Blue Coast and San Francisco Symphony in DSD or 96/192k

[dalethorn]

I got this one - Mahler First, recorded by Blue Coast in DSD and also available in WAV formats. This is the first high-res download I've gotten where I can easily distinguish the quality of different amps. I know that can be done with some of the more commercial music, but with this recording the differences are more dramatic.

 

Mahler Symphony No. 1 | San Francisco Symphony

[ted_b]

I got this one - Mahler First, recorded by Blue Coast in DSD and also available in WAV formats. This is the first high-res download I've gotten where I can easily distinguish the quality of different amps. I know that can be done with some of the more commercial music, but with this recording the differences are more dramatic.

 

Mahler Symphony No. 1 | San Francisco Symphony

 

Although I love everything Cookie and Blue Coast records, I must correct your initial post. This is not a Blue Coast recording. It is an existing 2001 SFO recording that Blue Coast's DownloadsNow site has made available in DSD, among other formats. I applaud Cookie and the SFO label. For those unable to rip their SACD of it, go for it!! It's been hailed for years, as has the whole MTT/Mahler cycle.

[dalethorn]

Thanks for correcting me - I assumed Cookie recorded it because the quality of the recording and the mic placements was so exceptional. Whoever engineered this, I need to find more of their work if it carries through to the mastering. This may be a much larger project than what Cookie is equipped to do, but it was an interesting fantasy anyway.

[ron spencer]

$50 though!!!!

[dalethorn]

$50 though!!!!

 

I agree with some other posts I've seen, that the price structure wasn't thought out well enough. For example, the increase from $20 to $40, from 44khz to 96khz. I think they should revise that to $30 for the 96k and $40 for the DSD. But there may also be an agreement with the symphony itself I don't know about.

[Manelus]

Way overpriced.

I purchased here (great sound BTW):

Symphonie n° 1 | Gustav Mahler par Michael Tilson Thomas - Télécharger et écouter l'album

[dalethorn]

Way overpriced.

I purchased here (great sound BTW):

Symphonie n° 1 | Gustav Mahler par Michael Tilson Thomas - Télécharger et écouter l'album

 

The price at this site for the 44 khz is close to the same as Blue Coast, and the higher priced 24 bit selection doesn't say how many khz. And there is no DSD offering.

[ted_b]

To be fair, the Qobuz 24/96 price is half of Cookie's. I emailed her to let her know. Yes, it has no DSD, but 24/96 is a big market amongst downloaders.

[dalethorn]

To be fair, the Qobuz 24/96 price is half of Cookie's. I emailed her to let her know. Yes, it has no DSD, but 24/96 is a big market amongst downloaders.

 

OK - thanks for pointing that out. I didn't see the 96 next to the 24. If she does lower the price or someone gets the 96k version, it would be very interesting to compare them - maybe a dropbox swap of one track...

[ted_b]

One thing to keep in mind, the studio masters from Qobuz have been there for some time, and I know Cookie got hers recently, and directly, from SFO..so maybe the provenance is different. Additionally, SFO gets the profits off her downloads, so the pipeline is more direct. I will fill her in on this thread and ask her to comment.

[ron spencer]

DSD or not, $50 is a bit of a crazy price. Sounds like some "cream skimming" is going with the price....very strange.

[cookiemarenco]

DSD or not, $50 is a bit of a crazy price. Sounds like some "cream skimming" is going with the price....very strange.

 

I want to thank you all for noticing we've released the San Francisco Symphony's performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 1. Considering the release hasn't been formally announced, the attention is wonderful no matter where you buy it.

Mahler Symphony No. 1 | San Francisco Symphony

 

I was not the engineer on the session. It is not under Blue Coast Records. Our sister company, Downloads NOW!

Downloads NOW! has a distribution arrangement with the Symphony.

 

Downloads NOW! creates MicroStores for labels (mostly indie) who want worldwide distribution and the ability to deliver DSD and full sized wav files. We do not deliver FLAC as 9624. Our files are full sized files.

 

If you need more explanation on costs of upkeep for a digital music delivery service selling files 40x the size of mp3s, write me directly at [email protected] . Donations are accepted.

 

The Mahler No 1 recording has been available on HDtracks, Qobuz and iTunes for quite sometime. Before that, it was available as an SACD with some of the finest surround recording I have heard. As an SACD, it is priced for less than half of what we sell the DSD download for. If price is the issue, you have choices.

 

As far as skimming the cream... well, it's just the Symphony and us. We hope to break even at best. The amount of work we've already put into this is less than what has been sold the entire year as a high resolution download through all their sources. We hope to give this work the attention it deserves regardless where you buy it and we believe our attention to our customers goes beyond price.

