This week, music producer T Bone Burnett (Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Counting Crows, O Brother, The place Are Thou?) introduced a brand new analog disc medium for music he is developed known as “Ionic Originals.”
And he promised the know-how transcends the sound high quality of CDs and vinyl. To not point out digital streaming and different mediums, as Selection reported.
In a photograph offered to press, a prototype disc held up by Burnett seems to be very very like a silvery vinyl report. That is smart, it could appear, as a result of it is manufactured by portray lacquer onto an aluminum disc, with the recorded sound then etched on it in a spiral.
Vinyl LPs encompass PVC (polyvinyl chloride) plastic with no metallic parts. Customary compact discs encompass polycarbonate plastic with a metallic layer, often aluminum. This unites components of the 2.
It virtually looks like the method merges present vinyl manufacturing with the best way mastering engineers create metallic “stampers” (and check acetate discs) to press these information within the first place. Stampers are often used as “masters” for duplication, and so they do not typically attain listeners since they are not made in giant numbers.
Producer T Bone Burnett exhibits off his new Iconic Originals music disc know-how in {a photograph} offered to press in April 2022.
In a press launch, Burnett positioned Ionic Originals as one-of-a-kind objects. (Ah, OK — so kinda like check pressings?) He mentioned it is the “first breakthrough in analog sound copy in additional than 70 years.”
An Ionic Unique “is the top of recorded sound,” he continued. “It’s archival high quality. It’s future-proof. It’s considered one of one. Not solely is an Ionic Unique the equal of a portray, it is a portray. This portray, nonetheless, has the extra high quality of containing that music.”
Burnett already has a serious artist onboard for the primary Ionic Originals launch. In response to Pitchfork, the producer lately labored with Bob Dylan, re-recording a few of his traditional materials to emerge because the debut Ionic Unique. (No launch date was specified.)
Burnett has additionally began an organization known as NeoFidelity Inc. to deal with the distribution of the discs. The producer, who’s been engaged on the undertaking for a number of years, hopes to “reset the valuation for recorded music” that some really feel has slid through the streaming period.
From the Ionic Originals press launch:
An Ionic Unique is the top of recorded sound. It’s archival high quality. It’s future proof. It’s considered one of one. Not solely is an Ionic Unique the equal of a portray, it’s a portray. It’s lacquer painted onto an aluminum disc, with a spiral etched into it by music. This portray, nonetheless, has the extra high quality of containing that music, which will be heard by placing a stylus into the spiral and spinning it.
When describing the standard that raises analogue sound above digital sound, the phrase ‘heat’ is usually used. Analogue sound has extra depth, extra harmonic complexity, extra resonance, higher imaging. Analogue has extra really feel, extra character, extra contact. Digital sound is frozen. Analogue sound is alive.
