Thread: How do artists get started in SACD recording ?

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Post by DrOctodivx September 23, 2004 (1 of 70)
This is related to the thread about promoting SACDs. It seems to me that not only should we encourage the the acceptance of SACD in the mainstream through submitting reviews, I also think more musicians should be made more aware of this avenue to expand their audience (and at the same time provide more material for our delectation).

However, just as many consumers are unaware of this medium for music appreciation, I think many musicians are unaware of the opportunity to gain exposure through this cutting edge format. I would think that this is a big opportunity for up and coming musicians with original material of quality to get established in an alternate channel.

I have a couple of musician friends (in the San Francisco bay area), and I am encouraging them to record and distribute their music in SACD format, and they are interested in doing so. Where would one go to record some sessions in this format, and what are the costs involved ? Any feedback would be appreciated.

Post by peteyspambucket September 24, 2004 (2 of 70)
From what little I know, there is a recent plug-in to PRO TOOLS that will help you to master in DSD, which would allow you to create an SACD. I'm not exactly sure of the process, but starting from the PRO TOOLS site would be a good start. I heard the plug-in is currently only available for MACs, and that was about 5 months ago.

Good luck!

Post by lexington125 November 15, 2004 (3 of 70)
DrOctodivx said:

This is related to the thread about promoting SACDs. It seems to me that not only should we encourage the the acceptance of SACD in the mainstream through submitting reviews, I also think more musicians should be made more aware of this avenue to expand their audience (and at the same time provide more material for our delectation).

However, just as many consumers are unaware of this medium for music appreciation, I think many musicians are unaware of the opportunity to gain exposure through this cutting edge format. I would think that this is a big opportunity for up and coming musicians with original material of quality to get established in an alternate channel.

I have a couple of musician friends (in the San Francisco bay area), and I am encouraging them to record and distribute their music in SACD format, and they are interested in doing so. Where would one go to record some sessions in this format, and what are the costs involved ? Any feedback would be appreciated.

I'm a recording engineer who specializes in location recording of acoustic music and I use a Genex GX9000 hard disk recorder capable of both DSD format and hi-res PCM recording. Getting musicians to record to DSD format is only part of the problem. The much bigger issue is convincing their record company to incur the expense to manufacture a SACD. I tend to record all sessions to DSD as I prefer the sound to any bit depth or sample rate PCM format. But eventually, all of these recordings end up being converted to 16/44 PCM as no local / independent musician is going to release their own SACD; nor is a small local label going to pay for the SACD manufacturing.

I'm a big fan of the sound of DSD, but until an inexpensive method of distributing DSD recordings becomes commonly available, most musicians will not have any opportunity to release SACDs.

Steve
Lexington 125 - High Resolution Location Recording
www.lexington125.com
lex125@pacbell.net

Post by Johnno November 16, 2004 (4 of 70)
lexington125 said:

I'm a recording engineer who specializes in location recording of acoustic music and I use a Genex GX9000 hard disk recorder capable of both DSD format and hi-res PCM recording. Getting musicians to record to DSD format is only part of the problem. The much bigger issue is convincing their record company to incur the expense to manufacture a SACD. I tend to record all sessions to DSD as I prefer the sound to any bit depth or sample rate PCM format. But eventually, all of these recordings end up being converted to 16/44 PCM as no local / independent musician is going to release their own SACD; nor is a small local label going to pay for the SACD manufacturing.

I'm a big fan of the sound of DSD, but until an inexpensive method of distributing DSD recordings becomes commonly available, most musicians will not have any opportunity to release SACDs.

Steve
Lexington 125 - High Resolution Location Recording
www.lexington125.com
lex125@pacbell.net

Steve, I presume you are referring to hybrids as the end product. Out of interest, are single layer SACDs any more expensive to produce than redbook CDs? Giving that question rather more thought myself, I was thinking about the early Sony SACDs and realised that many of them are stereo-only, although there are some multichannel ones amongst them. I realise too, of course, that in producing the single layer product those musicians would be restricting the sales of their recordings to a fraction of the possible audience.

It's a real catch-22 isn't it -- and I guess one that every SACD manufacturer is faced with?

Post by DrOctodivx November 16, 2004 (5 of 70)
I'm a big fan of the sound of DSD, but until an inexpensive method of distributing DSD recordings becomes commonly available, most musicians will not have any opportunity to release SACDs.
Hi Steve,

Thank you for this informative explanation. It does seem true that printing Hybrid SACDs is a much more difficult enterprise for an independent musician. However, some musicians such as David Elias have successfully released independent SACD albums, so it seems that it is not an insurmountable goal.

