Philips SuperAuthor 3.0.3.0
Philips SuperAuthor 3.0.3.0 | 3.3 MB
Philips SuperAuthor is a full-fledged authoring tool for the SACD format, allowing you to create SACD disc images from your stereo/multichannel DSD files in an easy and intuitive user interface. An attractive wizard guide allows you to smoothly follow all the steps, from importing the DSD/DST file(s), specifying track points, text, and album info, right through to creation of a "Scarlet Book II" compliant disc image. The resulting image file, outputted as DVDIMAGE.DAT, can be opened in UltraISO and burnt onto blank DVD, the resulting disc of which successfully plays as an "SACD-R" on your SACD player - if you follow the information in the avaxhome comments below.
HISTORY OF THE PROGRAM (HITHERTO RARE INFORMATION):
SuperAuthor was the first ever SACD authoring program to exist, and still remains the easiet yet most effective tool for the task. It has undergone an interesting evolution over the years, and its now obscure forgotten past I am sharing for all to know about. SuperAuthor started as the central authoring tool as part of a software and hardware toolset, which was the official SACD production process for all SACD titles. Only Sony/Philips had access to the program and all recording studios/mastering houses would send their DSD master files to them for doing the SACD disc creation.
The first batch of SACD titles were released to the public on May 21, 1999, and SuperAuthor dates to at least as far back as this year (as shown by this screenshot of one particular old version, 2.1.0). Also see this document created on 21 October 1999, outlining the toolset of which SuperAuthor was a part.
A free and limited 'TOC Editor' version of SuperAuthor was available, capable only of creating album structure and entering text for the album. This downloadable version was intended for studios and mastering houses to use in preparing the album, producing an 'LBM' text file which would then be given along with the DSD files to Sony/Philips, who would load the provided files into the 'full' version of SuperAuthor to make the disc image (and then of course to stamp that image to retail disc copies with the replicator).
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In 2003 Philips decided to start planning for the 'full' SuperAuthor program and other components of the authoring tool set (such as the DST encoder, verifier, and the accompanying hardware), to be available as a commercial product on the market - so that record companies and mastering houses could fully author SACDs in-house and be in control of the process right up to the replication stage.
So in October 2003 they offically launched the 'ProTECH' initiative, the name of which would serve as the brand name for this set of tools previously out of reach outside Sony/Philips. The first version of SuperAuthor to be branded as 'ProTECH' was v3.0.0.0.
Between May and October 2004, Philips added new software and hardware tools to the line including 'SA-CD Creator', a Pro Tools DSD file output plugin, and a 'DSD / DST / SA-CD Disc Image Playback application' (which required a DSD hardware PCI card).
Philips SuperAuthor 3.0.3.0
From early 2004, the tools started being commercially available on the market through resellers such as Steller-Online, and then more widely available as the year went on.
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On 1st January 2005 Philips announced that in order to properly commercialize the ProTECH line they would sell ownership of the entire line of products to a third party company.
On May 28, 2005, Sonic Studio announced that they would to be the company to take over the line. They renamed the proTECH label to "nexStage". Initially they started by selling the exact same products, unchanged apart from brand name and company owner info. They later made minor updates to some of the programs, and by now hardware (and thus hardware-dependant tools) have gone out of production and become discontinued. The LE (non-hardware) versions/tools continue to be sold today.
This release of SuperAuthor is the latest version of SuperAuthor (3.0.3), and it is extracted from the 'SACD Creator' installer (version 1.4.1) which since the ProTECH era, has always included SuperAuthor with it. Sonic Studio didn't rebrand anything in the 'about' dialog inside the program so it still says Philips, but it is taken from the Sonic Studio package.
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So in summary, SuperAuthor had three eras in total:
First era (1999-2003)
ProTECH era (2003-2004)
nexStage era (2005-now)
One interesting point is that the first-era SuperAuthor had a major and useful feature that they then took out from ProTECH onwards. Up until version 2.5.2 (the last pre-ProTECH version), they had a "Waveform View" feature. This was a feature whereby you could view the input DSD tracks in a graphical waveform window (like what you see in a normal waveform editor), and you could set track points in the graphical window where it's easy to see where you want songs to stop and start in the album. But most useful of all - you could play back the DSD files inclding track point selection playback, essentially previewing how the disc would sound as you skip from one track to the next. It would play back as 16-bit 44.1kHz PCM and I imagine that its included "Dsd2Pcm.dll" file was used for doing this.
For some reason, they simply took out this great feature once they started selling it as an available product under 'ProTECH' from version 3.0.0.0 onwards. We do however have installers for pre-ProTECH versions of SuperAuthor and might release it due time for interests' sake. If both versions are out, you'll have the choice of either one to use. Either should be fine as they only made a few random bug fixes/GUI refinements between them. The program was solid from definitely at least 2.x onwards, having already produced many retail SACD images anyway.
HANDY HINTS:
- To start making some test SACD images yourself, grab some free DSD material at http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html. Also test by converting PCM material to DSD with Weiss Saracon.
- To save space on the disc, first encode the input DSD tracks with DST compression using the already cracked Philips DST Encoder 1.4.3 - and make the DST file the input file on SuperAuthor.
http://www.sonicstudio.com/products/dsd/nexstage.html