Cookie, if you wouldn’t mind posting here about that when you’re ready to go public with the info, I’d love to connect on it if my work schedule doesn’t conflict.
Thank you and good to hear! We may offer a weekday night and a Saturday late morning session. We’ll be deciding on the dates and should post by next week.
We appreciate your interest!
Cookie
I didn’t actually spend any time reading about MoFi as I’m not an analogue purist. There were superb classical recordings being made in the late 1970s and early 1980s using digital recording and mastering before the CD era. Some people want a pure analogue audio chain, I am more than happy to have a system that does digital conversion of analogue inputs because it facilitates DSP for speaker and room correction. I do not find it destructive.
I look at the studios near me and at other places around the UK. There are many successful ones, started by broadcasters (BBC mainly, but others), producers (e.g. George Martin / Air Studios) and occasionally artists (Mark Knopfler / British Grove).
These days we have places like Media City in Salford, Manchester, which is a hub for a wide range of media and production companies, where you can do just about anything. The BBC have a major recording and production operation there, including their most modern orchestral recording facility.
There are also independent studios, for example 80 HERTZ Post Production Audio & Music Clientele. This is used by Gondwana Records, a local label that has grown very well in a short period, set up by trumpeter Matthew Halsall and his brother, and at the same time is used by major TV and film companies. Air Studios now does mainly film and TV work, but also lots of mastering for vinyl releases I buy.
Another local studio, a few miles away, is artist driven. The Church Studios | History
This was bought by Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart after they recorded Sweet Dreams there, and was highly influential in many artists moving to using smaller recording studios. 20 yers later they sold it to David Gray, soon after he released White Ladder, that made him a fortune. It’s a small place (opposite a record shop I go to), but is still used by the likes of Adele, Coldplay, and many others, Bob Dylan famously got lost going there and ended up in someone’s house drinking tea.
The Church point out they have the original 72-track Neve used in Abbey Road to record Dark Side of the Moon. I’m sure you’re aware that Alan Parsons made his name as an Abbey Road engineer working on DSOTM (and the Beatles), before becoming a recording artist, then a studio owner with Nick Mason (The Ark Studios). The Ark is a multi-media business. I once got to see Nick Mason’s studio at his home in Spaniard’s End, Hampstead, quite something.
There are plenty of other small music-based studios around here, like Livingstone Studios (big early successes were Talking Timbuktu and then Buena Vista Social Club), founded by Nick Gold, who went off to Africa and the Caribbean to make these great recordings.
So it seems to me that the success of these operations is often driven by the Film and TV industries, because that’s where the money is, and fortunately the UK is very good at that. Most of the nominally American studios do much of their sound production in the UK.
Another local one opened fairly recently, operates 24/7, you can rent space and engineers by the hour, designed for people who want an affordable place to go and record and create their own channel on SongCast.
So with a vibrant recording industry, one of the biggest users of DSD was a small independent label in Glasgow, Scotland - Linn Records. They operate fairly independently of Linn Audio, even though it was started to make quality demo tracks, a bit like Octave Records. It is telling that when 15+ years ago they rebuilt the audio business based on streaming, they did not implement DSD, and resisted it until fairly recently.
Thank you for outlining the studio situation in the UK. By the way, I’m a big fan of Gondwana Records and Hania Rani.
I have many friends from LA that were the top mixing engineers who work with many of the folks you’ve mentioned and just before the pandemic moved to the UK. (One, in fact, mixed Beyonce and Adele before he moved to the UK).
I believe the UK and Europe is more open to music and musicians than here in the USA. I very much agree that the money in the USA is being made with film/tv/game videos for studio owners and composers. I see it all the time.
I’ve managed to survive with my studio for 40 years, recording music and musicians… now that Fantasy has closed we are the oldest studio within a hundred miles of San Francisco.
Chris Stone (who started the Plant in LA) used to say about studio ownership… it’s a long term investment. You make your money in the real estate, you lose money on running the studio operations and you make quick monthly profits renting gear. I have found that pretty close to accurate.
As far as original owners… Abbey Road was bought by Universal Music. Sony bought Battery Studio in NYC. Sorcerer Sound (where Norah Jones recorded her first album) went out of business years ago. The Hit Factory is now condos.
I’ve seen a lot of studios come and go. I did well enough to not have to close and I’m pretty happy about that. But I would never suggest anyone who wasn’t deeply passionate and a risk taker to open a music recording studio. It’s not a business where you get into to be profitable… unless you own the property.
