It is a privilege to be awarded Brian Moura’s prestigious PFO Writer’s Choice Award along with the superb NADAC from Merging Technologies and the DSD album Eight Ensembles in 1 Bit, both of which Yarlung has promoted and reviewed in our social media. Our friends at Merging and NativeDSD deserve these awards and we are thrilled that Brian recognized Yarlung, Merging Technologies and NativeDSD in 2015. (Please note Yarlung’s album created specially in honor of the NADAC. Take a look at the download booklet).
Bob Attiyeh is one of the largely unsung heroes in the world of very high quality music and audio. This year he celebrates the 10th Anniversary of his music company Yarlung Artists. Yarlung is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that records and releases music from young and very promising musicians in the highest audio quality. This includes Analog Tape, Vinyl LP and most recently Music Downloads. The result is some of the best sounding recordings on the market, not to mention an amazing calling card for these young musicians just starting their career.
Attiyeh records Live to Analog Tape using a specially modified tape recorder. The music is then mastered with the assistance of Mastering Engineer Steve Hoffman. This year Attiyeh expanded his company’s offerings with the release of 20 albums that were transferred from the album Analog Master Tapes to the DSD 256 format. Almost overnight, with Attiyeh’s work, DSD 256 went from a recording studio tool and upsampling option for home audio to a real live release format.
Attiyeh credits his bold entre into the world of DSD and more specifically DSD 256 to Positive Feedback Editor in Chief David Robinson, who loaned him a Merging Technologies HAPI converter to make these transfers. Attiyeh also credited assistance from Native DSD Mastering Engineer Tom Caulfield in making this tape to DSD project a reality. Today, Yarlung continues to have more DSD 256 albums transferred from Analog Tape on the market than any other record label.
Having heard a number of the Yarlung DSD 256 releases, I can attest to the very high quality of these Classical and Jazz recordings. For his tireless work to advance the audio state of the art and his work in helping shine a light on the talented young musicians starting out today, Bob Attiyeh is very deserving of the Writer’s Choice Award.