Acoustic Sounds Adds DSD Downloads in Digital Move, But Will Keep LPs, SACDs

Audiophile music store Acoustic Sounds, which launched in 1986 as a mail-order supplier of vinyl in the early days of the CD, has added digital downloads to its LP and disc portfolio. Acoustic Sounds is the first company to offer Direct Stream Digital (DSD), the encoding format behind the Super Audio CD (SACD) format backed by Sony and Philips as a high-resolution extension of the CD, company executives said Wednesday. In a time when compressed music formats use “CD quality” as a benchmark for fidelity, DSD claims 64 times the sampling rate of CD at 2.8 MHz.

Acoustic Sounds still sells SACDs to a loyal customer base that has increasingly been asking for a high-resolution digital download option, Chad Kassem, Acoustic Sounds founder, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Kassem said the timing is right to offer downloads because hardware and software have come together to create a compelling solution for audio purists.

The initial catalog includes music Acoustic Sounds already sells in LP or SACD -- about 40 titles from Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, which acquired EMI’s music business last year for $1.9 billion. That number could double by the end of the week and increase “exponentially” going forward, Kassem said. Acoustic Sounds Chief Operating Officer Marc Sheforgen told us the encoding process involves embedding metadata such as cover image, liner notes, track listings and sound samples. “There’s quite a bit involved to create each file,” Sheforgen said.

Sony Music has a large catalog of SACD titles, but Kassem wouldn’t comment on any plans to sell Sony DSD titles via Acoustic Sounds. A Sony spokeswoman told us a company press event next week, which will include audio among other announcements, was not related to DSD but is instead “an industry announcement that is being supported by Sony."

Among the DSD downloads available Wednesday at Acoustic Sounds were Just A Little Lovin’ by Shelby Lynne, Temptation by Holly Cole, Phoebe Snow’s self-titled album, Traffic From Paradise by Ricky Lee Jones, The Very Thought of You by Nat King Cole and Midnight Blue by Kenny Burrell. Preserving the blues is one of Kassem’s passions, along with preserving high-quality recordings in high-res formats, he said. DSD has a “warmer, analog sound” than CDs or standard download files, he said. DSD downloads are $24.95 per album. The site also sells downloads in Apple’s ALAC lossless format and in FLAC.

Kassem acknowledged “dips” in Acoustic Sounds’ business when CDs began tailing off in the digital download age and during the recession. But SACD and vinyl sales have remained strong and consistent, he said. He wouldn’t give sales figures for each category but he told us the SKU count of Acoustic Sounds’ vinyl collection is about 30,000, and 2,000 for SACDs. In 2010 the company moved to a new 70,000-square-foot office, from an 18,000-square-foot space, and staff more than doubled to 56 in the same period, he said.

A goal of Acoustic Sounds is to demystify the music download experience, Sheforgen said. The website has a tutorial explaining the hardware requirements for computer-based music: a computer “of sufficient capability to handle the task,” a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) capable of high-resolution operation in DSD and PCM (pulse-code modulation) along with USB 2.0 connectivity, playback software and a broadband connection to the Internet. Additional suggestions include an Intel i7 or equivalent processor, 8 GB RAM and 500 GB hard disk space, with the disclaimer that “you'll be using external USB hard drives for most of your music storage.” Acoustic Sounds recommends JRiver’s $49 Media Center software for music playback on a PC. The lengthy instructions in the how-to section referred several times to the need for following documentation provided with a DAC and included specific qualifiers such as “do NOT use a USB 3.0 or 1.1 port."

The challenge of shifting to digital downloads for a clientele used to the straightforward playback process of a CD or LP is not limited to Acoustic Sounds. Sheforgen said “solutions to date have been scattershot,” requiring users to do “a lot of research” themselves. Acoustic Sounds is “proud of the work we've done” to make the hi-res download site “friendly” and the company plans to add features as it goes, he said: “A lot of people are intimidated by the process.”