If you are hearing autotune throughout any vocal it is being used as an effect.
Judicious use is remarkably transparent.
Sorry if this question was before. Can I play Octave records SACD cd album to my simple Marantz CD 67 PLAYER?
Most of the physical SACD discs also include a CD layer so for those discs, yes.
Check the details on individual albums, they list what is available.
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Thank You!
Absolutely! All Octave SACDs are two-layer hybrids meaning they have a CD layer that is playable on any CD player and a DSD layer playable on machines with that capabilitity.
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Thank You Paul! I will soon order. Greetings from Latvia!
So does Philadelphia
An interesting discovery:
I found recordings of the Hunnia Records label (for music reasons). Gabor Varga has many nice ones there and he’s one of the more interesting later jazz artists I discovered.
I then realized that Hunnia records on tape and DSD, so for the sake of my/our interest in this matter, I called the owner and asked a few questions. I summarize his answers here:
His sequence of preferred products is…
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Analog recording - no or analog live mixing/mastering - tape, vinyl or DSD media
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DSD recording - no or analog live mixing/mastering - DSD media
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Analog recording - analog mixing/mastering - tape or vinyl or DSD media
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DSD recording - analog mixing/mastering - DSD media
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DSD recording - DXD mixing/mastering - DXD media
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(he doesn’t do this) DSD recording - DXD mixing/mastering - DSD media
Although he says he doesn’t hear a difference between analog tape and DSD unaltered studio masters, he prefers this sequence of options due to their sequence of least (especially digital) conversion steps.
DSD for him is the cheaper option, especially when bands can’t play without needing many takes. Asked why he mainly records analog although he hears no difference to DSD, he says although there’s no difference for him in the direct master, but in the final media if mixed and otherwise many bands want analog equipment used during the recording process for certain principle and nostalgic reasons, independent of possible sound quality differences they are not concretely aware of…
This has been what I’ve always been told about DSD: can’t be mixed or volume adjusted. But over the last several months I’ve been talking to recording engineers and mastering engineers doing exactly this. They are mixing and EQ’ing in post and staying entirely in the DSD/PDM domain. No DXD/PCM. So, I got them to show me what they are doing and give me some comparative sample files to share so you can hear the difference for yourself (the link is in the article):
Mixing in Pure DSD - No PCM Allowed
Enjoy!
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Thanks Rushton!
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So because you can’t attenuate DSD, a fatal and incurable flaw, he sends it to another application and manually sends each of 12 channels at different levels into a stereo mix. That sounds incredibly cumbersome and hardly a practical solution…
p.s. It remains that the acoustic of that performance was poor. Vivaldi chamber music should not be played in a crypt. It was easily noticeable to me and mentioned in reviews:
“There is just one issue: I am not very impressed by the recording. It was made in a church, but apparently the miking was very close. There is hardly any reverberation and because of that the sound is a bit narrow. I would have preferred a little more space around the ensemble.”
If you have to close mic to be able to get tracks you can mix like a jigsaw puzzle, you are clearly at risk of losing the sense of the overall whole, which is what happened. The close micing may also have been to overcome the venue problem.
As previously mentioned, listen to recordings of the same material by Il Pomo D’Oro made at Villa San Remo (which has been used for such recordings for over 50 years) and the differences are clear. However, if you want a highly detailed but sterile recording, the choice is yours.
Very interesting the whole article. „Format conversions are not lossless“…well we have guessed it.
Seems who does not use his new found method does it for convenience reasons only. So I suspect Paul will take it over soon if he’s after best sounding quality of his DSD…
I’ll listen to the recommended recordings in the article and the comparison files.
Yes I heard them, talked to the owner (see second post before), have some digital and ordered two AAA LP‘s. Not only good sound but also great music in case of Varga.
That’s a bit like saying it’s good to paddle across the Atlantic in a canoe for reasons of fuel efficiency.
From my reading, amongst the key modules of the Pyramix system are the panning and reverberation modules (Strip Panner and Flux Verb), which use sophisticated processing to place instruments and give the sound life. The method Eudora describes, mixing outside of Pyramix, largely strips the music of life and the placement is done by manual mixing.
So by choosing this pure DSD mixing outside of Pyramix you are throwing out some some of the major, real benefits of the Pyramix package.
