Dr. AIX's POSTS

Hello From Zurich

That’s right, yesterday (and all night) was a travel day. The close of the Kickstarter campaign has come and gone…I watched the timer count down to zero on Wednesday morning closing out a very intense 30 day (and preceding 30 days of setup) period of watching the reaction to my new book and Blu-ray. It was a resounding success, I’m very happy to report. The funding reached 268% of the original goal and 812 backers will soon be hearing from me about their rewards. Thanks again for the very encouraging response.

On Wednesday morning, I also launched a Kickstarter campaign for a very talented pianist, lyricist, songwriter, and vocalist by the name of Paul Horner. I’d written about the recording of his new project back in March. My good friend Robert Margouleff (Grammy winner for his work with Stevie Wonder) produced Paul’s first recording…and he’s almost 80 years old. Paul is a remarkable musician and I’m very pleased to have gotten to know him through his project.

After the recording sessions back in the spring, I contributed to his project by mastering the record and putting together the artwork. It’s taken way too long but due to number of issues and concerns about images and licensing etc. but it finally ready to be replicated, packaged, and distributed to his admirers.

Paul is primarily known for his work with the legendary Peggy Lee. He co-wrote a number of songs with her and collaborated on the production of the Broadway Musical “Peg”. Many of those tunes have never been recorded, which is shame because Paul’s wit and songwriting skills deserve a much wider audience. There’s the first song that he and Peggy co-wrote called, “I Gave It Everything I Had”, which is also the name of the album. Funny songs, a Christmas tune about a three-legged reindeer named Snowdrop and my favorite, “Washing Windows”. There’s also a drawing of Paul and Peggy by Tony Bennett.

Paul’s looking for some support for his project so that he can finance a few final costs. As a recent Kickstarter veteran, I offered to shoot and edit his video and assist in putting together all of the rewards and images. You can check out his Kickstarter campaign at: Paul Horner’s KS Campaign.

The life of a musician and songwriter is not always lucrative. While Paul and I were shooting his video, he told me that he contributed to a number of hit songs early in his career in England but never received any credit…or money. So much for the music business being kind and fair. He mentioned, “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter”…a tune that was a huge hit for Herman’s Hermits. Paul collaborated with the writer with the melody of the bridge section.

So please consider taking a look at his Kickstarter pitch video. I included portions of a number of his tunes. And to keep things relevant, one of the rewards is high-resolution file downloads. Robert captured the project at 96 kHz/24-bit PCM and it was kept that way throughout the postproduction process.

See you tomorrow.

Dr. AIX

Mark Waldrep, aka Dr. AIX, has been producing and engineering music for over 40 years. He learned electronics as a teenager from his HAM radio father while learning to play the guitar. Mark received the first doctorate in music composition from UCLA in 1986 for a "binaural" electronic music composition. Other advanced degrees include an MS in computer science, an MFA/MA in music, BM in music and a BA in art. As an engineer and producer, Mark has worked on projects for the Rolling Stones, 311, Tool, KISS, Blink 182, Blues Traveler, Britney Spears, the San Francisco Symphony, The Dover Quartet, Willie Nelson, Paul Williams, The Allman Brothers, Bad Company and many more. Dr. Waldrep has been an innovator when it comes to multimedia and music. He created the first enhanced CDs in the 90s, the first DVD-Videos released in the U.S., the first web-connected DVD, the first DVD-Audio title, the first music Blu-ray disc and the first 3D Music Album. Additionally, he launched the first High Definition Music Download site in 2007 called iTrax.com. A frequency speaker at audio events, author of numerous articles, Dr. Waldrep is currently writing a book on the production and reproduction of high-end music called, "High-End Audio: A Practical Guide to Production and Playback". The book should be completed in the fall of 2013.

15 thoughts on “Hello From Zurich

  • Gordon Wheeler

    Hi Mark,

    And welcome to europe, I write as your website has registered me as the first viewer of this post and also to ask if you will be near or in any recording spaces whilst you are here?

    Would be cool i you were able to do an “on the fly” hi res project whilst “on tour” anyways hope you enjoy your stay this side of the atlantic.

    Gordon

    Reply
    • Admin

      Hi Gordon. Yes, I will giving a couple of lectures and a recording workshop next week at the University of Mainz of a jazz trio. Looking forward to it.

      Reply
  • Hello, an audio Upsampled to 2.5 MHz does sound with noticeably better attack than current ‘hi-rez’ is capable of.

    Reply
    • Admin

      Upsampling doesn’t change the fidelity of a sound…that is established by the original sampling rate and the word length.

      Reply
      • But the original sampling rate does sound substantially less analog, it is ‘that matter of space around instruments’ one could definitely perceive when listening to an audio upsampled to (but not recorded at) only 192 kHz, if you recall that talk with Scott Wilkinson back in 2012.

        Reply
        • Admin

          As if sounding more analog is a requirement or desirable? There is plenty of “space” around the instruments I record at 96 kHz/24-bits…this is more subjective nonsense.

          Reply
          • Well, sounding more analog adds an emotional component to the otherwise ‘flat’ listening experience.

          • Not to me it doesn’t.

          • (Some problem with the Reply button, as on YouTube.)

            It gets you just don’t care the 96/24 recordings feature temporal aliasing & simply are not dithered. By the way, that “space” is not around the instruments, as in accordance to many who happened to have heard an Upsampled audio as well as to some Shawn Murphy, but is the more perceivable background in which appear the sounds, and they appear to be tri-dimensional.

          • Admin

            I’m very pleased with the sound of my recordings…they don’t lack warmth, emotion, space or anything else. The tracks are very 3D not because of the 96/24 but because of the techniques used to record the albums.

          • Whereas I {and not only me} seriously doubt that quantization noise is inaudible from undithered 24-bit or even larger plate. A 192kbps MP3 track with electronic music upsampled to 192 kHz did also not lack space & emotion, with sounds theirselves being even more 3D than those on a 96/24 DVD-Audio whose timing resolution is limited to about 10 microseconds, so that it’s very likely to feature temporal aliasing.

          • Thanks Jay…I’ll stick with what I hear and know. And who’s listening to undithered 24-bit audio?

          • How, I just thought that you leave your recordings undithered… Whatever, they’re likely to be upsampled to >1MHz in order to avoid temporal aliasing.

  • Kit Kimes

    I just got a message from Paul Horner stating that my CD would be shipped in December, so I guess he got what he needed to finish his project. Can’t wait.

    Reply
    • Admin

      He did and is very appreciative. I’ll send in the final artwork and get the units packaged well before Christmas.

      Reply

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