You have to give it to Paul for his passion and effort in maintaining the highest quality possible from recording to playback. Octave Records recordings sound outstanding
Quincy Jones is legendary as a producer, arranger, composer and conductor, but not so much as a musician.He did play trumpet early in his career in the 1950s, but didn’t play a note on Thriller. Many of the bass parts were played by Louis Johnson, but it changes from track to track.
Great video Paul, the first time a heard a DSD file (256) of “The Art of HIFI - Strings, or Audiophile Masters IX) I was blown away by the quality of the music and it’s reproduction. Being an old school veteran of Vinyl (over 55 years) I must admit the vinyl bridge is trembling…😎
Thanks Paul. As always I appreciate your honest explanations of pretty high level stuff. I have no idea what PCM vs DSD or any other alphabet soup is compared to my "old school" 40 year old Pioneer receiver, CD player and DAC ( I sold my vinyl and turntable years ago). I like and understand your explanation of sampling rates and file sizes and if I ever win the lottery, I would have no problem picking up as much PS Audio equipment to play my Octave recordings and "be in the moment". My exposure to mind blowing audio was a Phase Linear amp pushing Bose 901 speakers fed by a reel to reel tape at the local Hi-Fi showroom in the early 1970's. It felt like you were sitting in the concert hall (Classical was the demo) compared to what I had in my college days. Thanks again!
Fascinating to listen to Paul. Just one note, Michael Jackson - Thriller was released on SACD with DSD layer years ago. Recently, MoFi released remastered SACD. I have both SACD' s versions. 😊
Hey paul, I enjoy your show. I've been writing music and recording for 30 years and I'm also an audiophile with his own studio. The important thing you said today is when you can hear a cymbal in real life and then hear it play back on the Monitor and you know that sound it's right there, you know you have control over the entire process. That's why all your equipment is so accurate God bless you
Hi Paul. Just so you are aware, there is software available now that can split an audio file up into different instruments and vocals. That's where the "remix" comes from. They used the same technique to produce a stereo remix from the mono masters of Woodstock for a recent reissue. It's got to be magic! I believe there's even an app for it for Android. As to their source , maybe they could just upsample cd quality. Love your vids.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio youtube has removed my reply. Apparently I'm not allowed to tell you. Its a vocal and music separator and there are AI versions for PC
As soon as you started to listen DSD on well designed DAC it is life changing experience. Even the bands which I couldn't listen to before like Queen sound very real on DSD. It is rediscovering the world of music experience. The rest of chain including the amp and speakers have to be on pair but the source stopped being an issue and there is no need for analog sources any more.
A CD dumped, edited and then resampled into DSD is still CD quality, you can't properly upscale audio, certainly not in anyway that keeps the sound natural and authentic. Plus anytime you convert an audio format which you'd need to do to edit it, it further compromises quality, so already the edited version would be fractionally less than the CD quality straight off the disc. The source has to be high enough to produce a DSD file, which either means a good tape, or another DSD source file.
For what it's worth... it is far far far from the same as Octave records work.... but everything that get played on my big rig is in DSD. Be it off local storage or from (currently) Qobuz it is converted to DSD on it's way to the DAC. For local files I use Foobar2000 with the output being to Foo_DSD_Asio and for streaming it's from the app to Voiocemeeter and Voicemeeter's output is set to Foo_DSD_Asio. The pure beauty of the Foobar player is it's directly working with Foo_DSD so that every PCM resolution is converted to it's best sounding DSD version, so, different output for 44.1 vs 96 or 196khz.... unfortunately for Voicemeeter I have to pick one conversion result and for an unknown reason Qobuz will not output to Foo_DSD_asio even though it shows up as an option. Cheers.
Question: I can't run DSD in my system ;-( So, I bought the Ana Vidovic Live at Hampden Hall in PCM 176/24 Bit from Octave Records, and was suprised by the sound. Here, it sounds dull, with lack of details, unnatural. I then made a little mastering adjustment by increasing the overtone level by 3-5 dB, and then it sounds like my other Ana Vidovic album which is standard PCM redbook version. I have lots of HiRez PCM, and I believe they sound better than redbook standard. Any ideas why the Octave Record Ana Idovic Live at Hampden Hal in PCM 176/24 bit doesn't sounds good?
