Nanci Griffith - Last of the True Believers

Only playable on DVD hardware. This disc is not compatible with CD hardware.

The Classic 24/96 Digital Audio Disc (DAD) is designed to be an audiophile musical reference. The process starts with the encoding of an analog signal from a live microphone feed or more commonly from an analog master tape. The highly sophisticated Analog to Digital converter (A to D) samples the analog signal 96,000 times per second (96kHz) and assigns a numerical value to each sample point. The 96kHz sampling rate is more than twice the 44,100 (44.1kHz) sampling rate used on standard CDs. The numerical value assigned at 96kHz - about every 10.4 microseconds - is stored as a 24 bit digital word. The significance of a 24 bit digital word is that there are 16.8 million different potential values for each 24 bit word! By contrast there are only 65,536 different potential values for a 16 bit word on a normal CD. The additional 8 bits on a DAD allow for over 16 million additional voltage values to represent the original analog signal. Further, 24 bit resolution offers 144 dB of dynamic range from the softest to the loudest musical note. At 144 dB of dynamic range we greatly exceed even the dynamic range available on the world's finest analog tape machines. For the first time in the history of digital audio we can provide Master Tape Sound (MTS).

Griffith hit her peak as a songwriter here with classics such as Love at the Five & Dime and Banks of the Pontchartrain, while singing over an always-appropriate backup provided by the 80s new bluegrass specialists Bela Fleck, Mark O'Conner, and others.