You know the joke… How do you make a million dollars in the music industry? Start with two million. 
Anyway, I believe we’re on the same page.
Question… I don’t remember what digital audio recording was happening in the 1970’s outside of George Lucas’s Soundroid? And that was used mainly for movies. I don’t remember much outside of the Sony F-1 from the early 80’s. Maybe something was happening in the UK that never made it over here?
Cookie Marenco
I’m a huge fan of Hania Rani. I would love to hear high resolution releases from her.
The first I remember was Delos/Soundstream, but I think they started end of the 70‘s earliest.
I was thinking of the companies using Denon digital recording from about 1975 onwards, Japanese and German companies, plus the likes of Teldec and Telefunken were doing DMM that was quite a gear change as well.
I think the UK is an easy place to work. Airstrip 1, as Kurt Vonnegut called it (I think). Well regulated, no language issues, a lot of history in film, music, TV and public service broadcasting, much of it pioneered here and a massive skill base, especially in things like SFX. It is also growing pretty fast. Plus artists like living here, they can live normal lives without being bothered, and much of the film industry is still based in UK/Europe. I’ve stood behind Chris Martin in a corner shop waiting to pay for a pint of milk. Not sure that happens in LA.
I was playing golf with a chap who runs a major licensing business and he was saying that his business aims to be fair to his artists, a lot of whom were under old style contracts that just don’t work these days. I knew some spectacularly crooked managers and agents from the old days, the music industry was very exploitative, but there is now a much greater sense of fairness. The head of UMG is a Londoner, grew up in the house next to mine, started as a runner at age 16, is hugely respected in the industry and by all accounts a lovely guy. His brother still lived next door until a few years ago. They didn’t even own the whole house, just the ground floor, later on bought the rest of the house.
A lot of independent studios have been started by artists with a lot of money. The well-known one set up independently by engineers was Metropolis about 35 years ago. Besides a great recording space, they wanted to set up the best mastering service anywhere and pretty much achieved it.
Ted, mastering assumed identical, is the quality of a DSD256 recording, downconverted to a DSD64 file the same, as a DSD64 recording of the same event, or is one of them better sounding? So, does the final format always determine/limit the quality in the same way as if it was the recording format?
It always depends on the quality of the hardware. Ignoring things like MICs, etc. the ADC that’s used greatly affects the quality of the result, much more than DSD64 vs DSD256. In general, a quality DSD256 ADC will probably outperform an older DSD64 capable ADC, but in the past people have built lower sample rate PCM ADCs that beat most all of the higher sample rate PCM ADCs available at the time.
From a purely theoretical point of view a DSD256 file has more information than a DSD64 file. In the digital domain you have many more options when downconverting that you would in hardware so I’d guess that it would be likely that recording in DSD256 and then downconverting to DSD64 would beat a lot of DSD64 recorders. Bear in mind I don’t have any concrete experience with any DSD256 recording hardware.
The world is a lot more complicated than A beats B.
Yes thanks, I didn’t consider the different HW topic. In my theoretical question I assumed the same ADC is used, once for making a DSD64 recording and once a DSD256 in parallel. So that finally there’s just the difference between the initial DSD64 format and the downconverted DSD256.
I guess then there’s no difference between them right? Then making a DSD256 recording has no value against a DSD64 recording (if the DSD256 is later downconverted).
What you tell about older possibly better PCM ADC’s than newer ones is interesting. I remember Kevin Gray swearing on an old Pacific Microsonics Model Two D/A converter. Do you think it can also be valid for some old DAC’s?
No, an ADC operating at DSD256 can do gentler filtering and have less noise in the audio band than DSD64. It’s highly speculative to assume that any DAC is excellent at both DSD64 and DSD256, they could be but that certainly isn’t always the case. Assuming both ADCs are perfect a DSD256 ADC will get more information and again, it’s easier to go to DSD64 in the digital domain than in the analog so it’s probable that recording DSD256 then converting to DSD64 would give a better result that directly recording DSD64 with all other things being equal. But they never are. DSD256 has more info, and as long as it’s good info it’s better than DSD64.
In particular I was thinking of the Pacific Microsonics A/D. It is certainly the case that well built gear for an older tech often beats the newer gear for newer tech for a while, perhaps for a long while.
Great, insightful answer!
Now where have I heard that before?
