Artegra believes that multichannel SACD is the best of the new audio formats. Here we share our reasons for supporting SACD.

Super Audio CD uses a new recording technology called Direct Stream Digital. DSD records a one bit digital signal at a sample rate of 2.8 million times per second, 64 times higher than CD's. The higher sample rate means better resolution and more accurate reproduction of transient information (see chart). In our experience, the accuracy of instrumental timbre and the sense of space is significantly better in DSD recordings compared to CD.

Audio professionals and interested audiophiles realize that it is not a simple process converting an analog signal to DSD, editing it, storing it on SACD and converting it to analog again. As much as it tries to emulate analog, DSD/SACD data is subjected to filtering, noise shaping, data compression and, in most cases, conversion to high resolution PCM.

But even though DSD isn't a "pure" process, our experience playing DSD and SACD recordings for musicians and non-technical listeners has convinced us that SACD is a significant improvement in recorded sound. We believe that it is critical to be an early supporter of a format like SACD. If SACD isn't comercially successful in the beginning, there will be little incentive to perfect it or to develop even higher resolution formats.