Various Artists - Audiophile Reference Music vol 1 (Octave SACD)

A perfect companion for Paul McGowan’s book, The Audiophile’s Guide, unlocking the secrets to great sound. On the Audiophile’s Reference Music disc you’ll find channel and polarity checks, depth adjustment tracks, center imaging perfection, soundstaging, tuning the bottom end, a burn-in track, and adjusting for small, medium and large groups of musicians. From subtle to fireworks, it’s all here in the one remarkable Audiophile Master. Couple this disc with Paul’s book and together you’ll upgrade your system to new sonic heights you never thought possible.

Recorded in Pure DSD on the Sonoma system, this will be your ultimate reference disc. Comes complete with a 40-page booklet, SACD playable on any CD or DVD player, and a data disc with all the master files.

About the Artists
Whether you are a beginning or an advanced audiophile, once you follow the setup steps in The Audiophile’s Guide, The Stereo, you too will be able to get closer to the sound of live music on the right recordings. Even if you’re blessed with golden ears, the difference between live and recorded music starts to vanish when you are listening on a system that has been properly set up. Between this reference disc and Paul's book, you can make magic with only a few hours of tweaking invested on a Saturday afternoon. The specially designed burn-in track can be used every time you get a new piece of equipment. And the last three tracks on the Reference Music Disc are alone worth the price of the disc. Whether you want to challenge your system, make certain it's working properly, spend a few hours tweaking it to perfection, The Audiophile's Reference Music Disc is a must-have component.This is one direct-to-master recording you don't want to miss out on. Each music track is a sonic treasure available as a direct-to-master exclusively from Octave Records.

Octave Audiophile Masters
Recorded over four months, The Audiophile's Reference Music laid down tracks in Octave's Boulder studio, PS Audio's main warehouse (for BIG sound), and Lyons Colorado's Animal Lane Studio. Every effort was made to maintain not only the purity of recordings, but the accuracy of miking, distance, and purpose. The three depth tracks, for example, were recorded in PS Audio's warehouse with centimeter-precision so that when you listen at the three intervals: 3 feet, 6 feet, and 9 feet, you can be certain what you are hearing is precise. Another great example is the level of care and detail exemplified in the Drum Solo. Engineer Jay Elliott went all out to get the best from this amazing drum kit. The kit consists of a Ludwig 1970 Blue Sparkle 20” kick drum, 12” rack tom, 16x16” floor tom, 14 x 6.5” Ludwig Superphonic John Bonham LM 402 snare drum, Zildjian New Beats Hi-hat 70’s era 14”, Custom Dark Crash Kerope by Zildjian Crash 18”, and a Kerope by Zildjian 22” ride. To capture this kit, Jay employed his favorite setup for close miking: a Shure Beta 52 for the kick-in and a cardioid patterned, phantom powered, large diaphragm FET Soundelux U195 by David Bock for the kick-out. The top of the snare was handled by a Hypercardioid Beyerdynamic M201 with its phase flipped while the snare’s bottom was a Telefunken M80. The rack tom was captured by a Shure SM7B Cardioid dynamic microphone and the floor tom, an Audix D4 hypercardioid dynamic microphone. To capture the ambient room response, a careful combination of AKG C24, Grados, Sony C100s, were used for the overheads, and a Coles 4038 with flipped phase was placed twelve feet behind the drum kit for space recording. Using The Audiophile's Guide Reference book and this Reference disc, it's easy to follow the step-by-step instructions to obtain near-perfect depth, imaging, tonal balance and 3 dimensional sound where your speakers disappear and the musicians seem in the room with you.

Octave Audiophile Masters bring new music and fresh talent through the highest-quality recordings in high-resolution formats including pure DSD on SACD, DSDDirect Mastered virgin vinyl single-pressings, as well as PCM. Octave Audiophile Master series utilizes the world’s finest studio equipment, based on DSD recording, mixing, and mastering.