Reference Recordings HRx – The Future of Digital Audio?

While the CD format has made huge improvements in sound quality since first appearing in 1982, its 16-bit, 44.1kHz limitation is an insurmountable barrier to getting truly high resolution audio to the consumer. The SACD and DVD-A formats meant to replace the CD both failed in the market for numerous reasons, perhaps chief among which were practicality issues, as the discs initially would only play in home SACD and DVD-A players. Dual-layer CD/SACDs and DVD-A playback ability in computers and a few cars were both far too little, too late. The public had already moved on to downloading 128kbps tracks from iTunes. Reference Recordings, a small audiophile record label from California, has created a new "format" for high-res audio far better than both SACD and DVD-A.

Rather than yet another new optical disc design incompatible with all previous optical disc players and loaded to the gills with industry friendly DRM, Reference Recording's HRx discs are simply DVD-R data discs containing digit-for-digit copies of original Reference Recordings 24-bit/176.4kHz digital masters in .wav format, designed to be copied onto a computer or music server. The physical HRx discs are an interim step to the eventual goal of making Reference Recordings' high-resolution masters available for direct download. The genius of this idea is that the .wav files could be stored on the home music server, while copies could be made and easily converted into .mp3 or other formats for use with portable players. Production HRx discs should be available for purchase soon.