Yes, I am afraid to say that is my fault. When we recorded it live there was a noisy air conditioning unit. I had run the entire recording through a filter that removed the noise but, unfortunately, removed some of the top end of the recording. I will be re-issuing that recording hopefully in the next month or so without this stupid filter and that will bring back the life of the guitar (and the air conditioner...but). Sorry about that and thank you for the reminder. We will do our best to let everyone know and re-issue download codes.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio Thanks for that answer - very honest and faithful. I have done recordings of concerts myself - not to compare with yours in any way - but noticed, that background noise is more audible in the recording than when being in the concert hall. But you hear than when com home! I look forward in hearing the "naked" version, and I think I can live with the air conditioning noise. Thanks a lots again.
I’ve listened to those bootlegged DSD files that Gibson mentions. They put a lot of work to put some equalization and echo into the recording. Very subtle but it’s not a multitrack remastering whatsoever. At the end of the day it’s USELESS. They upsample some of CD recordings saying it’s remastered in DSD. Nonsense. But to the untrained ear, it may sound like an upgrade. It’s just another example of click and bait files wondering in the internet.
I wonder if more companies would record in DSD if they didn't see the necessity to convert either to analogue or PCM in order to carry out any necessary editing? One English recording company which specialises in 'classical' music and which releases SACDs on a regular basis began, when it introduced the format many years ago, by recording in DSD but all its masters are now 24/96 PCM, presumably because its easier to do the entire process in PCM before finally converting to DSD for the SACDs.
if dsd sticks around long enough there would be tools to edit while in dsd. not that it would make much difference to 24b/96khz bunch of the dsd related talk reminds me of when mp3's were new and I mean like really new, many people were saying things like that it would be impossible to fast forward a mp3(back when the only player software available could not skip around a song or fast forward at all).
@@lasskinn474 I'm sure you're correct that someone will eventually find a way to edit in DSD and Paul has mentioned a so-called Zephyr filter on a couple of occasions that apparently provides a totally lossless means of converting one way (i.e. from analogue to DSD or DSD to analogue - I can't remember which) but not vice versa. I'd love to know what that entails and, if it exists, why is the reverse procedure seemingly either impossible or extremely difficult?
I suspect a lot has to do with legacy systems. Compared to processing in DSD, mixing in PCM is relatively more simple from a computational perspective and more forgiving of algorithm shortcuts and systemic modelling errors. Therefore there will still be a lot of PCM-based legacy mixing tools and equipment around of low computational power that work in PCM using simple software models.
Some peep on the interwebs has taken whatever 128kbps MP3 or WMA that they downloaded from Napster or Kazaa and converted then to DSD. I"m sure that's going to sound good.
@4:41 "...and commercial studios work really hard, at making the best recordings they know how to do." Either they do not know how to do it, or they never heard properly mixed and mastered songs. They are working off of a distorted belief of what sounds great. @4:53 "...and they sound great. They don't sound real. But they sound great." Our host and I have not been listening to the same studio releases. He just said how they screwed of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album. So how is it that they "work really hard, at making the best recordings they know how to do"? This is Michael Jackson we are talking about, and the studio personnel screwed it up for him. I agree that the Thriller album was recorded with the gain on the bass instruments turned down a bit too much. However, depending on the pressing, the bass is decent. I have gone through many different Thriller pressings, until I found two (both on the Epic label) that had the best sound quality that I could find (and easily better than anything released in the digital domain). Here are the stamper codes: Album #1: Side 1: PAL 38112-2B
@2:49 🧐🤔 FUNNY YOU MENTION ‘THRILLER’.. …I’VE GOT THREE CD’S (ORIGINAL, REMASTER W/ INTERVIEWS, AND 25TH ANNIVERSARY) AND I WOULDN’T HAVE BELIEVED THERE’D BE SUCH A DIFFERENCE IF I DIDN’T HEAR IT FOR MYSELF. …I ONLY ENJOY LISTENING TO THE ORIGINAL UNCOMPRESSED VERSION.
There are a few multitracks out on the Internet however most are created using AI stem separation. Unless you're someone like François K (look up his live stem remixes) who knows how to do it right because of thousands and thousands hours of experience in the studio it ain't going to sound good. That said there are a few legitimate leaks out but they are in standard PCM so there's not going to be any improvement. No one is going to have the master analogue tapes and 99.99% of digital masters are in PCM. So I'm extremely skeptical too. Maybe in the near future AI will get really good with stems to the point where we can isolate every little element then we can do PCM to DSD remixes properly but that's still a long ways off. Even then it'll be a lot of work.
People, really needs to understand the concept of DSD record . Otherwise will keep asking and talking about “Magic “ , that has nothing to do with improvements or anything else.