 

To be clear, I set the price, not the Symphony. The Symphony agreed to it. Since our Blue Coast Collection and other acclaimed albums (like Vijay Iyer on ACT Music) under Downloads NOW! are priced at $50/40/20 we felt the Symphony deserved the same pricing.

 

Each MicroStore is hand built by one of our engineers and graphics team. We obtained the original masters, pre SACD production. The DSD audio needed mastering/authoring for DSD download release. We created the 9624 wav files and 44.1 files from those same files. Our intention is to release this recording as 88.2 and 176.4 in the next few months.

 

The majority of our sales are full sized DSD and 9624 files. 44.1 downloads are far behind. We don't sell FLAC or mp3. On most of our tracks you can audition/stream the full piece at 196kbps (mp3--better than what iTunes sells). Because of restrictions with the orchestra, we can only allow 3 minutes of audition per piece... still I love to stream when I'm on my computer. The 30 second auditions are not nearly enough for us.

 

Those of you who feel our music is overpriced, so be it. We're not trying to compete on price. If you're a member of our newsletter, you know that our higher priced products are offset with rebates, free downloads and hands on customer service.

 

Music sales have been in decline for years and relegated to be the bastard sister of technology. Music and the production of it, has lost its value.. and most of the time, you can hear it in the recording. We believe music should be priced higher and produced better. In Japan, I've been told CDs sell for $40 and SACDs for $56. 70% of our sales are outside of the USA.

 

Qobuz does a wonderful job on their site. I believe Qobuz sells FLAC, however. If I'm wrong, let me know. We're not fans of FLAC, a subject we don't need to debate here. If you like FLAC, you have choices.

 

Again, we're thrilled you're discussing the Symphony at all. Whatever format you choose for this piece, you'll be very happy, I'm sure.

 

I would be interested to hear your opinions of a comparison test with other files of the same recording. We'll be making the tests as well.

 

Thank you again, for sharing your thoughts.

 

Cookie Marenco

founder and producer

Blue Coast Records

Home | Blue Coast Records

[ron spencer]

Hmmm...so you "felt" the product deserves the same pricing??? That means it is arbitrarily priced to make it seem like a sort of luxury good. If this is how you will price DSD then it will soon become the "bastard sister" as well, especially when multi-channel sacds are available at less than half the price.

 

This is exactly what skimming the cream is. I hope DSD does not go the way of dvd-a....but with such bizarre and arbitrary pricing schemes, then I do not hold out much hope.

 

Sorry, no sale from me....

[Jud]

Hmmm...so you "felt" the product deserves the same pricing??? That means it is arbitrarily priced to make it seem like a sort of luxury good. If this is how you will price DSD then it will soon become the "bastard sister" as well....

 

Buy or don't buy, but don't make unwarranted assumptions about the meaning of a few words in one sentence, or about the motivations of one of the good "guys" in the downloadable music business.

 

Yes, I'd buy more at lower prices - me and all the other folks who know about Blue Coast and Downloads NOW!. Let's face it, those "folks who know" do not comprise a crowd of millions, and there is little chance in today's industry that the number would grow substantially if DSD prices were cut. (How many people even know what a DSD download is or have the facilities to play it?) There are costs that must be met, and my thinking is that Cookie et al. have devoted substantial thought to how to meet those costs with the size of their market. As Cookie noted, deals (rebates, free stuff) are often available. Which reminds me, I've got to decide soon how I want to use Cookie's very nice rebate for Computer Audiophile subscribers.

[uvrmd]

Cookie-

 

I'd love to get this and pay full price for DSD. Are the rest of the Mahler Symphonies from SFS going to be available, also?

 

-Uday

[cookiemarenco]

Thank you, Uday. We hope to eventually release all of the Mahler Symphonies by the San Francisco Symphony, although only 4 were recorded natively to DSD. We have been planting seeds for them to record all future pieces in DSD... we are hopeful but have no indication when that might begin to happen.

 

Which reminds me, I've got to decide soon how I want to use Cookie's very nice rebate for Computer Audiophile subscribers.

 

Thank you, Jud. We appreciate your support and thank you for pointing out the rebate we offer for subscribers to Computeraudiophile. Make sure to send a note to [email protected] when you're ready to receive the $75 rebate.

 

I'm not worried about Ron not buying the Mahler from us. He's never bought any download from us. He's not a customer. And thank you, Jud, for pointing out that we are not trying to answer to the millions, we're not. We answer to our artists, labels and Members.

 

DSD is our answer for preserving an artform and delivering to as many people as who care to have the masters literally delivered from the mastering studio.

