burning your own DVD or USB as many might.
It has solved these problems for some ordering it in this fashion and I've gotten good feedback. (I also throw in some of my HD videos on the USB stick.)
I can also bundle the albums by mixes (2.0 vs 5.1) and provide more complete collections on a single thumb drive for those interested. My experience has defnitely been that someone who downloads one album will return and download others. So I hoped to make it easier for them to do that with the USB idea.
davidelias
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I agree! I won't be too surprised to see that option appear on other sites at some point.
Actually there is a USB Stick option on the NativeDSD.Com web site for the DSD256 Multichannel recording of Guitar Sonatas by Ricardo Gallén. Makes sense since the Stereo DSD256 version of that album, which can be downloaded, is around 9GB in size!
Wanted to mention two updates:
1. David Elias is continuing to monitor this thread. So feel free to post any questions about his music and high resolution audio adventures and projects.
2. Today's Free DSD Track of the Day on NativeDSD.Com is "Summer Wind" from David's Stereo DSD album "Acoustic Trio DSD Sessions". All you need to do to get a free DSD Download of the song is sign-in at NativeDSD.Com. The accounts there are free but they do ask for your email address to receive their upcoming newsletters.
Summer Wind - David Elias, from Acoustic Trio DSD Sessions. Today's Free DSD Track on NativeDSD.Com
https://www.nativedsd.com
https://skettisandwich.nativedsd.com/
1. David Elias is continuing to monitor this thread. So feel free to post any questions about his music and high resolution audio adventures and projects.
2. Today's Free DSD Track of the Day on NativeDSD.Com is "Summer Wind" from David's Stereo DSD album "Acoustic Trio DSD Sessions". All you need to do to get a free DSD Download of the song is sign-in at NativeDSD.Com. The accounts there are free but they do ask for your email address to receive their upcoming newsletters.
Summer Wind - David Elias, from Acoustic Trio DSD Sessions. Today's Free DSD Track on NativeDSD.Com
https://www.nativedsd.com
https://skettisandwich.nativedsd.com/
It would be great if manufacturers could implement playback support of losslessly compressed DSD audio files (including mch) in their hw/sw.
Btw, I wonder if there will ever be a physical disc format for DSD128/256 recordings? I don't think so but who knows ... If memory serves at another forum we christened it as Super Audio Blu-ray Disc (SABD) or Super Audio Blu-ray Expensive (SABRE) 
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What would be more likely, certainly in the short term, is compression of the DSD128 and DSD256 Files by the web sites selling them. Right now, some sites compress the albums into ZIP files for download. In theory, there could be another compression approach used for the albums that would then be processed at the user's end before copying the files to a PC or music server.
Today, most DSD Downloads are still single rate DSD (DSD64) and don't exceed 4.7GB, the size of a DVD. So it may become more of an issue down the road.
As David Elias notes, selling albums in DSD and/or PCM via USB memory stick is another option. But it does add to the cost of the album.
Interesting times ahead....
davidelias
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My understanding is that DSF files with the metadata (tags) are losslessly compressed compared to the DFF files. I can't remember how much compression they reduce the file size by though.
davidelias
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Unfortunately, ZIP compression does nothing to improve already compressed files, including DSF files. The same is true for graphics files like JPG, TIFF, etc. In fact, the ZIp file can be larger than the source file(s) as a result of trying to compress already compressed data.
The original DSD Disc I released a full 5 years ago in November (11/2009 release) was a single ZIP file that contained an ISO image to create a data DVD from. This was meant to be played in the Sony PS3 at the time and a couple Sony SACD players that supported DSD Disc. Nothing else was playing DSD files at the time! Since there were something like 30 million PS3 users out there, I was hoping some might be interested in Hi-Rez audio... unfortunately that never seemed to catch on
Now just barely a year since Sony announced their HRA initiative backing DSD downloads and AcousticSounds/SuperHiRez.com coming online, a lot has changed quickly!
That's certainly true.
Less than a year ago (Oct 2013) Super Hi Rez and Native DSD were announced and DSD DACs cost at least $700.
Since that time, we've gone from a small number of DSD downloads from pioneers like David and Cookie Marenco at Blue Coast to over 975 DSD downloads today - over 530 of which are also available in Multichannel DSD! And Stereo DSD DACs start at under $200 for the Geek Out, iDSD Nano and Loki. Significant progress in a very short period of time.
davidelias
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Summer Wind is a good example of a large (mostly) acoustic band being recorded live in a studio. John Magnie's accordion and Ross Martin's ambient electric as well Marc Dalio's percussion all just got sent up into the "air" to be caught as part of the 2-track live mix and 2-track room mics for natural delay/reverb added to the 2.0 and 5.0 mixes. The other 4 tracks were spot mics on my vocal and some of the other instruments including Eric Thorin's upright bass for controlling the final mixes a little better.
I think DSD is able to capture the natural attacks, decays and resonance of all these instruments as well as the natural bleed and delays between mics better than any other digital format. Summer Wind is a good example of all this IMO.
To my best knowledge DSF is an uncompressed file format of DSD audio data. You may think of DST which is a lossless compression method for DSD audio on SACD and for DFF DSD audio files.
davidelias
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Yes! my memory of course failing (again). I thought DSF used the DST compression for filesize not for audio quality. So I was trying to say that DSF may not be able to be smaller than the filesize it already is. Thanks!!
No problem, David. Developers and manufacturers should know much better than we do why they don't implement lossless compression in DSF files.
The original DSD Disc I released a full 5 years ago in November (11/2009 release) was a single ZIP file that contained an ISO image to create a data DVD from. This was meant to be played in the Sony PS3 at the time and a couple Sony SACD players that supported DSD Disc. Nothing else was playing DSD files at the time! Since there were something like 30 million PS3 users out there, I was hoping some might be interested in Hi-Rez audio... unfortunately that never seemed to catch on
DSD Disc. I remember that concept.
There are download sites, like PentaTone, that offer DSD in ISO format these days. But they don't refer to them as DSD Disc.
Most people who download ISO files like that use programs like the freeware ISO2DSF to create DSF files from the ISOs - even though software like JRiver lets you play ISOs directly.
davidelias
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ISO is the single image file used to burn a DVD. So in the case of DSD Discs saved as ISO images (like mine was) the user then had to create a Data DVD (not video DVD) disc from the ISO image. The Mac can read the ISO directly and burn a DVD from it. The PC needs some software to read the ISO file or burn a DVD. I use ImgBurn (also freeware) and there are lots of others. The free 7Zip also reads ISO's on the PC.
The DSD Disc data layout is pretty simple. Just a control file and a subfolder that contains the DSF files. If I remember right, the PS3 would read and play the DSF files from a USB stick anyway which skipped the whole burn a DVD issue.
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!
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