CLEVELAND, OHIO - SEPTEMBER 2007: To a much greater extent than at other labels, the producers and engineers at Telarc International have gone to extraordinary lengths to realize their near-religious quest for absolutely transparent, spatially-truthful recordings. They continually refine their recording technologies and reevaluate their equipment to remain at the vanguard of recording realism to the extent that Telarc has remained a full decade ahead of the rest of the recording industry. Their efforts have not gone unrewarded. In only thirty years, Telarc has earned over forty Grammys for performance, production, and engineering. Thus, when it came time to purchase a new AD converter, senior engineer and six-time Grammy-winner Michael Bishop sought out what has been heralded as a fabulous new product, the Digital Audio Denmark (DAD) AX24. But a reputation will only get your foot in the door at Telarc. The proof is in the listening. First, in a blind A/B comparison using their existing ultra high-end converters, the analog output of their custom console, and the DAD AX24 in a session with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Bishop, Telarc producer Elaine Martone, assistant producer Thomas Moore and two assistant engineers all independently chose the output of the AX24 as obviously closer to its input. In fact, if there was a difference between the AX24's output and its input, it bordered on imperceptible, even in Bishop's carefully aligned ATC monitors. Although the DAD AX24 fully supports all of the standard PCM sampling depths and rates, all the way up to 24-bit 384kHz, and is consciously designed to be user-updateable as different standards emerge, Bishop used it to encode Direct Stream Digital (DSD), which is currently the Telarc standard and which is made available to consumers on Super-Audio CD. The AX24 is also capable of encoding the related protocol, DXD, and is available with two, four, six, or eight I/Os. Ever critical, Bishop repeated the blind A/B test when he returned to Telarc's home studios in Cleveland. Three producers and four engineers evaluated the DAD AX24 and all seven independently selected it as the best converter from among Telarc's cream-of-the-crop converters. "Ten sets of ears, five of which have earned Grammys and the remaining five of which have Grammys in their futures, all independently selected the DAD AX24 as the absolute state-of-the-art," Bishop summarized. "The AX24 is a truly exceptional piece of electronics." Although the new converter won't see its first "front line" action until later in September for a Live In-Session recording of Puccini's La Bohème opera with Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the AX24 has already been put to use in Telarc's mastering room. Bishop explained, "Although we focused on the AX24's AD converters for the tests, its DA converters are noticeably cleaner and clearer than the converters that we had been using for post-production mastering. This says a lot, because our old DA converters were, before the AX24 came along, the very best in the world." |
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