Acoustic Sounds Super Hirez
I have tried to download the app to my Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and it consistently does not function correctly. However, when I tried the same. The new Acoustic Sounds Super HiRez™ service, available on www.superhirez.com, provides consumers with an alternative to MP3 and other lower resolution digital formats, while answering the needs of audiophiles seeking downloadable music with the same quality only available now on vinyl LPs or Super Audio CDs (SACD). Aug 27, 2013 - Acoustic Sounds Announces New DSD Download Site: Super Hirez! Chad Kassem and Marc Sheforgen of Acoustic.
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Positive Feedback ISSUE 75
september/october 2014
Super HiRez Brings Live Blues to DSD and Signs Warner Music Deal
by Brian Moura
Chad Kassem and Marc Sheforgan of SuperHirez.com
Chad Kassem is well known in music circles and among Positive Feedback readers as the CEO of Acoustic Sounds, Super HiRez music downloads site, Analogue Productions record label and Quality Record Pressings—a high quality Vinyl LP pressing plant. This has put Kassem at the forefront of many major breakthroughs in the world of high end audio, including last year's launch of the Super HiRez music downloads site, which was the first to offer major label music artist albums in Stereo Direct Stream Digital (DSD) last October.
Blues at the Crossroads Festival
What some of you may not know is that Kassem is also a passionate fan of blues music. His passion led him to develop and sponsor a celebration of the masters of this music at the annual Blues at the Crossroads Festival held at Blue Heaven Studios, a 91-year-old Gothic Church with superb acoustics in Salina, Kansas.
The 2014 Blues at the Crossroads Festival will be held on October 17th and 18th. It will feature an all-star line-up of blues stars including Kim Wilson (lead vocalist of the Fabulous Thunderbirds), Mighty Sam McClain, Joe Beard, Marquise Knox, Lazy Lester, Sunny Green, Bernard Allison, Rip Lee Pryor, Moreland & Arbuckle and Big George Brock.
Gus Skinas of The Super Audio Center
Live Blues Concert Recordings – Coming as DSD Downloads
This year's Blues at the Crossroads Festival will have an added bonus. Gus Skinas, President of the Super Audio Center in Boulder, Colorado will be on-hand to record the concerts in DSD along with Kassem. Several of the artists at the concerts have already authorized the release of their performances as DSD Downloads shortly after the event. This will allow concert attendees—and music fans around the U.S.—to enjoy what promises to be some great blues music in a very high quality form after the event.
In their announcement of these upcoming DSD Downloads, Super HiRez notes that 'The company will be in the first in the high resolution audio space to offer a live blues concert recorded entirely in Direct Stream Digital (DSD), which provides 64 times the resolution of CDs and a much more life-like quality than MP3 tracks.'
Super HiRez anticipates that the Stereo DSD Downloads from this year's Blues at the Crossroads Concerts will be available for purchase and download 'in time for the holidays'. These DSD Downloads will then be followed by additional DSD recordings done by Skinas at Blues at the Crossroads Concerts going back to 1998. Marc Sheforgen, COO at Acoustic Sounds and Super HiRez explained that 'The plan is to introduce the series using recordings from the 2014 concerts and to then begin to roll out all of the treasures from years past.'
Kassem said that 'Capturing the legacy of some of these Blues performers is very important to me and I really can't think of a better way of capturing the power and emotion of their music than with live recordings in DSD. We've been doing the Blues Masters shows for a long time and I'm confident these recordings will be treasured by music lovers.'
At last year's debut of the Super HiRez site, Kassem played samples from the Crossroads Concerts held in the past from artists including Lazy Lester and Tony Joe White that had also been recorded in DSD by Gus Skinas from the Super Audio Center. During these demos, Kassem mentioned that some of the performances have also been recorded in Multichannel DSD. Marc Sheforgen, COO at Acoustic Sounds and Super HiRez told me that 'While Acoustic Sounds Super HiRez is committed to bringing multi-channel DSD downloads—including those from their Blues Masters series—to market, there has been no immediate schedule for doing so set as of yet. The current focus is to continue to bolster stereo offerings in both DSD and hi-res PCM.'