Well, Paul did actually get a couple of things right but not much else. He's right about the questionable DSD recordings, stay away from them. He's also right about the fact that he records DSD at around 11 MHZ. Other than that Paul has it all wrong from the fact that Quincy Jones DID NOT play the bass on any of the Michael Jackson Thriller sessions to the fact that DSD is THE WORST possible format to record in. That is why the company that created DSD, Sony, ditched the format over 20 years ago. Paul tries to convince you that DSD is better than PCM but he neglects to tell everyone that he has to convert the DSD recordings to PCM to edit them AND THEN he reconverts the recordings back to DSD. He also neglects to tell everyone that huge amounts of noise has to be added to DSD to dither the bits. Filters must then be applied to the DSD files to keep from overdriving the electronics in the digital-to-analog conversion. There are A LOT of issues with DSD that make it the absolute worst format to capture recordings in.
As audio distribution is becoming almost entirely based on streaming and as even higher-end devices are incorporating DSP, the future of DSD as distribution format is very questionable. Your smart phone, tablet, laptop, set top box, smart TV, smart speaker, active speaker, wireless earbuds and wireless headphones all can't support DSD natively because modern audio processing can't work with it. Rather, streaming is already capable of running 192kHz 24 bits PCM, which is superior to DSD-64. I'm not even sure if we ever will need anything higher than 192kHz 24 bits as our hearing wont be able to sense further steps up in sample rate..
You have to give it to Paul for his passion and effort in maintaining the highest quality possible from recording to playback. Octave Records recordings sound outstanding
Quincy Jones is legendary as a producer, arranger, composer and conductor, but not so much as a musician.He did play trumpet early in his career in the 1950s, but didn’t play a note on Thriller. Many of the bass parts were played by Louis Johnson, but it changes from track to track.
Great video Paul, the first time a heard a DSD file (256) of “The Art of HIFI - Strings, or Audiophile Masters IX) I was blown away by the quality of the music and it’s reproduction. Being an old school veteran of Vinyl (over 55 years) I must admit the vinyl bridge is trembling…😎
You said it Paul. Imperfectly perfect as music should be. A lot of recordings are sterile and lifeless.
You are an artist and compromise is not in your vocabulary. Thank you for the beautiful music.
Thanks Paul. As always I appreciate your honest explanations of pretty high level stuff. I have no idea what PCM vs DSD or any other alphabet soup is compared to my "old school" 40 year old Pioneer receiver, CD player and DAC ( I sold my vinyl and turntable years ago). I like and understand your explanation of sampling rates and file sizes and if I ever win the lottery, I would have no problem picking up as much PS Audio equipment to play my Octave recordings and "be in the moment". My exposure to mind blowing audio was a Phase Linear amp pushing Bose 901 speakers fed by a reel to reel tape at the local Hi-Fi showroom in the early 1970's. It felt like you were sitting in the concert hall (Classical was the demo) compared to what I had in my college days. Thanks again!
Fascinating to listen to Paul. Just one note, Michael Jackson - Thriller was released on SACD with DSD layer years ago. Recently, MoFi released remastered SACD. I have both SACD' s versions. 😊
do they sound different?
Hey paul, I enjoy your show. I've been writing music and recording for 30 years and I'm also an audiophile with his own studio. The important thing you said today is when you can hear a cymbal in real life and then hear it play back on the Monitor and you know that sound it's right there, you know you have control over the entire process. That's why all your equipment is so accurate God bless you
Hi Paul. Just so you are aware, there is software available now that can split an audio file up into different instruments and vocals. That's where the "remix" comes from. They used the same technique to produce a stereo remix from the mono masters of Woodstock for a recent reissue. It's got to be magic! I believe there's even an app for it for Android. As to their source , maybe they could just upsample cd quality. Love your vids.
Thanks! I did not know that. What's it called?
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio It's called "Studio executive having access to the initial capture stems".
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio youtube has removed my reply. Apparently I'm not allowed to tell you. Its a vocal and music separator and there are AI versions for PC
As soon as you started to listen DSD on well designed DAC it is life changing experience. Even the bands which I couldn't listen to before like Queen sound very real on DSD. It is rediscovering the world of music experience. The rest of chain including the amp and speakers have to be on pair but the source stopped being an issue and there is no need for analog sources any more.
The best explanation of DSD yet. Also as always, octave records and Paul are the GOAT.
I wish many hifi companies was like PS Audio
Some are. But not even PS Audio are honest about EVERYTHING. Much is still opinions that bary from person to person.
