http://www.newswire.ca/releases/October2003/14/c0810.html
MONTREAL, Oct. 14 /CNW/ - McGill University of Montreal and Philips Electronics announce a co-operation in the field of new high-resolution DSD audio technology. McGill has selected the DSD (Direct Stream Digital) technology for incorporation in their new facilities at its renowned Faculty of Music, which will house the world's leading audio recording studios.
Philips will contribute by providing equipment, know-how and support tools related to Super Audio CD post- production, replication and playback, as well as by exchanging engineers and technological knowledge on an ongoing basis.
McGill's new facility, CIRMMT (the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research
in Music Media and Technology), will be housed in a specially-designed multi-storey building in downtown Montreal. CIRMMT and McGill's Faculty of Music are quickly becoming the destination of choice for the world's leading professional practitioners and scientific researchers on music and sound.
According to Faculty of Music Dean Don McLean, "McGill's goal is to develop musicians who are as comfortable in the recording studio and research lab as they are on the performing stage, and scientific researchers in music who are as sensitive to artistic complexity as they are to scientific outcomes."
McGill will use DSD as the audio format of choice for real-time
communication of multi-sensory content using broadband networks, which will be integrated in the new facility. "McGill University chose DSD because we consider this to be the highest-quality audio format available today," says Prof. Wieslaw Woszczyk, Founding Director of CIRMMT and Chair of McGill's Graduate Program in Sound Recording. "It matches McGill's ambition to be at the forefront of music-related technology."
Philips Research played a major role in the development of DSD
technology. Dr. Derk Reefman of Philips Research says: "McGill University is a world-renowned centre of excellence in music and the related technologies, and we believe that the new CIRMMT centre will play a major role in developing and increasing knowledge about our DSD technology and its applications and we look forward to giving it our full support."
Complete SACD recording and production complex
The planned production facility at CIRMMT will later be developed into a complete SA-CD recording and production complex, including a mastering house, a record label and web-based distribution and services group. This will be used for training of recording engineers, producers and audio technologists, including those already working in the industry. The resulting integration of music, media and technology will make CIRMMT a magnet for outstanding students from around the world who will learn about and benefiting from the extra dimension brought by multi-channel SACD technology.
Research for enhancing the immersive experience of sound
The activity is not only founded on DSD as today's most advanced multi-channel audio recording and reproduction technology, but also on a fundamental understanding of psycho-acoustics and its role in the perceived quality of high-resolution audio systems embracing every stage of the recording and reproduction chain. Digital technology will be tested and verified through research into perception and neuroscience, with the underlying aim of creating media that intensify and enhance the listeners' experience of immersive presence of music.
Super Audio CD: renders all the nuances of a live performance
Super Audio CD, developed by Philips and Sony, is the latest,
evolutionary, music carrier. It brings a breakthrough in the fidelity of music reproduction while still retaining full compatibility with the standard CD.
Achieving this objective required an entirely new approach to audio recording and reproduction. Based on the revolutionary new DSD (Direct Stream Digital) technology, Super Audio CD delivers superior sound quality with the ability to render all the nuances of a live performance. Using a sampling frequency 64 times higher than that of CD, Super Audio CD offers a frequency response of up to 100 kHz and a dynamic range of up to 120 dB across the entire audible range.
This technology captures the total signal information from today's state-of-the-art analog mixing consoles, delivering a performance that is unrivalled by any other system, whether digital or analog. A Super Audio CD disc carries up to 6 totally separate, full-bandwidth DSD channels, giving producers the ability to precisely reproduce the acoustics of the original recording venue, and immerse the listener in a 360 degree sound experience that no other medium can deliver.
McGill
McGill University's Faculty of Music is the largest university music
school in Canada with 800 students, and among the top-12 in North America. The faculty provides education in various musical art forms, and has some of the highest-rated student ensembles in North America. Its Graduate Program in Sound Recording, established in 1979, recognizes the importance for the music industry of having skilled technical engineers for the recording process. The program is consistently rated as the best graduate program in sound recording
in North America.
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands is one of the world's
biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 31.8 billion in 2002. It is a global leader in color television sets, lighting,
electric shavers, medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, and one-chip TV products. Its 164,000 employees in more than 60 countries are active in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances, semiconductors, and medical systems. Philips is quoted on the NYSE (symbol: PHG), London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and other stock exchanges. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter
