RR 2010 Grammy Nomination for Best Surround Sound Album

Reference Recordings "Prof." KEITH O. JOHNSON has received his eighth Grammy nomination for his first SACD in Surround Sound.

Category 94

Best Surround Sound Album For vocal or instrumental albums. Albums only.

BRITTEN'S ORCHESTRA

Michael Stern & Kansas City Symphony

Keith O. Johnson, surround mix engineer; Keith O. Johnson, surround mastering engineer

David Frost, surround producer [Reference Recordings] 

RR Grammy Information and Links

Keith O. Johnson is known for his many outstanding recordings and contributions to entertainment technology. He began by building a three-channel magnetic tape recorder and ribbon microphones in high school, which earned him a scholarship and training program from Ampex Corporation. At Stanford University, he recorded music groups and constructed a solid-state portable recorder that would ultimately record and master over 100 record releases. He introduced radio-frequency bias methods and photolithography construction of heads to significantly advance the state of recording art. He consulted to Sherman Fairchild, who licensed this patented "focused gap" technology for recorders he built for RCA. 

Johnson's professional achievements and patents also include:

1. Partnered Gauss Electrophysics and applied recording methods and patented air suspension of tape to standardize and dominate the high-speed tape duplication industry for many years. 
2. Developed an optical scanner to remove noise from damaged motion picture sound tracks. Famous movies are still being restored with the devices. 
3. Partnered Reference Recordings and has engineered over 120 exceptional titles. 
4. Designed critically acclaimed high-end audio equipment for Spectral Incorporated for almost 20 years. 
5. To improve the compact disc, he partnered with Pacific Microsonics and contributed important parts of the HDCD process and patents. Johnson's ideas -- morphing filters, hidden codes in dither, conversion sequences or pipelines -- are amongst the first of their kind. Microsoft bought the company and Johnson provided a speaker correction method to remove object-related sounds from small speakers. For Microsoft, he also helped develop a system based on generic speaker models and simplified files that is bundled with Windows software to improve computer speaker sound. 
6. He has received many awards, including 2 Grammy®-winning releases, 7 nominations for Best Engineered Classical Recording, 2 NAIRD Indy winners for Best Recording, 2 Absolute Sound Golden Ear awards, and 3 awards from the Academy Advancing High Performance Audio.

For more than 30 years, San Francisco-based Reference Recordings has been one of the most innovative and respected independent labels in the music business. It is fully dedicated to high quality sound in the service of great music. Reference Recordings has won two Grammy Awards and many other Grammy nominations, including a nomination for founder Tam Henderson as Producer of the Year and seven nominations for Johnson for Best Engineered Recording. In addition, the label has received numerous awards and citations from industry organizations and publications. RR has recorded numerous world premieres, and has pioneered many technological innovations-most recently the introduction of HRx, high resolution digital files for home music servers, and the widely praised HDCD digital encoding process (co-invented by Keith O. Johnson).

Here is my review of this wonderful SACD: Reference Recordings SACD and HRx

Telarc SACDs disappearing

Concord Music Group is not only letting Telarc SACDs go out of print, but CDs as well. many Telarc recordings are now only available as MP3s.   New Telarc CDs are still being released but I wonder if they will do just one CD printing and then when it is gone just sell MP3s?