By Fatima Najm
Two words took three Ryerson graduates all the way to the first ever Surround Music Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, nominated for the same award as Pete Townshend and The Who on Dec. 13, 2002.
“’Two words’, my friend said to me dramatically: ‘DVD-Audio,’ when I asked him what he was thinking of doing for the fourth year project,” said producer Raza Dhaya.
Even Mark Bialkowski, who uttered the prophetic words, thought the idea of Ryerson students coming up with Canada’s first DVD-Audio disc was a dream. But Dhaya was determined to make it a reality. After convincing the faculty to buy new equipment, endless hours of figuring out the technology and absolute dedication, 3Bone Audio did it.
Dhaya, Jed Harper and Jared Goldberg found themselves rubbing shoulders with music makers, producers and managers, all of whom are firm fixtures in the industry they have just broken into.
“It was unreal exposure. We were chilling with people who had grown up with the industry, making history as they went,” Dhaya said.
Their DVD-Audio Sampler, The White Elephant Sessions, lost to Pete Townshend’s entry, a recording of his live concert for the “best standard resolution title” category, but 3Bone was amped just to be nominated alongside such incredible competition.
Dhaya described the feeling of being dwarfed by the scale of the scene in L.A. “The whole experience was something else. People in Toronto think they do big things, they have no idea. L.A. is the heart of the (music) industry,” he said.
Are 3Bone Audio content with having made Canadian music history? Hardly. The group is busy setting up a studio, fundraising for the necessary equipment, and developing a game plan to sell the concept of DVD-Audio to the industry.
“We are at the stage that CDs were at when tapes were in use,” says Dhaya, who points out that DVD-Audio doesn’t make CD technology redundant the way CDs replaced tapes.
According to 3Bone Audio, their disk promises a more dimensional listening experience because DVD audio technology does not strip away layers of sound from a voice or instrument the way CDs do during the recording process.
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