Immersive and Stereo Musical Gems - TRPTK Edition, Part 1

Audio: Listen to this article.

Ever since installing my 7.1.4 immersive audio system in 2022, my musical tastes have expanded greatly and my appetite for music has been insatiable. I've spent more money on music in the last year, than I did the previous decade. Fueling this epic immersive journey are preeminent record labels, talented engineers, and incredible musicians. One such label is TRPTK, founded by its senior recording and mastering engineer Brendon Heinst.

I discovered TRPTK solely because it offers immersive audio downloads. I'd never heard a note of the music produced by the label, nor had I heard of anyone on the talented team at TRPTK. This lack of knowledge about TRPTK has everything to do with my head being in the sand, rather than the quality of the label's products. TRPTK offers its albums in several formats including PCM, DSD, DXD Stereo, Surround, Atmos, Auro 3D, and the holy grail of immersive audio discrete DXD. 

Audiophiles may be interested to know that TRPTK takes a similar approach to recording, mixing, and mastering as we do to reproducing the music in our systems. Quoting Brendon Heinst in the liner notes of a recent album, "No costs or efforts are spared to seize that magical moment in which music is being created, and bring it home to you in the highest quality. Why? Simply because this is how music should be experienced: fresh and alive, not canned and with a stale aftertaste of conservation. To us, music is life, and should be lived to the fullest in an authentic and uncompromising way."

In addition to the aforementioned approach, the TRPTK studio contains products from Merging Technologies (the same HAPI Mk2 and Anubis that I use in my immersive system), Grimm Audio, KEF, Hegel, CAD, and JCAT. Here's a photo of the mixing and mastering studio.

The Music, Part 1

Channa Malkin - This Is Not A Lullaby (TrueHD Atmos)

When I wrote that immersive audio has been my gateway to new music, I unequivocally meant it. Case in point, Channa Malkin's album This Is Not A Lullaby. Absolutely nothing about this album appealed to me, before I took a chance by purchasing the lossless TrueHD Atmos download. 

Channa Malkin is a soprano who was inspired by the birth of her son and motherhood, to create this album. According to the album information, "she highlights the immense emotional impact of becoming a mother with an unconventional choice of repertoire by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Sir John Tavener, and her father Josef Malkin." With all due respect and compassion for the human experience, my musical tastes have always leaned much more toward Metallica than motherhood. 

On this album, Malkin sings with pianist Artem Belogurov and cellist Maya Fridman. The music, the musicians, the sound quality, and immersive mix are all glorious. I was immediately captivated by Malkin's voice and the natural presentation of it on the recording. The Atmos mix wraps around my listening chair, with musicians in the front and surround and height channels reproducing the sound of recording venue, De Philharmonie, Grote Zaal in Haarlem, Netherlands. 

On the first eleven tracks, the sound of Belogurov's Steinway Model D Concert Grand piano both compliments Malkin's vocal performance, and stands out on its own.  I love track 9 Rocking the Child Op. 110 IX. Fear, because it features both great vocals and magic on the piano. Belogurov's fluid playing at the beginning, followed by an abrupt emphatic short solo that reverberates around the recording space and my listening room, are superb.  
 
The last six tracks on the album, Akhmatova I-VI, feature Maya Fridman on her Serge Stam cello, along with Channa Malkin. These tracks tug at one's emotional heartstrings more so than the first series of tracks, in part due to Fridman's command of the cello. I don't know how many times I've listened to the final six tracks, but I'm captivated each time. Hearing Malkin belt out the lyrics at the end of track 19 Akhmatova II. Pushkin and Lermontov, is stunning because of her vocal performance and the amazing ability by TRPTK engineers to capture the direct and reverberant sound in the venue. As she completes the final verse, her voice can be heard in the surround channels as it decays through De Philharmonie, Grote Zaal.

This entire album is a stunner for me, and one I would've never listened to nor enjoyed prior to hearing the immersive version. 

Link to stereo | link to immersive

Maya Fridman - REID (Discrete Immersive 5.1.4 DXD)

Next up is Maya Fridman's album REID. I purchased the discrete immersive 5.1.4 DXD version of this album, based not he recommendation by TRPTK engineer Brendon Heinst. I have to agree with him that the straight PCM discrete immersive DXD versions of albums are the absolute best. The 2L record label releases both 7.1.4 and 5.1.4 discrete immersive DXD albums as well. 

REID was recorded in Muziekcentrum van de Omroep Studio 7, Hilversum, Netherlands to 32/352.8 PCM, and recently mixed for immersive audio. The album as a whole feels like a journey, on which the listener is taken. Some of the tracks are a bit more esoteric and new age style than I prefer, but all of the tracks feature stellar musicianship and production. 

Two of my favorite tracks on the album are 3. Hell I, and 4. Wake Up... And Die. These may be considered more traditional classical pieces, and are a good place to start for listeners just feeling out the album. Fridman's cello mastery is evident right from the start. Track three, in a way, is a precursor to the story told on track four because while it's an emotional track and Fridman's delicate mastery of her instrument are on full display, it's much more dysthymic, for lack of a better descriptor, and less of a rollercoaster. 

Immediately on track four, Wake Up... And Die, a lush texture can be heard in Fridman's playing, as she pulls emotion out of the instrument and delivers it right to the listener. This track features 17 minutes of a master cellist at her best. Incidentally, the track is over 10GB in size (WAV file). 

