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July 8, 1998...  Liquid Audio's IPO.  What was Liquid Audio?  It was the first company to offer legal digital downloads delivered worldwide.  I was fortunate to be part ot the crew that helped make history.  Liquid Audio was a software program that predated Napster and iTunes for delivery of audio files.  In a sense, we were the first aggregator for digital audio even though the word "aggregator" didn't exist.

Direct Stream Digital, or DSD, encoding has been used for years already for SACD and also as an intermediate format inside analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. It's basic concept is DeltaSigma modulation and uses 1 bit per sample with a sample rate of at least 2.8224MHz (64 x 44.1kHz).   Read the entire white paper by Andreas Koch, one of the pioneers of digital recording.  Download the PDF.

Part One - Understanding the Recording Process   --  in a continuing series written by Doug Fearn of D.W. Fearn. Doug has committed his life to the pursuit of excellence in audio engineering.  That led him to manufacturing tube products of top quality for the professional audio engineer.  Today Doug is an advocate of DSD recording.  In this series Doug writes about the recording process to help music lovers understand the choices and complications we make before they have the music on their listening systems.

The power of community is strong!  We want to thank our ambient music fans for alerting Roon the issues of large file playback.  Credit Roon for contacting us right away to solve the issues and they have!  Read the article for how to get the updates.

AMSR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response -- that's the long version for "natural sounds".  The current trend uses the sound of whispering, opening beer bottles, birds chirping or any other sounds that occur in nature.  Crinkling paper has had millions of views on youtube.  Some say it helps one to fall asleep.  Others look for a tingling sensation.  How does the audiophile community use it?

So what happens when two frequencies in the megahertz range are within beating distance? They behave in exactly the same manner as two strings. The periodicity of the beating generates a fundamental that occurs within hearing range.  Noise is a cloud of frequencies. As a result there are myriad frequencies interacting, generating a myriad of audible fundamentals.  Joe Cohen of the Lotus Group presents his explanation of how overtones / harmonics affects a manufacturer's design decisions.

An interesting video of how music affects your brain by WIRED magazine.  Explore how getting goosebumps or chills when you hear certain music happens.  See what improvisation and creation is a different brain reaction than performing music. Very interesting information!

We hear a lot about comparing formats, streaming services, analog vs digital, etc.  Which is right for you is a purely personal decision. There is no right or wrong when it comes to music playback.  "Better" is a tricky word. At DSD-Guide we support music first and encourage your to support artists, record labels and manufacturers that you enjoy.

CES was never intended to be "for the consumer" but for manufacturers to meet with distributors, reviewers, etc to talk about new products and innovation coming up.  Here we examine the high resolution portable, immersive sound and why the audiophiles no longer attend.  Join Blue Coast Music's romp into the future of music

Who would think these could present a technology problem?  Well, they do. Most of the music in this genre has been produced using CD quality wave files.  Those files are about 700MB and handled easily in most audio players.  Of course, mixing and working in DSD256 has brought an interesting situation...  one track of 60 minutes and 10 gigabytes in size.  Have a read and find out more

There are many pieces of a musical puzzle that delivers music from the studio to home listening.  We've have identified 6 categories that we call "Six Parts of Production" or the "Six Degrees of Degradation' (much to the chagrin of our audio engineers and audiophiles).  It's true.. every stage is another step of audio degradation that needs to be managed so as to lose as little quality as possible to produce the best end result.

In this article we focus on Part 3 (mastering) and Part 4 (authoring) for DSD downloads and SACD production.

Certainly, we are not experts in the field and welcome your thoughts on how music makes your life better.

Recently the subject has come up as to why downloads and streaming services play back differently?  This article begins to explore why that happens and welcomes comments about your experiences.

Setting up a listening test to compare various types of files is not easy.  You need a base of equipment and a trusted set of files to start.  Set aside several hours and have a few people involved.  We rarely do a test with fewer than 3 people. Here we'll explore some of the basics steps to compare files.