 

I've been a music producer for more than 25 years. I would have preferred to not be a digital delivery service, but, in 2008, no company would deliver full size WAV files, let alone DSD. We never agreed with the 'one price fits all' model for selling music. That only serves Walmart, Apple and technology companies whose aim is to sell their companies to Google to satisfy investors.

 

I hope HDtracks and Qobuz are able to maintain their businesses because the industry needs a place for new audiophiles to experience a level up from mp3, which is what we consider FLAC.

 

We also have an information website for DSD.. DSD-Guide.com DSD-Guide.com | Direct Stream Digital Audio

 

Thanks again to all on this thread,

Cookie Marenco

cookiemarenco.com

[uvrmd]

Thanks for your reply, Cookie. Was the 8th symphony recorded to native DSD?

 

-Uday

[Manelus]

According to Qobuz costumer support , files are provided by SFS

[elcorso]

Hmmm...so you "felt" the product deserves the same pricing??? That means it is arbitrarily priced to make it seem like a sort of luxury good. If this is how you will price DSD then it will soon become the "bastard sister" as well, especially when multi-channel sacds are available at less than half the price.

 

This is exactly what skimming the cream is. I hope DSD does not go the way of dvd-a....but with such bizarre and arbitrary pricing schemes, then I do not hold out much hope.

 

Sorry, no sale from me....

 

This Mahler is 'pure cream' (at least to my ears) and cream is expensive, believe me, since I had being in the milk business for 40 years.

 

Then, when you buy a DSD DL you are buying a master, no compression: Exactly what is in the recording tape or hard drive. Files are huge in size, then DL time increase and the downloader server has to pay extra fees for this. I you get the SACD at better price go for them, but you need an working and hard to find PS3 that can go out of order with easy.

 

The biggest problem regarding price with DSD is the number of copies the record label or reseller could sell, mainly on classic music. Not only for the music type but of the quantity of users that are on native DSD playback gear. Both issues clearly covered by Jud.

 

Of course there is a lot of multi-channel sacds on the market, but the 'cream' of this ones are very, very expensive on resale. Also the SHM from Japan. If you don't believe ask Ted...

 

Roch

[thestewman]

Cookie

I am a faithful Blue Coast follower and I love the SF download. Give us more

And don't forget Fan-La Yin to sign on as Ray Kimber did not record some of her best concert music which is hypnotizing.

 

Stew

[Julf]

We're not fans of FLAC, a subject we don't need to debate here.

 

Cookie,

 

Not trying to debate, just seeking clarification - is your issue with FLAC one of preferring DSD over PCM in general, or with the FLAC encoding in particular?

[Jay192]

Great thread - I just downloaded (for free too! - thank you) CAS 2012 - it's very very good - especially enjoyed Steven Vidaic's two recordings.

[Manelus]

BTW, at Qobuz you can choose to download WAV, Flac, Alac or Aiff (same price) if you pick WAV you pay the same.

If you want DSD ok, but if you go for PCM (WAV or flac) I'm amazed you want to pay more for the same product from a diferent retailer that just decided to charge more.

 

In the end we have what we deseve.

[Robert Hutton]

"DSD is our answer for preserving an artform and delivering to as many people as who care to have the masters literally delivered from the mastering studio."

 

Lovely, but at $50 a pop, that artform will hardly go to anyone but a tiny handful and the "artform" cannot possibly be preserved. In fact, overpricing will kill the artform.

 

I find these comments extraordinarily condescending to the audiophile customers and very arrogant coming from the proprietor of an insignificant label on the fringes of wee, twee 'arty' music.

 

Hardly helps credibility to make statements like 'flac is a step up from mp3', which is just outright stupid - flac files come in many flavors, from 16/44.1 through to 24/192 and beyond. Having well over a hundred hi-res flac files, I can say with certainty that without exception all are a huge step up from any CD. I am far from convinced that uncompressed wav is any better from my experience.

[Julf]

Hardly helps credibility to make statements like 'flac is a step up from mp3', which is just outright stupid - flac files come in many flavors, from 16/44.1 through to 24/192 and beyond. Having well over a hundred hi-res flac files, I can say with certainty that without exception all are a huge step up from any CD. I am far from convinced that uncompressed wav is any better from my experience.

 

I have to agree 100%. There might be some actual merit in the argument that decoding FLAC requires a bit more CPU compared to WAV, but if your DAC is sensitive to CPU load, the problem is not with your file format, but with your DAC. As a storage/distribution format, stating that FLAC is inferior to any other lossless PCM format is the equivalent to stating that 1 + 1 = 2 is true everywhere else, but not in audio.