Well, it did seem this would be a good field for talented newcomers to make their mark, but of course, as always, you need the manufacturing and marketing muscles of the big players to really make this cost-effective. Sad and unfortunate :(

-Karl

Post by Dan Popp November 16, 2004 (6 of 70)
peteyspambucket said:

From what little I know, there is a recent plug-in to PRO TOOLS that will help you to master in DSD, which would allow you to create an SACD. I'm not exactly sure of the process, but starting from the PRO TOOLS site would be a good start. I heard the plug-in is currently only available for MACs, and that was about 5 months ago.

Good luck!

Petey,
The plug-in was introduced as a PC item only - and Pro Tools has always leaned very heavily toward Mac OS, so few experienced PT operators are using a PC platform.

Be that as it may, I'm not sure how much interest there is in making a hi-rez PCM master into an SACD. Why make a master that can't be played, but has to be converted to several different formats to be heard? I don't feel that's a very elegant solution. If an artist is really sold on SACD as a release format, then this is a way to do it... but we're talking about _creating_ that interest.

The DSD recording tools are still primitive, with only 8 tracks available at a time for recording. When that count gets up to 24, you will start to see some interest, and at 48 there will be a real reason for artists to jump in to DSD recording.

Of course, in the pop and rock worlds, there are a lot of artists who just don't have much hearing acuity left. It will be up to the (young) recording engineers and mastering engineers to push for the extra quality that the artist himself can't hear.

If an artist is interested, I would steer him to the Genex or Merging Technologies/Pyramix sites, or have him call around to studios or sound companies like Steve's. Studios will rent an item like a DSD recording box that they don't have on-site, if the client is paying for it.

Post by Sam November 17, 2004 (7 of 70)
Dan Popp said:

The DSD recording tools are still primitive, with only 8 tracks available at a time for recording. When that count gets up to 24, you will start to see some interest, and at 48 there will be a real reason for artists to jump in to DSD recording.

Recording is not the problem; it is processing. If any part of the toolchain is PCM-based, you have to convert away from DSD. More fundamentally, any modification at all of the DSD signal will transform it into a multibit signal, which must then be reduced again to 1-bit. Ugly.

Purist audiophile recording methods can cope, but they don't need 24/48 tracks, either.

Post by kikske November 17, 2004 (8 of 70)
Johnno said:

Steve, I presume you are referring to hybrids as the end product. Out of interest, are single layer SACDs any more expensive to produce than redbook CDs? Giving that question rather more thought myself, I was thinking about the early Sony SACDs and realised that many of them are stereo-only, although there are some multichannel ones amongst them. I realise too, of course, that in producing the single layer product those musicians would be restricting the sales of their recordings to a fraction of the possible audience.

It's a real catch-22 isn't it -- and I guess one that every SACD manufacturer is faced with?

Hi, if it can be any help, as a manufacturer of SA-CD ( replicator and fullmfillmenthouse) our company has invested a lot in production capacity and over the past year, we have been able to convince some smaller lables to try SA-CD and with success so far. if you have specific question to the manufacturing proces and cost aspect, please let us know and we cna try to give you input as much as we can : frank.vandenkieboom@viva-magnetics.be

Post by Dan Popp November 17, 2004 (9 of 70)
Sam said:

Recording is not the problem; it is processing. If any part of the toolchain is PCM-based, you have to convert away from DSD. More fundamentally, any modification at all of the DSD signal will transform it into a multibit signal, which must then be reduced again to 1-bit. Ugly.

Purist audiophile recording methods can cope, but they don't need 24/48 tracks, either.

Sam,
If you've seen the inside of a recording studio recently, or seen a picture of one, you'll notice something very large taking up most of the room. It's the console. A lot of records today are made with 64 tracks, some with 128 (Michael Jackson comes to mind). An "artist" who (mistakenly, in my view) thinks he needs a console with almost 200 inputs to satisfy his vision is going to sniff at the suggestion that he limit himself to 8. So the recording side is a problem.

Processing is also a problem. At the current time there are some solutions or workarounds to the processing problem but no solutions to the track limitation problem.

Post by Sam November 17, 2004 (10 of 70)
Dan Popp said:

Sam,
If you've seen the inside of a recording studio recently, or seen a picture of one, you'll notice something very large taking up most of the room. It's the console. A lot of records today are made with 64 tracks, some with 128 (Michael Jackson comes to mind). An "artist" who (mistakenly, in my view) thinks he needs a console with almost 200 inputs to satisfy his vision is going to sniff at the suggestion that he limit himself to 8. So the recording side is a problem.

Aren't the people using analog mixing decks also still using tape? Or are there people recording digitally, but mixing analog?

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