Your support has kept us busy and happy at Yarlung Records. Your Quad, Double and Single DSD download orders have placed our albums consistently in the top ten across the NativeDSD website. Sometimes number 5, sometimes 6, and often even number 1 or 2! And the superb recordings from other labels on the site have inspired us to keep helping the NativeDSD family grow.
Elliot Midwood and Steve Hoffman are two of the titans who enabled Yarlung Records to succeed. Steve, known as one of the finest mastering engineers in the world, kindly took us under his wing to master our first release and he has generously worked with us ever since. Elliot Midwood helps us continue to refine our recording techniques, designs microphone preamplification and monitoring equipment for us, and serves as executive producer for a number of our most successful analog releases as well as this DSD quartet. We use Elliot’s studio at Acoustic Image to check test recordings and hone our microphone setups. And we always listen with him one final time before an album reaches you. It is fair to say that Yarlung recordings are “born” at Acoustic Image.
(Find the albums separately below, including the discount coupon codes)
The PS Audio Quartet includes some of Elliot’s favorite albums in the Yarlung catalog; and people still walk up to Steve Hoffman from time to time, asking for his autograph on physical copies of Dialoghi and Janaki String Trio. They are two of the early recordings in our catalog, now in DSD for the first time.
Both Steve and Elliot think highly of PS Audio’s DirectStream digital to analog converter, and both use them for digital playback. We are therefore doubly pleased that PS Audio agreed to sponsor Yarlung’s fourth quartet of albums in DSD. Thanks especially to Paul McGowan and Bill Leebens at PS Audio for making this possible.
NativeDSD has arranged a 10% introductory discount for the PS Audio quartet for 7 days. Use the coupon code “PSAudio” to receive the discounted price. Please let me know what you think of the music.
I saw this yesterday and was surprised it was connected to PS Audio since I don’t recall Paul mentioning it. So I did a Google search for Yarlung Records. Found the site and I poked around a bit until I found the PS Audio sponsored (?) recordings, here’s a link:
Scroll down near the bottom. I found it by searching on the Yarlung site, not the Native DSD site. I also only found three recordings, only one of which seemed to have a PS Audio logo on it. This whole thing seems kind of odd, hope Paul can enlighten us!
If you have subscribed to the email list from Native DSD you’d have received a mailing about this that the first message in this link was copied from. Unfortunately all of the links I could find referred to my personal information so I didn’t want to post them, but:
If you enter “PSAudio” as a coupon code you’ll save 10% on checkout.
You can download the liner notes for any album by clicking on the “Download booklet” under the pictures on the links above. In the liner notes you’ll see some PS Audio blurbs…
Also the “Ted” in their signatures now and then is Ted_b (Ted Brady)
Thanks Ted for clarifying, odd that when you search the Native DSD site with “PS Audio” nothing comes up, but there they are on the first page. Just had to open my eyes! A few observations; I checked a few of the prices and they were in Euros, then noticed the site was in the Netherlands, hmm, but OK. Then I checked the Yarlung main site and they are in Los Angeles, bigger hmm. Why am I buying from Europe, something from the US? Then I looked at all four of the PS Audio recordings and they were all about 30 minutes and cost from about $19 - $23 (double DSD, stereo, before discount). Ok, but not cheap for being “sponsored”. I haven’t signed up for anything so I don’t know if there is hidden VAT that will be deducted or something added, presume a few here have used this service. Are the recordings as good as the “reviews” say?
NativeDSD is an offshoot of Channel Classics, which is based in the Netherlands. I think it was a good move to create a place where one can buy DSD recordings and be sure that they aren’t upsampled PCM or whatever. Channel has been recording in DSD for quite some time.
I can’t say why Yarlung doesn’t sell direct, but it probably is easier (if not cheaper) for them to sell through established outlets like HDtracks and now NativeDSD, rather than run an in-house shopping operation. HDtracks does not offer DSD at this point, AFAIK.
All the recordings I’ve gotten from NativeDSD have been good; obviously there can be some variation from recording to recording and from label to label. But then I generally like the sound of DSD. Those who find DSD “too soft” might not be so happy. As with most outlets, DSD (and hi-res PCM) cost more than CD-quality. The NativeDSD shopping cart shows you the approximate equivalent in US$ before you buy. There does not seem to be any reduction for buyers outside Europe not paying the VAT.
And just to be clear, we at PS Audio haven’t had the chance to listen to the discs nor approve or curate the results. We agreed to sponsor this series because of our love of music and the format and trusted them to produce something of value, which I am sure they will.
However, until we get our own copy and give a listen, we can neither endorse or otherwise recommend the recordings because we simple have not heard them.
We are, however, happy we could help them get the word out as any recording in this format is something we are happy to see proliferate.
Paul McGowan said
And just to be clear, we at PS Audio haven't had the chance to listen to the discs nor approve or curate the results. We agreed to sponsor this series because of our love of music and the format and trusted them to produce something of value, which I am sure they will.
Not to knock PS Audio, but this sounds bass ackwards. I would think Yarlung would have provided advance copies of the CDs for you to approve or at least make sure it wasn't a big mistake. There is certainly nothing to indicate the recordings are anything but good (or great), just an odd sequence of events. I'm thinking of getting them, but would like to know the file sizes (didn't see them on the site). I'm running short of storage space at the moment and my experience with DSD from Blue Coast is the files are huge. The Yarlung files must be similar, correct? This just might finally push me into getting an NAS.
Paul McGowan said
And just to be clear, we at PS Audio haven't had the chance to listen to the discs nor approve or curate the results. We agreed to sponsor this series because of our love of music and the format and trusted them to produce something of value, which I am sure they will.
Not to knock PS Audio, but this sounds bass ackwards. I would think Yarlung would have provided advance copies of the CDs for you to approve or at least make sure it wasn’t a big mistake.
I agree but they wanted something to move forward with and we helped out.
One does hope the recordings and performances are good, since the PSA logo is displayed prominently on the covers (at least on the thumbnail versions I saw on the NativeDSD website).
