24/96 One Guitar

02009-03-07 | Uncategorized | 4 comments

On 2009-03-07, at 07:15 , SM wrote:

On the other hand, listen to an mp3 file from my One Guitar album, the source of which was NOT compressed at all and you will notice that the mp3 does a very good job of delivering the dynamics of the recording.

I would go so far as to say that the audio quality of One Guitar is in what I would call “ECM grade audio territory.” Worthy of a technical Grammy or some other technical award.

If you ever decide to do a 24bit/96kHz version of One Guitar, I’d pay a premium for that. Between the performance and the sonics it would be more than well worth it.

I suspect that would sound amazing on my system.

Thanks, you just gave me an idea.

We are launching a subscription model within the next week or so. For $20/year (or $4/month) a subscriber gets to download a free tune (usually unreleased, either from the archives or stuff I am working on), gets access to about 10,000 of my Flickr photos (and may download any of those in full quality), plus video downloads, a private Journal with community (commenting, discussion) etc yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway, I think I will make one of the One Guitar masters (24/96) available as a download as part of the subscription. There will probably only be a handful of people who have the gear and desire to listen to those files, and so the bandwidth won’t be a problem.

How does that sound?

Peace
– ottmar

PS: which track from “One Guitar” would you like to hear?

He wrote back:

That sounds fantastic! I will sign up for that!

Wow… Tough question… For me, kinda like asking “which of the Bach ‘cello suites do you prefer …” probably “This Spring, Release 10000 Butterflies”

So I went to the studio and grabbed the original 24/96 mix of “This Spring Release 10,000 Butterflies” and transferred it to my laptop. iTunes imported the track, no problem. iTunes even played back the track without a hitch.

As you can tell from the screenshot, the file is rather large: 199.7 MB – that would take up a third of a regular CD… If you have iTunes and a newish computer, one that has a D/A (digital-to-analog) converter that can handle 24/96 you should be able to enjoy the depth and sound quality of this file. If you are using an Apple Airport Express to deliver music to your amplifier/speakers, their built-in D/A converter works fine, too.

Watch this space for a link to download the music sometime soon.

4 Comments

  1. dave

    I downloaded Butterflies last night & it sounds great with headphones. I’m curious what the cd rate (correct term?) is?

    Reply
  2. Ottmar

    Dave: the sample size of a CD is 16 bit and the sample rate is 44.1kHz. Thirty years ago there was a race for the first digital standard and Philips and Sony were eager to get their system to market. Only months later 48kHz was available. Many musicians record using a sample size of 24 bits, because it gives one a little more headroom. I recorded both “One Guitar” and “Up Close” at 24/96.

    It’s quite a difference, isn’t it!!

    Reply
  3. Tom Alverson

    Can you also post the 16/44 tracks that would be used on a CD? I have a very nice stereo (www.avahifi.com) that has an external DAC which only accepts that format (which is probably better than most people realize). I would guess that you normally downsample it with some dithering scheme like Sony’s SBM (super bit mapping)? Maybe there is something free I can use to do this myself from the 24/96 files.

    Reply
  4. Ottmar

    Tom: you can find the 16/44.1 files on every One Guitar CD. The point of this Subscription is to share files that are not otherwise available.

    Reply

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