Last week I went on an audiophile expedition to the UK and the Netherlands. Touring the dCS factory in Cambridge, England I saw cutting edge products being designed and assembled by hand. Across the North Sea in Amsterdam I attended the unveiling of dCS' DSD over USB playback solution at Rhapsody Sound & Vision and visited Bert van der Wolf at his Turtle Records mastering facility. Equally as important and exciting, Saturday afternoon I talked with several very nice Computer Audiophile readers who attended my computer audio seminars at Rhapsody. Throughout the entire trip I met great people and experienced great music and great sound.
The show has been rescheduled. Leo Laporte had some scheduling issues today. The tentative reschedule date is Monday June 27, 2011.
The long awaited asynchronous USB to AES / S/PDIF converter has been officially announced by Berkeley Audio Design. The US retail price will be $1,695 and will ship in about four weeks. The Alpha USB interface uses the industry leading Streamlength Asynchronous USB implementation. The following information is directly from Berkeley Audio Design. I'll have more information in the not-to-distant further including a full review of the Alpha USB.
HDtracks recently teased its customers with an email suggesting it would soon make history. This email was similar to Apple's history making teaser before offering The Beatles' music in very low resolution. Many audiophiles yawned and moved on after The Beatles announcement. Today HDtracks announced it's offering The Rolling Stones at 24/88.2 kHz and 24/176.4 kHz. This announcement is certainly no yawner for computer audiophiles who've been eagerly awaiting quality mainstream music downloads for years. The Rolling Stones material available exclusively at HDtracks originates from the, "same [ABKCO] masters as the SACDs" said HDtracks co-founder David Chesky. In fact Bob Ludwig mastered the DSD files for the HDtracks downloads. History making or not this is a huge announcement and major step toward dragging the high end audi industry into the next phase of high quality playback.
Once again CA supporter and industry leader Reference Recordings has supplied two complimentary high resolution audio tracks for Computer Audiophile readers. The first two HRx tracks offered by RR in 2009 have been downloaded and enjoyed by thousands and thousands of readers. The next two tracks are from RR classics Thinking About Bix and Reveries. The tracks are offered in stunning HRx 24/176.4 quality. As many readers know HRx is a trade name owned by Reference Recordings. It means so much more than simply high resolution 24 bit / 176.4 kHz audio. HRx material is an exact copy of the digital master files directly from Reference Recordings or an analog to digital transfer using the highest quality process in the industry. There is no upsampling from a lower sample rate. The HRx logo should give audiophiles piece of mind that what you see is what you get.
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