Here is another provider for digital files: the Unipheye Music from Philadelphia sunbirds.

http://www.unipheyemusic.com/SMRD.cfm

I was considering ordering the Beethoven quartets disk but they have no PayPal checkout option and I do not fill those checkout forms anymore on their site as they twice crashed on me.

The UnipheyeMusic music does something what I like the sell the “raw” files, not the idiot DVD-A format but the actual .WAV files – that is a very good sign.

Now is what I do not like. They sell WAV files – it means that it has 2G max and it means that the tracks cut in separate WAV files – I found it very uncomfortable play in DAW  as I need to click each file. Also, I very much disagree with the prostitution of the fashionable phrase “Master” files. It looks like the original recording was made using the inferior 1-Bit DSD format hen just converted to PCM. This is not kosher to begin with. Then the UnipheyeMusic sell different PCM files 96, 44 and so on… are they just down-sampling of some kind 172K PCM master or direct conversion from DSD to 44/16? Anyhow, I feel that the notion of “raw files” with UnipheyeMusic is kind of blurred.

The last one. It annoys me that UnipheyeMusic trying to sell the Beethoven String Quartet No. 11 and have absolutely no information about the performing event or about the musicians who performed the work. I do not need to read the comment from a bunch of hoodlums who admired the sound - I will make my own judgment. I however would like to know who, why and how play the Quartet No. 11. From the MP3 file that was sampled I was not impressed by nether performance nor recording. I might try to get the file to see if anything will be better at full bloom of the “raw file” …

That is so much pisses me. A few days back I posited this like and was laughing that this guy record in DSD (which is in fact not DSD but SACD, I do not think he has access to DSD) in order to sell his recording in PCM 2X and 4X? Why do those people do not record in PCM?

I was predicting 10 years back that the dominance of idiotic SACD format will force people who do recording to record in SACD (the actual surrogate of DSD) and then to consider the PCM transfers as “equal to master copy”. Wary sad but it is how they feel nowadays.

Last week I bought a few new recordings that I very much would like to have. The CDs have a note:

“The CD was recorded using the Direct Stream Digital". Mach of the added resolution afforded by DSD process in standard CD production by using dedicated DSD conversion.”

It means that the masters of the recordings DO NOT EXIST in PCM but exist only in the fundamentally screwed 1-bit SACD.  That is very sad…

I did not order the UnipheyeMusic. Tne only recording I was interested was the Beethoven quartet but I did not like how it was recorded.  According to the UnipheyeMusic guy the artists were too “famous” to give him a lot of time for recording and they juts squeeze 30 minutes form their schedule to record the work. Well, good luck to them… I a bit disturbed that the guy from UnipheyeMusic  agreed to record under this conditions.

The technicality is another matter. The best SAD plays of today right after reading the disk imidetaly convert data to 32/384 and then process it further as a pure PCM but not the stupid 1 bit DSD. So, who the hell need to record in DSD. The DSD that we have today is not the superb 4-bit DSD as Meitner originally designed but the 1-bit crap that even theoretically imposable to operate properly. The only reason why today DSD is around is because the people who use is are ignorant and deaf idiots, no other reasons. The entire notion of SACD was unfortunate bait-and-switch and it is good only for the hoodlums with the tease for the “audiophile blues”…

BTW, I also found that Unipheye believes that the 32bit (floating point) files sound better than the 24bit very funny. Wais unit they over 64 bit! What you do not what 684dB of signal to noise ratio? That would be too cool. You will be able to reproduce with a single driver the Big Bang and to record it with no volume control… I do not know even if to laugh or to cry…

manisandher wrote:

I received my copy of 'The Karp Segall Experiment' today. The music's not really 'my cup of tea', but it's OK as background music for me. Using RME's Digicheck, I'm measuring -50dB noise at 81KHz...

Andy Simpson wrote:

What was the RMS loudness of the music itself? Andy