Cookie Marenco: Pioneer of high quality digital music recording

Cookie Marenco blames bad sound for the decline of the music industry. Now she hopes that high quality audio files and an innovative recording technique will help revive an interest in sound quality.

From a studio in her home near San Francisco, California, Marenco's record label, Blue Coast Records, is pioneering a new kind of high-quality download format called DSD, or Direct Stream Digital.

A DSD file is 30 times bigger than an MP3. Marenco says DSD best captures the range of the music and sounds most like an analogue tape recording.

In 2010, Marenco was one of the first to release DSD downloads to the public, and since then people around the world have bought the songs - which sell for $5 each.

The BBC sat in on a recording session with folk duo Quiles and Cloud.

Hear the difference for yourself here, external.

Produced by the BBC's Ashley Semler and Bill McKenna; filmed by Travis Peterson

Photos courtesy Rick Clark

Women in Tech is a series of stories profiling the most innovative, pioneering and successful women and how they are changing an industry traditionally dominated by men.