Greetings!

The sky is falling! Or so a few luddites would have you believe. It's more of a mixed bag... This newfangled digital/internet stuff keeps me on edge so let's dive right in...

EMI is the first major label to sell their music DRM-free (software that restricts copying) via iTunes. For those of you who think that this move spells doom for artists/labels ability to earn a living... Deutsch Telecom in Europe removed DRM from it's independent artists and saw a 40% increase in sales of those tracks. Similiar marketing tests done by EMI also suggest the public's eagerness to be able to purchase, play and transfer their music on whatever device(s) they own as protected by the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Meaning, as long as you're not a mass distributor of unpurchased music, you have the freedom to make and have copies of the same song on whatever media you choose. DRM does nothing to combat piracy (Audio Hijack, anyone?) but everything to piss-off music fans. What's the point?

In a similar vein: the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has raised the royalty rates that small webcasters must pay for streaming recordings. The change is made in response to noncommercial broadcasters increased georgraphic reach via the internet and subsequent ability to compete with commercial services. How this will affect noncommercial broadcasters such as NPR-member station KCRW and others is yet to be seen but it definitely limits the amount of new and interesting choices available to internet listeners. Of course, this is great news for traditional, commercial-radio a-holes who can afford to pay top-dollar for content (thanks to all of the ad revenue AND payola they receive... nice tie-in to last issue, eh?).

I swear I'm more interesting over a few drinks. The more you have, the better.

I'm going to make this month's editorial short and sweet and completely unrelated to audio production (bear with me). How long does an artist have to starve before it's ok to make a few dollars?

When I was a recording artist on Sony, a very good friend of mine who worked there told me a story that haunts me to this day. A fellow label-mate was offered a *100 grand to license a song to a TV commercial. My friend advised the artist against making the deal because they felt it would hurt their "indie cred" and negatively impact future record sales (yeah, I know... a lecture from somebody at Sony about credibility is ironic). The artist turned down the deal and I never heard of them again. Now I don't know what the ad was for, but I'm guessing credibility doesn't really matter when nobody's heard of you.

Just my 2 cents in the bank and ZERO credibility. Love ya! -Hans

*(100 Gs sounds like a lot until you factor -22% for taxes, -15% for manager, divided by the number of years it took said artist to make any money at all. Don't call it a sell-out unless you think working at McDonald's is ballin.)

What's the difference between DSD and PCM digital audio?

First off, they are both methods of encoding and storing audio on digital media.

PCM (pulse-code modulation) is a digital representation of an analog signal based on regularly sampled intervals of the magnitude of a wave. The number of bits represent how many intervals are sampled, hence the more samples, the higher degree of accuracy. It is the most common form of digital audio and represents anything from red book compact discs, DVD audio, WAV, AIFF, SD2 to various compressed audio formats such as MP3, AAC, etc. Most recording software/DAWs are PCM-based (Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, DP, Reason, etc).

DSD (Direct-Stream Digital) is a proprietary format created by Sony and Phillips (designers of the audio CD) which uses a sequence of single bit values at a sampling rate of 2.8224 Mhz (64 times the CD audio sampling rate of 44.1 khz). An example of media that employs this encoding method is the Super Audio CD (SACD). A few DAWs that use DSD are Pyramix and some Sadie systems. Sonic Solutions will convert PCM to DSD and vice versa.

The verdict is still out on which one is superior but it's widely agreed that DSD is better than PCM at reproducing audio at lower sampling rates (say 44.1 khz), while PCM still reigns supreme at higher resoultions (ie 192 khz). The reason lies in the differences between multi-bit and single bit converters/modulators and the noise shaping/distortion that occurs.

Does any of this have anything to do with a great sounding recording? I mean, more than where you put the microphone or whether the guitars are out of tune? Probably not, but interesting none-the-less.