It can’t be repeated enough.
Thanks much, this was the point. I didn’t ask because I assume that such differences are major, as I often said, for me recording differences rule greatly over format and resolution in general.
I assumed a higher sampling rate recording downsampled sounds theoretically better, but to be honest it’s hard to imagine how more information reduced to the lower sampling rate again, remains a tiny bit more information than recording originally in that lower sampling rate.
Yes sure…I just somehow came from all the Mofi discussions and also regarding Octave, I perceived the talk mainly about format and resolution.
If we come to ADC quality, I read “Building all new state of the art DSD A/D converters that capture every nuance of the musician’s performance” in the Octave records description. Are you building the ADC for Octave?
Hi Cookie,
At the time I bought Music from Blue Coast Music, both DSD and PCM was available for purchase and still is. Also CD format and vinyl. It is up to the customer what they prefer most. However at the time of purchase there was language published that explicitly said so. This is what I did refer to.
I can buy CD’s and vinyl in any store in the world and put it in CD players or on turntables of any price and I get the music played. No hardware issues, no compatibility issues, no copy right issues. None of it, it just works.
The DSD music I purchased from Blue Sound Music, I had to convert with DSD master to a Hybrid DSD / ALAC file to be able to play it with BitPerfect on my MAC, alternative is to buy expensive license fee software and you need a DSD compatible DAC.
All very cumbersome and an uncertain process. Especially because the DAC would not confirm the input of the DSD signal, it was a rather hidden process not confirmed by the DAC. Yet it concerned about the most expensive titles I ever purchased.
When the DSD compatible PreAmp DAC broke Down I replaced it with a PCM only compatible unit. Converted the Blue Sound Music purchases to PCM and enjoy that beautiful music on any device in my home and car without having to worry about file format compatibility at all.
Availability of native DSD format music is extremely limited compared to CD and vinyl. If you try to purchase DSD titles from more popular artists like Nils Lofgren, have entered the credit card details into the interface of the on-line music store to which you are referred by the artists WEB-site, you are meeting the big copyright hammer, making the purchase impossible at a stage the Creditcard details are taken. Purchase canceled.
For recording I absolutely love what you and Gus Skinas do, utilizing DSD and I never said a negative word about it. But, on the same level I like Todd Garfinkel’s art of recording and mastering PCM. The CD’s and records extracted from the PCM masters are equally wonderful.
For play back, I have given up on DSD. So I am happy Blue Coast Music sells the wonderfully recorded and mastered music available in CD and vinyl. Same applies for Octave Music, bravo!
Wow - hadn’t seen that webpage. I’d think that all needs some editing.
What do you think is wrong? No custom built ones used? Which then?
Would be interesting to dive a little into ADC differences and who uses what. Didn’t catch what Mofi uses. The best mastering chains usually are custom built or modified, so it wouldn’t be surprising Paul also tweaks around.
But to quickly develop a leading ADC probably isn’t as easy as developing some analog mastering gear.
Hi Rudolph,
I very much agree with you and the issues you’re facing with digital files. I have a number of listening stations setup myself and for “ease” of use in my small office, I have a setup for streaming from popular services.
For convenience and darn good sound, CDs can do a great job. Nothing starts up faster than my CD player for immediate satisfaction. My turntable is boxed up, but I recall a similar easy/quick experience. Neither have compatibility issues… those things were solved before the formats were released. I still have a CD player in my car.
CDs/vinyls were developed back in the day when hardware manufacturers setup standards between companies so the consumer wouldn’t have playback issues. Size of discs, sampling rates and other redbook standards were determined before the discs were released in the case of CDs.
That hasn’t been the case with digital audio. We have many conversations with hardware manufacturers about issues our customers are having. Add to that many dsps (apple, spotify, tidal, etc) use their own systems to deliver the sound to consumers. Those of us making the music have much less control of you’re hearing and what we actually made. When sound is fixed on a disc, there’s a 99% chance it got delivered to you as we intended.
DSD is a bit of the wildwest for consumers. The consumers adopted DSD long before most professional recording engineers knew what DSD was (and many still don’t). It’s gotten much better recently and I’m hopeful for the future… but for now, if you have to convert your files to PCM for compatibility… that’s what you have to do. I’m grateful you’re able to enjoy the music how ever you have to make that happen.
Thank you for being a supporter of our music and others,
Cookie Marenco
Blue Coast Records and Music