To my ears (and others, quoted above) this results in inferior recordings. I’ve just been listening to the Bach Harpsichord and Violin Trios recording and lasted about 20 minutes. It was recorded in the same problematic church, the result is a sound with no air and is really “in-your-face”, to the point I could take no more.
I’m now listening to the Faust/Bezuidenhout recording made in the Teldex Studio in Berlin.
It is vastly more pleasurable to listen to and actually sounds like a real live performance. This recording would have been recorded and mixed using Pyramix, as explained here it’s what they use for classical recordings, using it how it’s meant to be used.
Seems a pretty good example of what can be done with Pyramix if used as recommended.
p.s. The Faust/Bezuidenhout is a rather laid back affair (although I like them and have been to a number of their recitals). A much more lively affair is Victoria Mullova and Ottavio Dantone. You’ll have to sink to 16/44 for that one!
lol 
I’ll start into listening first before going further into theory (with no clue anyway)…will report back.
I just like the idea of less conversions. And Pyramix is not as undisputed as it seems from your writing, so every alternative attempt seems interesting.
Pyramix seems to be the considered the best thing out there. Recommended format .PMF is 32/384, up to 60 tracks with unlimited data files, huge mixing capability, rapid workflow, many third-party modules and DSD as a bolt-on. Pyramix seems to be essential if you’re making film soundtracks or recording in Dolby Atmos. This is all done without conversions. Eudora are basically doing manual panning in 2 dimensions, track by track, Pyramix works with all tracks in 3 dimensions.
They accept that they had a problematic venue (just look at it - San Miguel Church in Daroca), and they seem to have failed to convert a sow’s ear into a silk purse.
When Jared Sachs recorded Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque playing the Four Seasons and The Art of Fugue at St Jude’s (which is a mile from here) that has a less than ideal acoustic, he obviously got his microphone placement and balance exactly correct and basically captured it as a live recording. The result is why I think he’s so very good.
Apparently you have to filter out HF noise every time you do a DSD/DXD conversion. You don’t have that problem working in the Pyramix native format.
I meant to say, not Pyramix in general but Pyramix DXD mixing for DSD releases is not undisputed.
Speaking of DSD recordings: There are some preferring analog mixing, some preferring to stay in DXD or PCM after DXD mixing and this new guy who seems to prefer mixing without leaving DSD by the way he described. Then there are many who mix by Pyramix in DXD for DSD Recordings and output format, but Paul seems to be the only one of them (I heard of so far) who doesn’t just do it for convenience reasons or because not bothering about anything of that like most, but for sound quality reasons.
So this is why I’d say Pyramix is not necessarily seen as “the best thing out there” generally and for every process and purpose, but as the best for PCM productions and the best for mixing DSD in DXD.
So I listened to the Protean Quartet and Lost in Venice recordings, both sounding very good and airy 3D, though not with overly reverb.
I then also listened to the test tracks and the HQ player processed tracks sound clearly better than the DXD mixed ones. More airy, more organic, more palpable focused. So for me his new option works.
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Pyramix does seem to be the leading product because it is so versatile, for films, live mixing of events, multi-channel audio, and humble stereo.
When you say “there are many who mix by Pyramix in DXD for DSD”, there are only a handful of people using DSD at all. The UK is one of the leading countries in the recording industry and I think there is only one man running an independent studio who records with DSD. None of the major recording studios use DSD. Lots use Pyramix.
DSD in Pyramix seems to be a legacy bolt-on package. I think Paul does DXD mixing in Pyramix because he has little choice and has to output in DSD because that’s his brand. He does primarily studio recordings that have to be mixed. There is an irony that he built a studio and mixing facility to focus on a format that can’t be mixed in its native state.
I believe Jared Sachs does or did analog mixing, but he has exceptional equipment made for him by the likes of Ed Meitner and Tim de Pavaracini.
Of course Pyramix won’t be considered “the best thing out there” by people who want to mix in analogue, because it is a purely digital system. For purely digital, does it have any serious competitors?
No I think not for purely digital….except this new method mentioned by Rushton.
I don’t have own comparisons of DXD vs. analog mixed DSD files, but there is the one or other PCM recording that was mixed in digital for digital releases and in analog for vinyl. The extent of how much better the vinyl sounds in those cases is not related to ulterior differences of both playbacks and exceeds them by far.