Much is written about sound, or even the sound of sound, or maybe the sounds we wish and want to hear.
Music is personal, it's a matter of taste, it's emotional, or it can be a complete turn off.
With recorded music, combining the sounds we want to hear with, or should I say within the music, is not always possible. It becomes the choice of others, such as the producer or mastering engineer. The playback medium can have an effect too.
We are spoilt for choice; Streaming, CD, Vinyl, Hi-Definition or even for the analogue connoisseur, Reel to Reel Tape.
However we do live in a "digital world" so most of the content today is indeed digital. Even Vinyl in many cases has a digital source, which many vinyl enthusiasts are unaware of.
Here at HDDAP, we acknowledge that some of the best sounds can be captured digitally, but that doesn't mean that that they translate to a pleasant experience.
Not everyone likes rock music to sound so loud, that you cannot hear the guitar/amplifier/speaker harmonics, or drums being so compressed that they sound like plastic lunch-boxes being banged together. Vocals too, have often lost their natural decay.
Yet, in most cases it didn't start out like that; back in the analogue days music often sounded better. This is where we come in. We love the sound of the music and better still, music with the correct sound.
Good music fidelity is characterised by a great dynamic range, (this is the difference between the loudest and the quietest parts of the music) with rich acoustics and complexity, correct note longevity and detail.
We believe that we can get as close to this ideal as possible, with the vast amount of recordings, as most of the damage is done at the end stage, commonly known as the mastering stage.
The common marketing term "remastered", is usually not a sound benefit but a huge trade off in sound to get the maximum bang for buck in loudness. This means lesser dynamic range and a sacrifice in all the other components that make up a good sound. This means, that under the usual music release schemes, progressive releases of remastered editions is a gradual degradation of the sound quality, often being a ruse to tempt people to repurchase their music library.
This is where we are different, it is our objective to try and get a more approachable, dynamic and audiophile sound out of existing recordings, despite their existing deficiencies.