Recently some prominent audiophile reviewers have voiced their opinion on what they believe an audiophile recording is.  Opinions vary greatly and seem to depend on the favorite genre or listening style of the reviewer.  Written by Cookie Marenco, Blue Coast Records

The discussion of the Loudness Wars has finally reached a few ears in the pro audio community.  We are grateful to Tape Op for presenting this article written by Aaron Mullan.

JRiver Media Center is running a poll on the importance of DSD for your listening.  Now is the time to vote!  JRiver was one of the first media programs that helped catalog, playback and convert DSD files.  It is considered one of the finest when it comes to sound.  They promise to continue their excellent service to audiophiles and TV viewers.

The Loudness Wars...  you may have heard about it ...  or maybe not.  What it means is the 'relative' volume of playback for any given song.

Relative Playback?  what does that mean?

What is mastering?  Mastering is what we call the 3rd part of the production process (recording is part one and mixing is part two) that has the potential to change with improvements or degrade the sound.   As we talked about in Part One of our series, the final stage 6 is the listening environment in the home.

Fiona Joy Hawkins -- her name resonates in the acoustic music circles as one of this generation's top contemporary solo piano artists.  Having won many awards for her two previous albums, Fiona's new album, Story of Ghosts, is destined to do the same.

Eamonn Flynn was born into a musical family in Dublin, Ireland. His soulful mastery on piano, keys, and organ landed him on the 12 million selling movie soundtrack for "The Commitments." He’s recorded & toured worldwide with many major artists including Michael Franti & Spearhead, Elvin Bishop, Coco Montoya, Michelle Shocked, Evelyn "Champagne" King and a ten year stint with New Orleans drumming legend Zigaboo Modeliste. Eamonn's solo album "The Irish Channel" reflects a unique blend of Irish & American influences, expressing music that is rich, heart-warming and rousing...a fusion that Eamonn himself calls "Irish Soul".

Jenner Fox and friends were recently recording at Blue Coast Studios for their just released album, Buffalo.

Here's a sneak peek at what it's like to be in the studio with Jenner.  A brilliant combination of mixed performances and actual performance captured of rehearsals from the video camera perspective.  In one minute, you'll hear the music transform from mixed to live to mixed all locked to video captured of the musicians, engineers and others during the session.

Commentary by Cookie Marenco on Daily Dose of DSD.  Comment on how you listen.  

Everyone wants streaming... and why not in DSD256?  

Primeseat and Blue Coast Records have teamed up to test your interest for streaming dsd 256. In the first Live-in-the-Studio FlashJamm Meghan Andrews, Larry Mitchell and Marco Ferrero bring their talents while producer, Cookie Marenco and the Blue Coast Studios Crew records this session live to DSD256.

PRESS RELEASE -- BLUE COAST RECORDS; 2/16/2018; San Francisco, CA

High Fidelity Recording Artist - Fiona Joy Hawkins - Nominated for Best New Age Album in the IMAs

The Independent Music Awards (IMA) announced their nominees this week for Best New Age Album. Included in the nominations was Into The Mist by Fiona Joy (Hawkins), on the Blue Coast Records label.

Need a daily newsletter of information, opinions, activities and musings from those most passionate about DSD?  Get ready for a daily dose of hifi in a short email.  

Cookie Marenco of Blue Coast Records does a comparison test using a $700 Ethernet cable and a regular cat5 Ethernet cable.  Read the article to find out the results.

Blue Coast Music is offering free downloads to test your playback system for DSD, FLAC and WAV files.  Did you recently upgrade and want to know if your system will play DSD 256?  Does your iTunes play FLAC?  Is there really a difference between DSD, FLAC and WAV that you can hear?  Now is your chance to test and optimize your music system.

Garett Brennan is a recording artist for Blue Coast Records based out of the Portland, Oregon. This is an article of the recording session with Cookie Marenco at her studio in 2014.  For those interested in being a "producer" Blue Coast Records has released a 35 minute rehearsal of Garett and friends as they prepare the song "I Will Walk" for eventual release.  

Los Angeles Sheraton was filled with audiophiles for the 1st annual LAAS Event.  Fiona Joy took the opportunity to try something new with her album release on Blue Coast Records... she gave a release party at the Sony Sponsored Magic Bus!

