With Paris, Hilary Hahn returns to Deutsche Grammophon and presents a homage to the rich cultural heritage of a city that is of great importance in the violinist’s career. “Paris is about expression,” says Hahn, “about emotions, about the feeling of being connected to a city and a cultural intersection in a way that inspires the interpreter and the listener.”
UHQCD stands for Ultimate High Quality Compact Disc and is a joint development of the Japanese CD replication company Memory-Tech and the Audio Quality CD Company from Hong Kong. Unlike conventional CDs, UHQCDs are not pressed from polycarbonate, but rather cast from a photopolymer and cured with UV light. Another layer of high-purity polycarbonate is applied to protect the softer photopolymer from scratching. The combination results in a significantly reduced reflection of the laser light inside the CD and an unmatched precise edge transition between pits and lands of the CD. UHQCDs are 100% compatible with normal CD players. Musically, the result is a sound that is strongly reminiscent of analog master tapes.
The discs offered by Universal Japan are also MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) encoded. Anyone who outputs the digital signal from the digital output of their CD player or the previously ripped data stream from their music server to a corresponding MQA-DA converter can generate a 24-bit signal with a sampling frequency of up to 352 kHz from the CD data.
