PS Audio’s first title for its Octave music label is Out of Thin Air, a solo performance from pianist Don Grusin. The high-end audio company launched the label Wednesday with a charter of “preserving the art of high-fidelity recordings and compensating musicians fairly.” Grusin’s recording is available on a two-disc limited Super Audio CD/CD set with Direct Stream Digital encoding, 192kHz/24-bit PCM sampling and CD formats, said the company. Octave covers all studio, mixing, mastering, production, distribution and marketing expenses so artists have a direct share of sales revenue, said to be 10-20 times those of other labels, said Scott McGowan, PS Audio director. Octave artists own their music and have creative control, he said. Octave’s engineer, Gus Skinas, has worked on hundreds of recordings, including titles from the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Nat King Cole and George Harrison. Out of Thin Air was recorded and mixed at Grusin’s Moose Sound studio in Colorado.

Data Conversion Systems announced recording engineers Al Schmitt, Tony Faulkner and Chuck Ainlay as recipients of its Legends award, which acknowledges efforts of recording, mixing and mastering engineers to deliver "the finest music listening experience possible." Its music education and promotion program underscores the trend toward “studio quality" high-resolution streaming services, said the group Tuesday. DCS gave its first Legends award to audio mastering engineer Bob Ludwig last fall (see 1910180008) and has supported the program with digital and print ads.

Luxman bowed a $3,295 digital player with a CD transport, two independent Texas Instruments PCM1975 digital-to-analog converters, Master Quality Authenticated decoding for files and CDs, and support for DSD files up to a 11.28 MHz sampling rate. The D-03X’s USB input supports two modes of high-resolution audio file transfer, said the company. Luxman software for PCs and Macs decodes WAV, FLAC, MP3, DSF, DSDIFF, ALAC and AIFF files, it said.

Master Quality Authenticated is working with Jazz re:freshed on streamed versions of live sets from the British Music Embassy Sessions. The first March 18 livestream was originally intended to remotely connect with the international music industry at the SXSW festival in Austin, which was canceled due to the coronavirus. MQA technology was used to “fold” the full sound of the live studio performance into a stream that fit alongside the HD video for streaming. The BME sessions will be available as audio-only tracks on subscription-based high-res music service Tidal. Other acts billed to perform as part of Jazz re:freshed’s Outernational line-up at SXSW were Daniel Casimir & Tess Hirst and Theon Cross. The performances, captured in HD video and 24-bit/96kHz audio, were recorded as 30-minute sets from Mill Studios, London.

Audio vendor iFi bowed the hip-dac Thursday, a portable USB digital-to-analog converter and headphone amp small enough to fit in a pocket. The $149 amp is designed to improve sound from smartphones, tablets and computers. Using a Burr-Brown DAC chip, hip-dac streams “bit-perfect” pulse-code modulation, native Direct Stream Digital and Master Quality Authenticated. Hi-Res PCM and Digital eXtreme Definition audio data is supported at sampling rates up to 384 kHz, with DSD support from 2.8 MHz-12.4 MHz, it said.

NAD is launching at CES a combination digital-analog converter and amplifier in its Masters Series. The $4,999 M33 is BluOS-enabled for multiroom music, delivers 200 watts into two channels and features HybridDigital Purifi Eigentakt amplifier technology. Streaming features include high-res support for MQA decoding from a local NAS or shared drive and streaming audio services such as Tidal, Deezer, Qobuz and Amazon HD, said the company. It supports Alexa and Google Assistant voice control skills and Siri via AirPlay 2. The M33 is due in stores in March.

Lenbrook is integrating Neil Young Archives, a streamed high-res music collection of the musician’s works, into its BluOS multiroom streaming platform, it announced Monday. This quarter, North American users of NAD, Bluesound and Dali loudspeakers will be prompted to update their players to be able to sample Young’s archived song of the day and album of the week in full resolution, Lenbrook said. Users interested in subscribing can do so through the app. The agreement demonstrates how a content creator and a home audio equipment provider “can collaborate and model an effective and simple solution for music lovers to access and enjoy a unique and fully high-resolution streaming experience,” Lenbrook said. The collaboration is a way for musicians to take more control over their work and by bypass traditional music distribution channels to reach fans more directly, it said. Parent company Lenbrook said in December it's collaborating with OraStream (see 1912200010), giving the company’s music content customers access to the BluOS platform on Lenbrook brands. OraStream’s adaptive streaming platform, based on the MPEG 4 SLS codec, encodes music files in their native resolution; a decoder at the listening point delivers the audio file, adjusting and buffering data to fit bandwidth limits, while eliminating skipping and pauses. At CES, Lenbrook will demonstrate Neil Young Archives on BluOS at its Venetian suite, #29-140.

Lenbrook announced a collaboration with OraStream, giving the streaming platform company's music content customers access to BluOS-enabled NAD, Bluesound and Dali branded-products. OraStream has an adaptive streaming platform, based on the MPEG 4 SLS codec, and back office infrastructure. Music files are encoded in their native resolution; a decoder at the listening point delivers the audio file, adjusting and buffering data to fit bandwidth limits, while eliminating skipping and pauses, it said Thursday.

Japanese pay-TV broadcaster Wowow will use Master Quality Authenticated audio to showcase HD video playback at the Inter BEE trade show on Nov. 15 in Tokyo, said MQA Friday. MQA’s real-time encoding capability was demoed to Japanese audiences for the first time at the trade show last year.

The introduction of Amazon Music HD last week (see 1909180028) typifies recent hardware and streaming developments that could be “stepping-stones towards mainstream adoption” of hi-res audio, blogged Futuresource Consulting on Friday. The growth of wireless speakers, “notably driven by Amazon,” is another potential market invigorator, it said. The components required to “fully benefit” from hi-res audio “have been significantly simplified, now incorporating all the required audio components into a single device,” said Futuresource. Spotify and Apple Music “could also follow Amazon’s move into high-quality streaming,” though Spotify has “consistently rejected the idea,” it said. Apple “could benefit from the synergy of its in-house cloud storage service to have lower hosting and delivery cost,” it said. Futuresource canvassed smart-speaker owners in 2019's first half, and half said they want products “with better sound quality than they currently own, indicating the strong potential for upsell and upgrades,” it said.