A CD dumped, edited and then resampled into DSD is still CD quality, you can't properly upscale audio, certainly not in anyway that keeps the sound natural and authentic. Plus anytime you convert an audio format which you'd need to do to edit it, it further compromises quality, so already the edited version would be fractionally less than the CD quality straight off the disc. The source has to be high enough to produce a DSD file, which either means a good tape, or another DSD source file.
For what it's worth... it is far far far from the same as Octave records work.... but everything that get played on my big rig is in DSD. Be it off local storage or from (currently) Qobuz it is converted to DSD on it's way to the DAC. For local files I use Foobar2000 with the output being to Foo_DSD_Asio and for streaming it's from the app to Voiocemeeter and Voicemeeter's output is set to Foo_DSD_Asio. The pure beauty of the Foobar player is it's directly working with Foo_DSD so that every PCM resolution is converted to it's best sounding DSD version, so, different output for 44.1 vs 96 or 196khz.... unfortunately for Voicemeeter I have to pick one conversion result and for an unknown reason Qobuz will not output to Foo_DSD_asio even though it shows up as an option. Cheers.
The last Beatles "release" was using some sort of "separate out instruments as tracks and remix them" software. We are only going to see more of this.
ua-cam.com/video/d8XMx4h2ZAE/v-deo.html
The bass on Billie Jean is really good though. That does not suck. 😂
I ❤️ DSD, 👍, saludos.
thanks Paul
I thought a lot of "remasters" on the market are not even using the original master tapes?
Paul do u have All artists at Octave records ?
Question: I can't run DSD in my system ;-( So, I bought the Ana Vidovic Live at Hampden Hall in PCM 176/24 Bit from Octave Records, and was suprised by the sound. Here, it sounds dull, with lack of details, unnatural. I then made a little mastering adjustment by increasing the overtone level by 3-5 dB, and then it sounds like my other Ana Vidovic album which is standard PCM redbook version. I have lots of HiRez PCM, and I believe they sound better than redbook standard.
Any ideas why the Octave Record Ana Idovic Live at Hampden Hal in PCM 176/24 bit doesn't sounds good?
Yes, I am afraid to say that is my fault. When we recorded it live there was a noisy air conditioning unit. I had run the entire recording through a filter that removed the noise but, unfortunately, removed some of the top end of the recording. I will be re-issuing that recording hopefully in the next month or so without this stupid filter and that will bring back the life of the guitar (and the air conditioner...but). Sorry about that and thank you for the reminder. We will do our best to let everyone know and re-issue download codes.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio Thanks for that answer - very honest and faithful. I have done recordings of concerts myself - not to compare with yours in any way - but noticed, that background noise is more audible in the recording than when being in the concert hall. But you hear than when com home! I look forward in hearing the "naked" version, and I think I can live with the air conditioning noise. Thanks a lots again.
What were you gonna say about Steely Dan, Paul?
I’ve listened to those bootlegged DSD files that Gibson mentions. They put a lot of work to put some equalization and echo into the recording. Very subtle but it’s not a multitrack remastering whatsoever. At the end of the day it’s USELESS. They upsample some of CD recordings saying it’s remastered in DSD. Nonsense.
But to the untrained ear, it may sound like an upgrade.
It’s just another example of click and bait files wondering in the internet.
Turntables are next? 🤔
I wonder if more companies would record in DSD if they didn't see the necessity to convert either to analogue or PCM in order to carry out any necessary editing? One English recording company which specialises in 'classical' music and which releases SACDs on a regular basis began, when it introduced the format many years ago, by recording in DSD but all its masters are now 24/96 PCM, presumably because its easier to do the entire process in PCM before finally converting to DSD for the SACDs.
if dsd sticks around long enough there would be tools to edit while in dsd. not that it would make much difference to 24b/96khz
bunch of the dsd related talk reminds me of when mp3's were new and I mean like really new, many people were saying things like that it would be impossible to fast forward a mp3(back when the only player software available could not skip around a song or fast forward at all).
@@lasskinn474 I'm sure you're correct that someone will eventually find a way to edit in DSD and Paul has mentioned a so-called Zephyr filter on a couple of occasions that apparently provides a totally lossless means of converting one way (i.e. from analogue to DSD or DSD to analogue - I can't remember which) but not vice versa. I'd love to know what that entails and, if it exists, why is the reverse procedure seemingly either impossible or extremely difficult?
