Here is a wonderful page on UltraAnalogue's web site with samples. Please visit it and watch some of these videos. You'll be glad you did.
https://ultraanaloguerecordings.com/new/sample-videos/The fact that you can watch one and click a button to have it delivered to your door - a 1 to 1 real time copy of the 15 IPS master tape from the holy grail of craft studios out of Canada is an incredible luxury and extremely rare. You have no idea. A reel of tape like this has so much palpability that you can listen to it over and over each time it is nearly new. For example, you might get lost in the touch of the keyboard one day when you listen, the next day you get swept into the violin, the next day you are taken by the interplay between the two, the next day you marvel at the resolution of the recording, the next day you get lost in the acoustics of the space, the next day you discover the piano itself, the next day you discover the bow of the violin and realize it is an instrument in and of itself. You thought it was only two, it is three. This is what happens when you purchase a tape machine and buy a master tape. Yes, you could own 10 albums for the same price, and while musically more diverse, when you friend comes over to hear your stereo, not one of those 10 albums will be selected, instead the master tape and if the evening goes like it should, after you have listened to it once, and taken a short break to figure out what just happened, you have to listen to it again.
This is why tape is worth the price. Now to have DSD of these analogue masters is really almost too good to be true. Compared to the sampling of HD tracks I've downloaded over the years, this is in a whole separate league and it will give people a window into the incredible talent on Ed's tapes. This is important because it is about the music. In Ed's world, the absolute insane recording costs lift and elevate the music. In the rest of the world, the saying "it's about the music" is an excuse for why it wasn't recorded all that great.
Now that Ed has generously made his work available in DSD, perhaps he will admit that 7-1/2 IPS reel to reel tape is considerably better sounding, and those are the machines that get most tape guys started, many who move on to 15 IPS machines. If were me, there would be small reels of 7.5 IPS, there would be SVHS tapes of the video performances, and there would be metal cassette tapes for those Nakamichi fanatics, of which I am also one of. This would plant a lot of seeds. You can't just set a pyramid in front of someone and expect them to have the resources or confidence to climb straight up to the top of it if they've never done it before. They needs steps. A training pyramid first. Then a junior size one, then the more serious deal, and then finally the holy grail.
As for samples of the actual download tracks, it is difficult with classical music because a 15 second sample could just be silence before a sudden burst of notes... how do you pick what 15 seconds to use... still if someone could manage that, it would also push a lot of people over the edge... I know for example when I purchase HI RES digital music, I do not need a sample of the music. I already know the music. I listened to a low res version of it. I don't need more than 10 seconds or so to hear if the recording space is appealing to me or not. That and that alone is what determines if I press the download button or pass. I can assure you that if Ed did this, no-one would ever pass. In fact, it would elevate the standard enough that when people return to HD tracks and listen to samples, they will never hear them quite the same again.
One of the reasons for this huge gap between most stuff on HD tracks and Ed's stuff, is that the industry is fond of getting the digital recording onto a computer and using Protools to normalize and or manipulate it, often both. This tanks it in my opinion compared to taking a tape machine and dumping a 1 to 1 copy onto a pure hardware recorder with no computer involved is a whole different deal. This approach sounds very close to the actual analog tape. Again, you would never know this, because no-one other than myself, and Ed do this.
Sorry, just my unedited as usual thoughts - I just get get excited when I hear these recordings because the resolution and overall balance and the way they are dynamically animated makes commercial compressed CD's sound like soft serve ice-cream melting down the side of the soggy cone onto your hand.
Happy listening, and I can promise you that if you enjoy the video, imagine setting on a stool about 15 feet away from the piano, front and center, and feeling it like it was real. This is the density of tape that nothing else quite has... but I would say that the DSD files Ed is offering played on top-drawer digital equipment will narrow the density gap between DSD and TAPE far beyond the norm since these are direct 1 to 1 hardware transfers. Seriously the digital world could transform itself if it only stayed away from the computer for printing. If all recordings were digitally mastered on hardware only... and then dumped from hardware directly to a file without being molested by software or it's operator, it could be a whole new world.
Steve