Dipping a toe in the Audiophile market

As you may... or may not know, one of the key differences in the recording of “Hobson's Choice” was where and how it was recorded. “Hobson's Choice” was recorded at Unipheye Music, in an Audiophile recording studio. 

What does that mean? Glad I asked.

Audiophile means Sound Lover. The Audiophile market is comprised of people that take sound very, very, very seriously.  The amount of money most would spend on a car, the Audiophile will invest in a sound system. Most major label commercial recordings (well honestly all) don't really shine on an Audiophile system. The mixes are dense, compromised and designed to sound good on your I-Device. This is why Audiophile record companies like Unipheye exist. To provide music that sounds exceptionally... well... real.

Now I'm not suggesting you need a 10,000 $ sound system to enjoy “Hobson's Choice”, Good sound also sounds good on your computer speakers or whatever I-device you may have. The reason most recordings don't fall into the Audiophile sphere is because it takes a lot of talent on the performing and engineering end to make it happen. The performance must be live, and you must capture it with very costly hardware and …. cross your fingers.  There is a lot of talent and knowledge behind it, but a big portion of the equation is pure luck.

We got Lucky.

Yesterday we sold the very first Audiophile version on “Hobson's Choice”. Here is the consumer's review of his purchase.

“now i had the Time to hear "Hobsons Choice" at my "big System" ( Mac 8GB/PureMusic via FireWire to WEISS Dac2 ; GryphonPreAmp and big, selfbuild semiaktive Monitors) .... an absolutely awesome Recording ! Wonderfull tonaly Balance, great Dynamic and perfect Resolution of this small, little Details that make an Recording "real". Very, very good Job and the Music itselfs is so great, that i´ve heard the Album directly over again ;-)

Best Regards

Thomas”

While I, and the members of Kinagree Smith do not intend to make the Audiophile market our prime target, we do care a lot about how what we do sounds. We plan to Record “Ashes and Dreams” at Unipheye Music, and there is talk of yet another Jack Kinagree solo recording.

One of my favorite stories about the sound quality of the recording of “Hobson's Choice”, is a while back I was testing an HTML5 file player on the back end of my web site. Kenn Kweder had dropped by, and Kenn has an I-phone so I asked him to test out the file player for me. He loads the page, the file plays and he put the phone in his pocket and leaves it playing. Kenn and I start talking, the music is playing in his shirt pocket on his I-phone speaker and about a minuet later he stops mid sentence, pulls the phone out of his pocket it and exclaims “Wow, the guitar sound here is amazing”.

I'm very proud of “Hobson's choice”. It's a great recording on all levels, and I'm glad people are starting to appreciate the amazing sound of it.

Keep expecting great things.