I understand and respect were you are coming from, especially on downloads as there are no material costs involved.
However I think you must take into account the very small market that Octave has. Every download or physical album sold has to cover costs of studio, mixing and production of the very high quality we are all expecting.
Considering that Octave are not competing with the mainstream and selling hundreds and thousands of copies where the unit costs are significantly lower.
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I see nothing in the lab report from HiFi News you posted which indicates a tape transfer was used in the production of Say Somethinā.
The āEuphonix deckā referenced is not a tape machine. It is an analog mixing console.
Thanks for the clarification Elk.
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People get hung up on the format of the media and that has little to do with it. The secret sauce is in the mastering. If the mastering is done properly, it will sound good on any media. If the mastering is all jacked up and it will sound jacked up on DSD256 too. Remastering can help in some cases, but as we all should know by now that remasters are not always better either.
The extra cost for Hi-Res music is just a big profit maker for the record companies, especially when it is sold as a download.
Neil Young wrote a book about these issues and his dealing with the record companies when he worked on developing the Pono music player. All of this ties into together and what his original goal was. The book is called To Feel the Music: A Songwriterās Mission to Save High-Quality Audio and it is worth reading. The surprise for me in the book was about the original software developed for Pono that Neil passed on and it later became MQA. Neil is not a fan of MQA, but that is another subject altogether.
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Yes, I also think so. The process how a digital signal is mixed analog directly to another digital signal and why it limits DR would be interesting. No clue.
The customer decides if the downloaded work is worth the price or not, regardless of who makes the money or where money is made.
The likes of Linn and Hyperion donāt sell hundreds of thousands. Three or four thousand physical plus downloads would be good.
There are loads of independent labels doing first class award winning recordings. My favourite recording of 2020 was available in DSD up to 512, PCM and multi-channel, it was recorded by a small independent label in a Berlin concert hall and the recording equipment could fit in the back of a VW Golf. I paid ā¬15 for 24/192 PCM.
Octave is no different from many labels in terms of audio quality. Frankly I have no idea what it is trying to achieve and how it is planning to achieve it. If PS Audio or Paul want to finance it, thatās fine, but I paid $30 for some test tracks and Iām not doing it again.
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I just ABāed the DSD 128 to the PCM 24-192 version. Itās like you described - fuller and more timbre especially in the bass and lower mids. The piano had a lot more body to it with a more woody sound. Ditto for plucked bass.
The PCM 24-192 version was faster sounding with transients and seemed to have more air - probably a by product of it being āleanerā. Strange, on its own I wouldnāt have picked it as being lean.
Itās strange that higher rate DSD imbues the same recording with different traits vs the PCM.
I am going to try āLive at Art DāLugoffās Top of the Gateā and āAnother Time The Hilversum Concertā in DSD 128 next although if I remember right they werenāt well recorded.
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They were well recordedā¦these three Bill Evans releases are in my top 5 Bill Evans releases!
The Lugoff well recorded? Sounds like a bootleg to my ears 
Just to put this PCM24/192 vs DSD256 into context, hereās Bandcampās take on audio quality.
The default download format is MP3, and this is probably what you want. ā¦
You can also download in FLAC, ALAC (Apple Lossless), AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and AIFF formats. These options are, as we say in the interface, for āaudiophiles and nerds.ā
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This review is a complete mystery to me as itās so limited, not full range sound etc. compared to nearly all other audiophile Bill Evans releases except a few also released by Resonance, strange. I like it though, just donāt count it among noticeably good sounding ones.
Iām talking about the 2xHD DSD128 releaseā¦not the Resonance Records CD or vinyl releasesā¦
Have them all
gotta love Bandcamp - esp since some stuff i originally bought and DL as MP3 and i can now go back and re DL in any and every format. i was astonished to discover that other portals only let you DL once!
I wanted to be sure about my opinion and relistened just now to the 45 RPM vinyl, which imo is the best version and the only all analog LP release of all the Resonance Evans LPās (all Evans 2xHD releases are also from analog tapes, the Resonance releases except the Lugoff are from hires).
I must admit that transparency and 3D is clearly better than I remembered, at least in the middle third, maybe even first thirdof all Evans releases around. Regarding missing full range tonality and realism there Iād stay with my memory, the bass is quite shy and underrepresented (similar to the Montreux album) and the piano sound is also quite vintage compared to better Evans recordings. But also here a bit better than my memory. All in all fun enough for a lost recording recovery.
Bandcamp has really had a push from Covid.
No need for record labels, everyone can create their own and sell their merchandise and vinyl as well. You can even get Bjork cassette tapes. All you need is a cassette player. One Little Indian seem to have transferred over to Bandcamp recently.
The idea is for Tidal to allow artists to sell direct, so goodbye MQA. I think Bandcamp is the only platform that does that now.
Iām quite upset as Iāve always been perfectly happy with 16/44 digital, never really wanted for more, which I thought made me very Clapham Omnibus, but Bandcampers think that makes me an audiophile and a nerd.
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ah well it all depends on the company you keep i guess 
iāll take ānerdā, some of the most interesting people i know are nerds, and one or two would rank as wizards, in the mould of Gandalf rather than Dumbledore.
i must go look at whoās on Bandcamp now, i donāt browse there as a rule, just go for specific artists - hopefully they will displace some of the old incumbent record labels completelyā¦
āI was a nerd before it was cool.ā
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