Warner Music Group Licenses Albums to Super HiRez
Acoustic Sounds Dsd
When Chad Kassem launched the Super HiRez downloads site at last year's Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in Denver, a big part of that announcement was the news that music downloads in both PCM and DSD formats would be coming from the catalogs of Universal Music and Sony Music. In short, two of the big three major music companies.
Less than one year later, Super HiRez has grown to over 1700 albums including over 1300 albums in PCM formats and almost 400 albums in Stereo DSD. It is one of the largest collections of PCM music downloads and the largest collection of Stereo DSD downloads available today.
Today Kassem completes the circle with the announcement that Warner Music Group, the home of major labels including Warner Brothers, Elektra and Atlantic records (formerly known in the music industry as 'WEA'), has signed an agreement with Super HiRez. The agreement means that over 1,200 albums will be made available through the Super HiRez web site in the coming months. This includes albums in high resolution PCM from Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Tom Petty that have already been made available on the Super HiRez in the past week.
Kassem said 'Adding Warner to our existing roster of major labels [Sony, Universal] is a huge win for us, the industry, and for those looking to enhance their high-resolution music collections. As far as we're concerned, the more choices in high-resolution music, in both titles and formats, the better.'
Kassem believes that the addition of the titles from Warner Music will help the Super HiRez catalog of high resolution albums reach 3,000 by the end of 2014. He plans to provide the provenance information of Warner Music recordings (when available) on the Super HiRez web site. Kassem also plans to explore licensing agreements that will open up the Super HiRez music downloads to customers outside the U.S. (all titles) and Canada (selected titles).
Warner Music Titles in DSD?
In the days when DVD Audio was first introduced, Warner Music was a staunch proponent of that format. Later on, Warner Music released albums in Stereo and Multichannel SACD in Asia and Europe featuring a number of their major artists. Not to mention a recent licensing agreement with Audio Fidelity Records that brought the classic jazz album 'Breezin' by George Benson to the market in 5.1 Multichannel SACD for the first time (see web link below). This raises the question, will we see some DSD titles from Warner Music on Super HiRez in the future?
According to Marc Sheforgen, COO at Acoustic Sounds and Super HiRez 'As of now, there is no news to share regarding DSD from the Warner Music catalog.' Positive Feedback will keep an eye on this to see if some of the DSD tapes from Asia and Europe make their way to Super HiRez in the future. That would make today's Warner Music announcement even sweeter in the future!
All in all, it has been a big day for Super HiRez and fans of their High Resolution Music downloads. The upcoming availability of the Blues at the Crossroads Live Concerts as Stereo DSD Downloads in the very near future plus the roll out of PCM music downloads from Warner Music will continue to expand the number and choices of major artist albums in high resolution audio. Big news indeed!
“We’re so lucky that it’s all coming together at once,” said Acoustic Sounds’ Chad Kassem.
On the final morning of the 2013 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, editors from Stereophile, AudioStream.com, and AnalogPlanet.com gathered in Kassem’s demo room to learn more about his new Super HiRez DSD download site.
Much of the weekend’s festivities had been highlighted by spirited talk of convergence, cooperation, and timing. During the Sony press conference, representatives were sure and careful to stress the importance of “industry-wide” support, not only of DSD, but of every file format. The words “and the industry” became a common refrain to any mention of Sony’s plans for new products, as though Sony and The Industry were an entirely new company or a hot new band. “This is just the first wave of products to come from Sony and the industry . . .” “Sony and the industry will be making big announcements in the coming weeks . . .” It’s all a part of the “hi-rez initiative,” and we were hearing about it again, Kassem speaking bluntly. Behind him, Sony’s new HAP-Z1ES music player was glowing with metadata.
“This isn’t just about DSD. SACD, DSD, hardware, software, LP . . . We offer it all.”
For sure, Kassem is fond of DSD—he’s got over a dozen years’ worth of DSD recordings waiting to be sifted through and made available for purchase on his site—but even more important to him is freedom of choice and simplicity of use.
“The key to making this thing fly is making it easy. We want to bring together the highest quality and ease of use. The customers pick what they want. The only reason we’ve hung our hat on DSD is because no one else was doing it and people were asking for it. We’ve had some customers ask us about ‘Double DSD.’ What I want people to understand is that the recording and the mastering are more important than the format. A well-mastered CD is going to sound better than a poorly mastered LP or high-rez file.”
