Dear Friends,
It is a rare treat when a music writer and critic twists a producer’s arm to re-release an early album in a record label’s catalog. David Fung’s Evening Conversations put Yarlung Records on the audiophile map, and it was last released in 2012. Rush Paul, dear to all of us at NativeDSD, was the friendly arm-twister in our case, and encouraged us to release a fresh mastering of Evening Conversations in honor of Yarlung’s 20th Anniversary. What a treat it was to revisit the original takes and bring them to life in DSD with equipment Yarlung didn’t have at the time of the original recording. Not only did we not have the fabulous Merging Technologies Hapi to record the actual DSD files then, but we have since refined and developed new equipment such as Arian Jansen’s SHI18 (in the analog domain) to refine the soundstage and make a good recording better. This is the first edition of David’s Evening Conversations transferred to 256fs DSD, and this is an edition I suspect will stand the test of time.
Elliot Midwood, frequent executive producer and one of the principal equipment designers at Yarlung, offered to underwrite some of these 20th Anniversary releases. We begin with David Fung’s now iconic Evening Conversations, an album for solo piano recorded in Zipper Hall at Colburn School, where I am setting up tomorrow to record Quartet Integra. Stay tuned for that one! We are recording Beethoven, Ligeti and Lefkowitz. Zipper has wonderful acoustics, as I think you will hear in Evening Conversations, and Yarlung has recorded about 12 albums there to date.
Prior Yarlung board member Larry Davanzo served as our valiant executive producer for the compact disc of Evening Conversations many years ago, an album which continues to be a best seller, even in this era of dwindling interest in digital physical media.
Arian Jansen, Elliot Midwood and Steve Hoffman worked with me to remaster this album as we transferred to DSD, and NativeDSD’s wonderful Tom Caulfield performed his DSD mastering magic such that you can listen to the album in its original 256fs resolution, or choose 64, 128 or 512 as your ears and DACs prefer. Thank you Tom, Arian, Steve and Elliot!
In his longer article for our album booklet, Rush gives us a taste of the mischief he engendered with this special 20th Anniversary release:
This new DSD256 transfer is a magical listening experience. If you’ve only heard the CD release, you have not heard these performances. These are the master tapes heard in as pure a sound as we can ever expect—no post processing, no compression, no messing about with frequency balance. As Dr. David Robinson (founder of Positive Feedback) and I have said before, the sound of a Pure DSD256 transfer (made with good equipment as used here) is indistinguishable to our ears from the analog tape source. DSD256 sound quality is simply that good.
David Fung is extraordinary—his playing soars on wings of the greatest delicacy, nuance, insight, and emotion. He combines a refined elegance with intensely poetic and expressive nuance. The clarity with which he navigates passages is breathtakingly liberating. Listening after all these years, I am once again awestruck by the musicianship, the intelligence, the technical excellence of these performances.
– Rush Paul, Positive Feedback
We used two Neumann U47 microphones for this recording, which I hope you enjoy in the playback. I’m eager to hear what you think.
Sincerely,
Bob Attiyeh, producer
Yarlung Records
