Sound Magic has announced Serenade Workstation, a complete package comprising the Serenade 384KHz USB2.0 Audio Interface, a Digital Audio Workstation, a DSD/DXD Effect Plugin Bundle and a DSD&PCM Bi-directional Converter Software.
Back in 1999, The “Next Generation” Audio Format was introduced by Sony and Philips as a successor to the standard audio CD technology (PCM). It was called Digital Stream Data – formally known as Super Audio Compact Disc. DXD (which stands for the Digital Extreme Definition and has a 24 Bit/352.8KHz resolution) is an alternative encoding scheme developed to aid in editing DSD. Neither format became as popular as they were expected to for 3 main reasons:
- DSD is a format which is very difficult to edit and process directly
- Most professional audio interfaces are at 24Bit/192KHz, and cannot support higher resolution (such as 24Bit/352.8KHz), nor do they have native playback support for the DSD format
- The workstation which can make DSD/DXD formats are far too expensive for most musicians
Serenade Workstation managed to solve these issues by:
- Providing a USB audio interface which supports up to 32 Bit/384KHz (which can playback DXD) and native playback support for 4 kinds DSD resolutions: DSD64,DSD128,DSD256 and DSD512.
- Providing a DAW and plug-ins that work at 32 Bit/352.8KHz and 32 Bit/384KHz resolution, allowing for nearly lossless conversion to DSD. This makes DSD an editable format, allowing for mixing and mastering.
- Providing the entire solution at a very affordable price of $999, far less than any other DSD/DXD workstation – and even lower than a lot of common mixing/mastering solutions.
Serenade will officially be released at the beginning of December, 2014.
More information: Sound Magic / Serenade Workstation