Like many passionate audiophiles, there is a desire to understand more about the music they love and why.  In this article, David Slattery tells us the results of his Dynamic Range (DR) testing.  He also supplies the "how to" of setting up your own test at home.  Recommended for the more computer savvy audiophiles.

There has been a lot of controversy over the years about whether WAV conversions to FLAC are exact duplicates and sound exactly the same.  It's Ears vs Math.  Which do you subscribe to?  The Crew at Blue Coast Records believes there is a difference after doing dozens of blindfold listening tests over the last decade.  Why is this important to DSD listeners?  Understanding how to do a blindfold listening test is complicated.  Included in this article are methods how you can have a blindfold listening party to test for your own ears.

"What would it take to launch a new format today, and what problems could it possibly solve?" Andreas Koch and Positive-Feedback try to answer this and other questions about digital audio formats.  Andreas Koch led a team of engineers designing the world's first multitrack DSD recorder and editor.  He has been a pioneer in all things DSD.

Simply put, open source is when the source code for a piece of software is free and open to the public. This means that people who use the software are not required to pay a licensing fee because it is not owned by one person or company. DSD (.dsf) is an example of an open source digital audio format, FLAC (.flac) is another.

Excerpt from Positive-Feedback and written by Brian Moura. One packed seminar featured a discussion of The Future of DSD hosted by Cookie Marenco, owner of Blue Coast Music along with Gus Skinas, chief of the Super Audio Center and Marc Sheforgen, Chief Operating Officer for Acoustic Sounds. DSD Audio is predicted to be the format of choice for high resolution audio and music.

High resolution audio is becoming more and more common these days. Although there’s no standard quality the audio should reach in order to be classified as high resolution audio, we can easily assume that a file with a quality of at least 44.1 khz/16 bit is a high resolution audio file. But why would you listen to high quality audio material instead of MP3?

Find information on DSD DACs, Hardware, Software, Music, etc. Direct Stream Digital -- One Bit Audio. Read more to get the link.

It has just been announced that the Pono device now supports DSD64 and DSD128.  Here is a link for the firmware update associated.

https://ponomusic.force.com/ccrz__CCPage?oId=a201500000BtI4vAAF&pageKey=product&type=Update

John La Grou is no stranger to pro audio and the advancement of audio technology. A long time friend of DSD recording with many of the top producers using his Millennia's professional grade preamps, John now takes us on a journey of the future of sound. A great read!

If you've ever wanted a rough guide as to the size of a DSD file compared to a WAV or mp3, here is a chart created by Romain Delbos and Quentin Brard.

The 30th floor of the Venetian Hotel was buzzing with activity and one of a kind DSD listening experiences over the 4 days of CES 2013.  From January 8 through 11, Gus Skinas (Super Audio Center) and Cookie Marenco (Blue Coast Records) were giving Carte Blanche to play any music they pleased.

Sony and Blue Coast Records have collaborated on a 3 song DSD sampler of favorite selections used for demoing their highly acclaimed AR 1 Speakers. The songs include "Looking For A Home", "Romance" and "Mutineer". You can hear these songs and buy them as a bundle at

http://bluecoastrecords.com/sony

October 22, 2012, Benchmark announces a 2-Channel DAC that plays DSD natively.  Here is the spec sheet: http://www.benchmarkmedia.com/dac/dac2-hgc

If you've tried the unit, let us know!  support@dsd-guide.com

Early June was the gathering of audiophiles at T.H.E. Show at Newport Beach.  In the Sony AR1 room, Michael Bishop (FiveFour Productions) and Cookie Marenco (Blue Coast Records) were asked to offer their thoughts on DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording --  "Super Resolution" Audio.  Thank you Nicho Mageras of AudioLuxuries.com for capturing this on video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFRG6IMLRV4

We are delighted to report that our first few weeks since launch has driven a huge amount of traffic. To our surprise, most of the visitors are coming from Japan followed by the USA, Canada, Germany and the UK. The main source of the drive from Japan has been from a blog that is new to us called Music To Go. We would like to thank Yoshihiro Sasaki for writing about us.