Still, the benefits of DSD done properly are profound. In between Kassem’s discussion, we took time to listen. The system included the aforementioned Sony music player ($1,999), Pass Labs XP-20 preamp ($8,600) and XA60.5 60W monoblock amplifiers ($11,000/pair), and Sony SS-AR2 speakers ($20,000/pair). The sound was marvelous. I’d heard similarly good sound elsewhere at RMAF—in the MSB/SoundLab room, in the Sony room, in the Vivid/Luxman room, and in the Wilson/VTL/dCS/Parasound room—but, here, more than anywhere else, I felt transported by the music.
“Peace in the Valley” was a miracle, plain and simple. I’d never before felt so close to Elvis Presley. I found myself thinking how wonderful it is that humans can achieve such beauty—beauty of song, beauty of spirit, beauty of art and of technology. This was amazing. Elvis. The soul of Elvis—his sadness, his joy, his passion and love—everything but the man, there in the room with us. How did we accomplish this?
Look, “Peace in the Valley” sounds good through my shitty computer speakers. In DSD, through this system, it was as close to real as I’ve ever heard. We listened to more. Shelby Lynne, Ben Webster, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Joe White. Every one of them was there. I could imagine the players’ subtle motions, the purposeful movements, the necessary twists and turns and pulls of every note, chord, or breath that communicate exactly the right feeling and tone. I imagined myself, on stage, playing my own songs, communicating through motion as well as sound.
What I heard, then, was a greater degree of humanness in the reproduced music. It was like some expertly realized CGI, but instead of a tiger on a raft, there were musicians in a room. The gap between reality and illusion is growing smaller.
My messy notes: “We’re crossing boundaries. To some extent, it’s frightening, but it’s also absolutely beautiful. The force in the musical climaxes is magic.”
I think that’s what’s most impressive about the best DSD playback I’ve heard: There’s an overall smoothness and effortlessness, combined with wonderfully natural and powerful dynamics. Michael Lavorgna expressed it this way: Usually, when we listen to music, we prepare ourselves for the big dynamic bursts. There’s some anxiety involved, some clenching of the fists or tightening of the skin. But with the best DSD playback, there’s only relaxation and sweet thrill—a wave of music that gets larger and more powerful as required, but never becomes mechanical or unnaturally edgy.
Acoustic Sounds Records
Everyone should hear it. On that Sunday morning, everyone in the room agreed. Of course, Chad Kassem wants you to hear it. The Super HiRez website is made to be as intuitive and helpful as possible. There is a glossary of terms (“The Download Lowdown”); there are pages for “Recommended Equipment” and “Recommended Software,” all of which can be purchased directly from the site; there is a “How-To Guide,” written by Positive Feedback Online’s David Robinson; there is a history of DSD recording and playback; and, of course, there is music. Kassem sells his DSD titles for $24.98, which strikes me as an incredibly fair and very competitive price.
When you click on one of the available DSD titles, you get a description—not only of the music, but of the recording and its provenance. “The recording and the mastering are very important,” Kassem reiterated. “We want to give you transparency. When we have the information, we’ll make it very clear.” John Lee Hooker’s It Serve You Right to Suffer, for instance, was mastered by Kevin Gray, from the original analog master tapes. When Acoustic Sounds does not know the origins of a recording, they’ll make that clear, too, with a note stating that the info is being researched. They’ll add the information when they can.
Currently, Acoustic Sounds carries 126 DSD titles. Kassem is working to obtain more, but stressed that it will take time. “We’re starting with our own titles, because we’ve got them and we know where they’re from.” Acoustic Sounds will continue to release their material on SACD. The discs will appear about six months prior to the DSD downloads.
No doubt, there’s an element of control—a desire for control—to this endeavor, just as there is with Jared Sacks’ NativeDSD.com, but my feeling is that, in both cases, control is necessary, first and foremost, to ensure quality. So far, the quality is outstanding. The potential is awesome.
“The day we’ve been waiting for is here,” Kassem said. “We’ve got the tools and the gear, and we’re doing our best to get as many titles available as we can.”
Hi Res Music
I'm excited about this, hopeful and confident that Acoustic Sounds, Sony, and the industry will get it done right.