It can be converted to “DXD” ( PCM 387) remastered and then without any loss reconverted to DSD.
I suspect a lot has to do with legacy systems. Compared to processing in DSD, mixing in PCM is relatively more simple from a computational perspective and more forgiving of algorithm shortcuts and systemic modelling errors. Therefore there will still be a lot of PCM-based legacy mixing tools and equipment around of low computational power that work in PCM using simple software models.
👍
dsd , is the latest in data streaming technology .
That said, the technology is approaching being 30 years old since the first commercial release.
Steely Dan really needs Re-Mastered
Some peep on the interwebs has taken whatever 128kbps MP3 or WMA that they downloaded from Napster or Kazaa and converted then to DSD. I"m sure that's going to sound good.
All you need to do now Paul is get Van Morrison to record at Octave Records
@4:41 "...and commercial studios work really hard, at making the best recordings they know how to do."
Either they do not know how to do it, or they never heard properly mixed and mastered songs. They are working off of a distorted belief of what sounds great.
@4:53 "...and they sound great. They don't sound real. But they sound great."
Our host and I have not been listening to the same studio releases. He just said how they screwed of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album.
So how is it that they "work really hard, at making the best recordings they know how to do"?
This is Michael Jackson we are talking about, and the studio personnel screwed it up for him.
I agree that the Thriller album was recorded with the gain on the bass instruments turned down a bit too much. However, depending on the pressing, the bass is decent.
I have gone through many different Thriller pressings, until I found two (both on the Epic label) that had the best sound quality that I could find (and easily better than anything released in the digital domain).
Here are the stamper codes:
Album #1:
Side 1: PAL 38112-2B
@2:49 🧐🤔 FUNNY YOU MENTION ‘THRILLER’.. …I’VE GOT THREE CD’S (ORIGINAL, REMASTER W/ INTERVIEWS, AND 25TH ANNIVERSARY) AND I WOULDN’T HAVE BELIEVED THERE’D BE SUCH A DIFFERENCE IF I DIDN’T HEAR IT FOR MYSELF.
…I ONLY ENJOY LISTENING TO THE ORIGINAL UNCOMPRESSED VERSION.
There are a few multitracks out on the Internet however most are created using AI stem separation. Unless you're someone like François K (look up his live stem remixes) who knows how to do it right because of thousands and thousands hours of experience in the studio it ain't going to sound good.
That said there are a few legitimate leaks out but they are in standard PCM so there's not going to be any improvement. No one is going to have the master analogue tapes and 99.99% of digital masters are in PCM. So I'm extremely skeptical too.
Maybe in the near future AI will get really good with stems to the point where we can isolate every little element then we can do PCM to DSD remixes properly but that's still a long ways off. Even then it'll be a lot of work.
People, really needs to understand the concept of DSD record . Otherwise will keep asking and talking about “Magic “ , that has nothing to do with improvements or anything else.
I think all of this is gilding the lily. A recording should
be enjoyed the way it was produced when it was produced even if that was 1955!
Well, Paul did actually get a couple of things right but not much else.
He's right about the questionable DSD recordings, stay away from them.
He's also right about the fact that he records DSD at around 11 MHZ.
Other than that Paul has it all wrong from the fact that Quincy Jones DID NOT play the bass on any of the Michael Jackson Thriller sessions to the fact that DSD is THE WORST possible format to record in.
That is why the company that created DSD, Sony, ditched the format over 20 years ago.
Paul tries to convince you that DSD is better than PCM but he neglects to tell everyone that he has to convert the DSD recordings to PCM to edit them AND THEN he reconverts the recordings back to DSD.
He also neglects to tell everyone that huge amounts of noise has to be added to DSD to dither the bits.
Filters must then be applied to the DSD files to keep from overdriving the electronics in the digital-to-analog conversion.
There are A LOT of issues with DSD that make it the absolute worst format to capture recordings in.
FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ua-cam.com/video/cH8iv4n2kco/v-deo.html
As audio distribution is becoming almost entirely based on streaming and as even higher-end devices are incorporating DSP, the future of DSD as distribution format is very questionable. Your smart phone, tablet, laptop, set top box, smart TV, smart speaker, active speaker, wireless earbuds and wireless headphones all can't support DSD natively because modern audio processing can't work with it. Rather, streaming is already capable of running 192kHz 24 bits PCM, which is superior to DSD-64. I'm not even sure if we ever will need anything higher than 192kHz 24 bits as our hearing wont be able to sense further steps up in sample rate..