Artegra Records, a new label based in the Twin Cities area is finishing up its first 3 SACD releases. The albums will be released as Hybrid Multichannel SACDs in June.
Two of the Multichannel SACDs will be jazz discs: The Sound of Water by the Pete Whitman Quintet and The Bridge by Chris Lomheim. The third album will be Akta Spelman ‘s Swedish Fiddle Music.
To bring these three recordings to SACD, Artegra Records worked closely with David Glasser, Owner and Chief Mastering Engineer at Airshow Studios. Airshow has extensive experience with the SACD format.
“Airshow is one of the few mastering houses experienced with hybrid, multichannel SACD,” said Artegra founder and president, Warren Sampson. “It’s been a pretty steep learning curve to get to this point, and having Airshow’s experience and ears was tremendously helpful.”
“John Scherf recorded all three albums on a Genex DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recorder and transferred the tracks to Artegra’s Sonoma workstation,” explained Glasser. “John roughed out the mixes, then brought the hard drives and session data to Airshow, where we put the tracks on our Sonoma. We refined the mixes as we mastered the projects, mixing and mastering the surround first. All processing was done on the Sonoma except for additional reverb from a Quantec Yardstick and Sony DRE-S777.”
Artegra SACDs contain high-resolution 5.1-channel and 2-channel mixes plus a hybrid CD layer that allows the discs to be played on existing CD players. The company plans to focus on jazz, classical, folk and pop artists active on the Minneapolis-St. Paul music scene.
“I’d met a lot of great players in the area,” said Sampson about his decision to launch Artegra, “and when SACD came along, I saw the chance to jump into recording. When the technology changes, a newer and smaller label has a chance to get out in front.”