Back in the mid-90s I was involved in having two CDs replicated at a plant recommended to me by Jimmy Bowen, towards the end of his long career as producer and star-maker. I had asked him where I could find a plant that would cut the glass master from a CD-ref directly at 1-X speed, that is, a real time transfer, rather than waste resolution by going to 1630 first—-which at that time, a lot of plants were still set up for. Mr. Bowen had told me this was how he was mastering, and I could have my CDs mastered this way at a plant in North Carolina.

I had hated the 1630 sound ever since I had heard a prototype at the Bee Gees' Miami Beach studio in 1983. We had all put our heads in the sand (sonicly), when this new technology called digital, emerged and we all found our individual recording tricks to reduce the harsh effect of 44.1, the new CD format.

This brings us to the second part of my introduction to good digital sound: The AES show in NYC--94 or 95. They had a Pioneer demo of the new 96k Dat recorder/player. They simply played the same program of music selections and sound-effects, such as a steam locomotive starting up and pulling away from the station.

The comparison was mind-boggling. 96k at a mere 16bits so blew away 48k at 16 bits! This drove home two important lessons: forget about chasing bits, truncating bits, turbo bits and all the other pitiful fixes for the basic problem of poor digital sound: low sampling rates!

While I was in North Carolina in 1995 at the CD manufacturing plant, I got to talk to the owner, a pioneer in the digital sciences. He told me of a new technology that by the ability of squeezing more digital information on a cd, would be capable of encoding a color movie on that cd. This enormous leap in capacity had a vastly higher importance to me--this new format, called DVD, would mean the end of the terrible sound that digital had come to signify. Audio formats with sampling rates of 96k at 24 bits!

Here we are, 5 years, no—5 long, frustrating years later! This Winter of 2000/2001, the first DVD players are being released with HDCD de-coding chips as a standard. HDCD chips that will decode sampling rates of 88.2, 96, 176.4 and 192. ALL at 24 bits! I
was battling cancer 5 years ago, and it was questionable I would live to see my latest project make it to DVD release. But I said to my-self, "If it's the last thing I do, I want to have my last project available at 176.4"

Last summer , recovering from a removal of a vertibra, not sure if I would ever get out of bed, or the pain I was in, I took an act of faith and back-ordered the Model Two AD/DD/DA converter by Pacific Microsonics, developed by two Americans and licenced by Toshiba and many others for the HDCD decoding device that makes all those high-sampling rates in the next generation players possible.

Next, I needed a recorder to handle a stereo program of 176.4 (divisable to 44.1 for production of standard CDs for laggards who may want to hear the new project, but aren't ready to buy a new DVD player). Mind you, the new players are what we DVD fence-sitters have been waiting for—they will do everything from High-rate stereo, 5.1 surround, old-time 44.1 cds, and all of the above with video of the performance, stills, and What-Have-You.

My choice of recorder was a no-brainer: The Genex MO 8-track disk recorder, the only machine I'm aware of at present that records at the 88.2, 96, 176.4 & 192 in stereo. It may do more tracks at these rates, but I am still in the learning curve (and thinking Stereo, not Surround). Another feature of the Genex is the option to order it with 8 tracks of 96k@12 bits. In and Out.

I am thrilled by the sound of the master I'm putting together--incredible head-room, definition, and hi-fi like the old days--like listening to the original analog master before it left the studio for the 44.1 trasher.

Next and final step is authoring. I haven't reached that point, but I hear prices are falling right and left on this RECORDING to DVD ROM/RAM stage. Remember how much it used to cost to get a Reference CD made? Now you can make 'em on your computer!

One last advantage to the high-sampling rate HDCD Audio format I would like to mention is the fact that it would be difficult to bootleg---thus we will have the option to buy a disk capable of delivering sonic quality still years away from practical downloading over the ' Net.'

Sandy Bull is a well known composer, multi-instrumentalist and self-engineering producer. Check out his website, www.sandybull.com.