A Super Audio Recording

This Zenph recording with Sony BMG Masterworks is an audiophile dream come true, much like the recent re-performance of Glenn Gould's 1955 Goldberg Variations. The new album is a "hybrid multichannel SACD" disc. This type of compact disc has three layers and plays perfectly on any traditional CD player, but sounds magnificent on the newer Super Audio CD (SACD) players. It is especially involving in surround sound. Richard King and Gus Skinas, both renowned for their surround-sound expertise, used the latest Sonoma workstation for this DSD recording.

Sony also recorded a binaural version of the playing. In this technique, two microphones are positioned in the ears of a dummy head, so that headphone playback sounds quite immersive. The binaural tracks let you hear what Tatum heard as he sat at the piano bench in the Shrine, an amazing experience!

So, there are 13 songs on the new disc, appearing on the disc twice, for 26 total tracks. The first 13 tracks are recorded from an expected perspective in front of the piano – you’re hearing what the audience would have heard. Then, the whole 13 tracks are presented again, this time recorded in binaural. If you listen to these second 13 tracks through headphones, you have a sense of “being inside Tatum’s head” as he played. You hear the piano laid out in front of you, bass to the left, treble to the right.

Both the binaural and the surround-sound versions will be on the new hybrid SACD/CD. These multiple new recordings show the ability to take a re-performance and hear it from different perspectives.