ECA Reflection and Mobile Rig Completion.

One year ago, I founded Eos Chasma Audio. 

And what a year it has been. Eos Chasma has had the privilege to work with some of Nashville's finest artists. We've established connections and relationships with the best of Nashville's numerous recording studios. We've learned from our invaluable network of audio experts and created a foothold for the high resolution community to grow in Music City. 

A humble beginning, with hopes for growth for years to come. 

When I created Eos Chasma Audio, I planned to provide a traditional music production experience. As the idea matured and grew, the business followed. Why provide a traditional experience when technology can offer so much more? Why not expand into fields that insist on perfection and that have demand to grow into the 21st century. Why not, indeed?

Everyday, I am excited and inspired from what ECA has turned into. The artists and clients we are privileged to work with provide us with the means to continue to expand and push the boundaries of high resolution audio. And the future is bright. Thank you for a fantastic year one.  

The Mobile Rig is born. 

A large portion of my time recently has been dedicated to designing and building a multi-faceted mobile recording rig. I'm proud to say that as of today, it is fully operational. The rig itself is designed for classical music and acoustic music production, providing outstanding conversion, DSD capable technology, and excellent microphones. The ability to pack up and move the rig means that the best sounding acoustic spaces are now at our fingertips. The world-class conversion is also a perfect fit for our forensic audio and restoration services. More details of the equipment will be available on the ECA website. We are excited about this, and we can't wait to create amazing audio solutions with you using this gear.

An Interesting Study in Digital Audio and Why Hi-Res Matters

As some of you may know, audio's biggest convention, AES, just wrapped up last month, and offered a look into new gear (woo!), but also a new wealth of knowledge presented in various talks and papers. While searching through everything from the convention, I found a very interesting bit of info on a study currently being conducted at McGill University. Here's the link: 

http://www.merging.com/news/news-stories/prostudiomasters-and-mcgill-university-use-merging-technologies-for-key-audio-research-project 

Merging are the masters of all things digital audio.  We're currently designing our brick-and-mortar studio here at Eos Chasma and we are building it around a brain of Merging tech. In the article, it briefly describes what the study, entitled "Simultaneous Audio Capture at Multiple Sample Rates and Formats for Direct Comparison and Evaluation", aims to achieve. In short, it is exactly as stated in the title: Recording directly to various mediums (using identical interfaces) and comparing the outcomes. This mainly involves various forms of PCM and DSD digital formats along with a handful of analog mediums (tape machines with different IPS and tape width) to which all are being recorded simultaneously. This will allow for extremely in-depth back to back analysis of each medium. 

Why does this matter? It matters because these questions are being asked, and hi-resolution digital audio is the future of this field. Hi-Resolution has a future questioned by many because of the failure of other digital formats in the past, and partly because they question the legitimacy of the benefits of hi-res audio past 96k/24bit. But when you consider services such as ProStudioMasters, one of the participants in the above study, or HDTracks, you realize there exists already a market for high quality digital audio. Also consider the streaming service Tidal, whose model is based around providing Hi-Res streaming. DSD was once considered obsolete until our technology caught up to it and allowed for CDs other than SACDs and master downloads to support it. Consider the graph below:

(Image from the Merging Technologies website)

Here at Eos Chasma Audio, we believe in hi-res, and we believe in the future of digital audio. Our philosophy is to blend the best of both worlds.

What do we love about analog? The delicate character of a vintage tube microphone. The warmth of a classic preamp. The subtle multi-band, soft-knee limiting of your favorite tape machine. We understand and share the love for these items. But in the modern age, the sonic qualities of these favored pieces of gear are, more often than not, lost to poor analog to digital conversion. And even if the conversion was done well at the beginning, often times re-sampling occurs, multiple times in some occasions, continuously degrading the quality of your digital audio. 

Quality conversion is what defines the quality of music in this age simply due to the fact that almost all music is consumed digitally. We want to get that great analog sound, with all of the fun gear to play with, and prepare it for the digital world the right way.  

We're excited by the possibilities of hi-res formats such as DSD (and we hope you are too). We look forward to becoming one of Nashville's first hi-res centered, DSD capable studios. We want your music to have the depth of an analog heart, and the clarity of a digital soul. 

In short, don't be afraid of innovation! Embrace it! Learn it! 

Make sure to monitor the results of the McGill study, I think they will be interesting!