DSQ goes DSD

Is Bob Ludwig master of the DaPontes' fate?

By Doug Hubley

Pioneers: the DaPonte String Quartet combined with Bob Ludwig to produce the latest in digital audio.

In Maine it’s always news when local classical players release a recording. But Beethoven Op. 18 Nos. 1,2,4, a new CD quartet from the DaPonte String Quartet, has something of a national news angle, too: It was made with technology that Sony and Philips, the companies that brought us today’s CD, are pitching as part of the Next Big Thing in home audio.

So new is the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) recording process that the Midcoast-based DaPontes are one of the first American string quartets to have made a commercial product with it. The opportunity came through Bob Ludwig, an internationally renowned recording engineer whose Gateway Mastering has been a Portland fixture for years.

It will take a label deal for this recording to realize its full audio potential, as the disc that the DaPontes started selling from their office last month is but a conventional CD. But it was made from DSD master recordings that could, with help from a deep-pocketed label, be pressed as Super Audio CDs (SACDs), a format that its backers hope will follow the 78, the LP, and the CD as the flagship audio format. SACDs promise something for every music lover: superior fidelity; mind-blowing surround-sound capability; and, with so-called “hybrid” SACDs, compatibility with today’s CD players.

In addition to arranging with Sony for the use of the DSD gear, setting up and engineering the sessions, and donating thousands of dollars worth of his company’s time to the project, Ludwig is talking to a number of labels about picking up the disc as a SACD title. Sony got first crack and declined. Delos, Telarc, and Dorian are still in the running, as is DMP, a Connecticut label that made the first commercial SACD and specializes in that format. (DMP’s owner, Tom Jung, helped engineer the DaPonte sessions.)

Ludwig appears to be of two minds about the disc’s prospects. On the one hand, he says, “It’s not going too well because it’s just an awful time for classical music in general.” Representing only about two percent of record sales, classical is taking it on the chin as small labels close down and panicky-but-healthy labels drop classical artists. In addition, SACD is still young, with players only now falling below the $1000 mark, fewer than 300 titles available for purchase, and significant competition from another audio disc format, DVD-A.

On the other hand, Ludwig says, too many people have heard about this project for it to simply go away. “I think it’s going to make it out there,” he says. “It’s just hard to push people right now when they’re in retracting mode.”

Specializing in record mastering — the process of making the final mix from which a recording is reproduced — Ludwig is best-known for his work with rock stars such as Bruce Springsteen or Lou Reed, but his background is in classical music. A fan of the DaPonte String Quartet, he approached the group about making a record. “I always feel a little bad that we can’t give back more to the artistic community” in Maine, he says. “We’re a high-end studio, so a lot of the local bands can’t afford us.” Ludwig adds, however, that Gateway is about to open a more affordable mastering room.

The Beethoven quartets were recorded in May 2000 at Camp Ketcha, in Scarborough, an institutional summer camp whose Great Room had the kind of sound Ludwig wanted. Setting up the quartet in there, he used a nearby room for the recording equipment and a technical staff that included people from Sony. Also in this makeshift booth was Laura Kargul, of Freeport, a pianist who teaches at the University of Southern Maine. Ludwig recruited her to serve as recording producer — that is, the person who would scrutinize the music coming from the speakers and decide what to keep and what to redo.

“I loved it — just working with a group that has such high standards and such integrity, and plays so beautifully,” Kargul says. “They’re just fabulous. It was fun.”

Fun despite circumstances that were less than ideal. There were only three days available for the sessions, which meant covering one Beethoven quartet per session. Scheduling forced the first session onto the same day the band — violinists Ferdinand Liva and Dean Stein, violist Mark Preston, and cellist Myles Jordan — drove back from a workshop in upstate New York. All the sessions began in the evening and went into the small hours. In short, tired people were laying these tracks.

“These guys are pros, through and through,” says Kargul. Despite Kargul’s calls for additional takes — chirping birds and passing aircraft spoiled more of it than subpar playing — “they didn’t complain, ever.”

“We didn’t feel optimum at that point, but it came out Okay,” says Liva. “You have to do it, you have to focus, you’re tired, too bad. Do it anyway.”

Liva and Preston later selected the material for the final product, and the editing was done at Ludwig’s shop under the supervision of a DSD expert from Texas. And then Kargul and the quartet got to hear the finished product in Super Audio surround-sound. Vivid, enveloping, and extremely detailed, the surround-sound experience “blows you away,” says Kargul. “I think it can sound better than live performance.”

Thanks to the generosity of Ludwig, Sony and others on the technical side, the press run of 1000 CDs only cost the quartet about $10,000, Liva says. The band is using it to tempt concert presenters and is selling it, for $15, at concerts, over the Web (www.daponte.org), and by phone order (207-529-4555). And in the meantime, the DaPontes are waiting for a word from the record labels. “It could turn into a real thing,” says Liva.

Doug Hubley can be reached at doug.hubley@worldnet.att.net.