Sound Magic announces Serenade Workstation - DSD/DXD/High-Resolution Music Production Workstation

Sound Magic has announced Serenade Workstation, a "DSD/DXD/high-resolution music production workstation with quality, affordability and portability".

Serenade is designed for high-resolution music production. It is a complete package consisting of 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:

1. DSD is a format which is very difficult to edit and process directly.
2. Most professional audio interfaces are at 24-bit/192kHz, and cannot support higher resolution (such as 24-bit/352.8kHz), nor do they have native playback support for the DSD format.
3. The workstation which can make DSD/DXD formats are far too expensive for most musicians.

Serenade Workstation managed to solve these issues by:

1. Providing a USB audio interface which supports up to 32-bit/384kHz (which can playback DXD) and native playback support for 4 kinds of DSD resolutions: DSD64, DSD128, DSD256 and DSD512.
2. 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.
3. 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 Workstation will be officially released and available on the market at the beginning of December.

Price: €799/$999/£649.