sommelier du son

sommelier du son is a project by Birgit Hammer-Sommer and Dirk Sommer, in which all is about good music and its adequate recording and reproduction: Recording – Producing – Mastering or “rpm” for short.

At first Birgit’s and Dirk’s intention was to make good sounding records of renowned artists, whose music just appealed to the personal taste of both of them. The result were four LPs with such well known musicians as Charlie Mariano, Dieter Ilg, Michel Godard, Steve Swallow, Gavino Murgia and Hans Theessink.

The best analog studio equipment – as Studer, Acousta, Nagra, Neumann, EMT, AKG MicroTech Gefell and Beyerdynamic – was used in every production step exclusively. sds does not use any compressors or limiters as a matter of principle.

After the third record, the independent German media company Edel AG became aware of sds and started the label “Triple A” with Birgit and Dirk, for which they recorded and/or produced albums of Joo Kraus, Leon Russell, The New Mastersounds and Dephazz among others.

Later, the remastering of albums of the legendary German label MPS, whose catalogue was taken over by Edel AG, was added. Among others the 6-LP-Oscar-Peterson-Box “Exclusively For My Friends” and the 7-LP-George-Duke-Box “The Era Will Prevail” were released.

The DSD 256 files you find at NativeDSD from sds were transferred title by title directly from the analog master tape and not edited afterwards. Since the start and end of the songs were no longer trimmed, the playing times of the files may vary slightly from those on the LP. For the Analog to Digital Conversion of the four sds-albums a Playback Designs Pinot was used.

In his main job Dirk is the publisher and chief editor of the German high-end online magazine hifistatement.net.