Stereolife DSD Album Vol. 1

There is no music without sound, and for some people, the quality of sound is more important than most things in life, as it brings us closer to our favorite music and lets us explore its beauty. What you are about to experience is an album created by StereoLife Magazine in collaboration with Native DSD Music.

In our work we are operating in two completely different areas, but it all leads to the same thing – letting our readers and listeners immerse themselves in sound and enjoy music in the best possible way. There are many ways to achieve this state of total connection with art. For some music lovers it can be a turntable and old vinyl records, others just need a smartphone and decent headphones to enjoy their favorite music, but at StereoLife Magazine and Native DSD Music we believe that DSD recordings are quite simply the best solution of all, allowing us to take the sound quality to the state-of-the-art. In this compilation you will experience different genres, a variety of musical flavors, but all of them in the best possible quality.

Direct Stream Digital (DSD) is a trademark used by Sony and Philips for their system of digitally recording and archiving music, initially for release on Super Audio CD (SACD) and preserving analog master recordings. Native DSD Music offers original DSD recordings, directly from the producers who record in this format. But instead of printing and shipping SACD’s – you can now download these 1 bit files. DSD stores music as delta-sigma modulated digital audio, a sequence of single-bit values at a sampling rate of 2.8224 MHz (64 times the CD Audio sampling rate of 44.1 kHz) which is used for SACDs. DSD can also be recorded in Double DSD (5.6 MHz or DSD 128) and Quad DSD (11.2 MHz or DSD 256) which are only available as downloads (not SACDs), such as those found at the Native DSD Music website store.

The word “Native” in Native DSD Music means offering music files that are sourced as early in the production process as possible. The key word is Native. Unlike most download service sites today, unless otherwise indicated, Native DSD offers only DSD Edit Masters, sourced from DSD and DXD session recordings, and not ripped files from optical media. The much-abused term “Studio Masters” has little relevance when the source of a site’s download file is from the same optical media available to the consumer.

To put this into perspective, this is most important for recordings that contain the fragile low level spatial and instrument detail content of recorded music. It is music recorded in an acoustic space at the highest technical level available, with the intent of transporting the music performance to the listeners’ room with the highest possible detail.

David Elias – Vocals and Guitar (Track 1)
Scott Hamilton – Saxophone and Andrea Pozza – Piano (Track 2)
Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Ivan Fischer (Track 3)
Eddie Graham Trio (Track 4)
Joachim Eijlander – Cellist (Track 5)
Kobra Ensemble (Track 6)