Listening to Wake Up... And Die in its entirety several times, I was taken on a solemn trip for the first five and a half minutes, before being abruptly awakened by Fridman's enthusiastic transient shift. This track takes a turn into the more serious areas one's mind, perhaps a bit of anger can be gleaned from the way Fridman so energetically plays the passages. The track continues by alternating from a warm breeze, flowing style of music to the abrasive energy of the rosined bow bearing down on the strings aggressively. It's a ride which I won't soon forget, and one that absolutely gave me my money's worth. It's almost as if I need a break after listening to all 17 emotional minutes. 

Tracks three and four are mixed superbly for immersive audio, with appropriate support from the surround and height channels, and enough reverb to put the listener into Studio 7. 

Link to stereo | link to immersive

Luis Cabrera, Justyna Maj & Sylvia Huang - Canto Interno

The final album in Part 1 of my focus on TRPTK, is Canto Interno performed by Luis Cabrera, Justyna Maj, and Sylvia Huang. Recorded at De Doelen, Grote Zaal in Rotterdam, Cabrera's Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi double bass and Justyna Maj's Steinway Model D-274 concert grand piano, sound superb. The Dolby Atmos mix is classic TRPTK. Listeners are placed into the venue, with a main focus on the front channels, and the surround and height channels enlarging the space by providing air, ambiance, and reverb. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the stellar sonic character of the recording that is every bit the equal of the Atmos mix. This is one of those albums with great music, great musicians, great recording, and great mixing. 

I was first taken in by Introduzione e variazioni di Carnivale di Venezia and Gran Duo Concertante, the opening twenty-four minutes of the album. However, the real star of the show is the final four tracks, a sonata written by Cesar Franck. After listening to this sonata a few times, I opened the album's liner notes and read what Luis Cabrera's description of the piece. It really hit the nail on the head for me, as this is the exact story told by the music. No explanation required, but as someone who isn't well versed in classical music it's gratifying to connect to the music and understand exactly what the composer was trying to convey.

In the notes, Cabrera says:

As it is known, César Franck wrote this sonata for Eugene Ysayë’s wedding to Louise Bourdau. I believe that when someone makes a present for someone special, things are always well-planned with care and love, and so I feel he did in this piece. He masterfully wrote it with all the elements of storytelling: drama, poetry, rhetoric, and the most organic harmonic progressions where the themes gradually introduce each other making a perfectly told story where everything makes sense.

The constant reminders of molto dolce - dolcissimo - sempre molto dolce that give way to the contrasting fuocoso - molto fuocoso - appasionato - drammatico grandioso and even con fantasia... perfectly explain the moods that succeed each other. The extreme tenderness that grows into rage, passion, fantasy and excitement... and a nuptial hymn! But the harmony, the tension emerging with every key that appears really is what makes me stay on my seat when listening to or playing this piece.

To play it on the double bass, apart from the obvious technical challenges, presents several musical difficulties of handling the original slurs and indications of dynamic and articulation as well as the octavation, paticularly in the canon of the last movement. It does sound odd inverting the intervals, but to me it does still make sense to do this and try to sing it, recite it and even desperately cry it through the double bass. Since we don’t have a work of this magnitude, isn’t it fair that we try?

Justyna proposed that we played this sonata a few years ago. She had played it extensively with her husband Dimiter in New York and knew it really well. As I could later witness, she loved it and understood it perfectly, so I thought why not? I went on holiday on my own to the south of Lisbon and ran up and down the beach of Comporta listening to the old recordings of the great violinists. I looked at the score every night in front of that wonderful Atlantic ocean with a glass of Alentejo wine. I feel that I learned that piece during those days and whilst this place had nothing to do with Belgium or Franck, the reflection of the moon in the sea and the vibrancy of the water hitting the shore felt ideal to listen to it and feel inspired. I came back and we performed it in London and Amsterdam. Now we just recorded it in Rotterdam. The piece has traveled with us through many places and stages of our lives, and whatever the result of the transcription may be, it is part of us by now.

This album is worth the price of admission for the Franck sonata alone, but the first nine tracks are also superb and shouldn't be missed. They are every bit as beautiful, with sublime sound quality and masterful performances by all three musicians. 

Link to stereo | link to immersive

Wrap Up

I'm often guilty of focusing on major labels and what "most" people are familiar with, when it comes to music. However, finding boutique labels such as TRPTK is equivalent to finding a lesser known restaurant where the masterful chef uses only the best ingredients, and doesn't follow whatever the popular trends. TRPTK produces music in the same uncompromised way that many of us listen to music at home. The aforementioned three albums only scratch the surface of TRPTK's wonderful catalog. 

In Part II, I'll cover three more albums from this catalog. I'm equally thrilled with the next three albums I've already chosen and would've included them in this article, but I believe bite sized chunks are much better for consumption than a firehose. I highly recommend everyone purchase these albums and take time to digest and really enjoy this artistry. 

Note I: For many TRPTK stereo, five channel surround, Auro 3D, and soon Atmos releases, checkout the wide selection available from the good people at NativeDSD. 

Note II: For information about playing the immersive versions of these and other albums, see our immersive audio coverage here http://audiophile.style/immersive.