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Topic: Another HDCD thread... (Read 65527 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Another HDCD thread...

Reply #50 –
Quote from: TheFamilyMan on
I've fiddled about using a laptop and foobar2000 for a few years to stream music.  IMHO that works great, but it's too clunky to deal with in the long run.  Long story short, to move forward I got a Yamaha CD-S303 which plays both flac encoded data disks and has a USB interface that plays music files from an attached flash drive.  Now I'm able to play my collection of HDCDs as decoded flac files on data disks, and the flac files of my 96/24 digitally recorded LPs using USB drives.


You could just rip and decode your HDCDs  and save a flac, which makes them files like any other.

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Also, its DAC quality blows away the DAC in my Cambridge Audio CXA80 (which I've been using since I got the CXA80), a surprising and most welcomed upgrade to say the least.


If you mean there's an audible quality increase blows you away, I assume there's some blind test or measured data to support the claim?


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As for Reference Recordings, aka RR, I first drank their cool-aid around 2000 and was naively bamboozled by their HDCD stuff into thinking it was "the best" thus had to have it...oh well...had I known at that time that HDCD was sort of a farce and a slow motion train wreck about to happen...

There's virtually nothing audible that HDCD could do with legacy analog recordings, that plain CD couldn't have done.



Unless that

Re: Another HDCD thread...

Reply #51 –
Decided for me the best way for me to deal with HDCDs is to "unHDCD" them.  I begin with using dbPoweramp's HDCD DSP tool (essentially running hdcd.exe) on the ripped HDCD disk, then reading the resultant 24 bit files in Audacity where I amplify them as a whole to -.2 db from clipping the overall max peak extension, followed by writing the results to 16 bit wav files using dither.  From there I burn a redbook disk from the wav files, which finishes the unHDCD conversion.  The two Reference Recording classical CDs I tried so far sound great doing this, but in a way "ignorance is bliss" for that I can't compare the results to the HDCD playback of the original disk on a HDCD capable CD player/DAC, for my old HDCD capable Denon CD player recently died.  Yeah I could play the 24 bit files on foobar or other such ilk, but for me that is inconvenient at best.  Of course, for all the this I'm sure opinions vary greatly (which is just fine).  Enjoy

Re: Another HDCD thread...

Reply #53 –
Quote from: TheFamilyMan on
The two Reference Recording classical CDs I tried so far sound great doing this, but in a way "ignorance is bliss" for that I can't compare the results to the HDCD playback of the original disk on a HDCD capable CD player/DAC
The real question is whether your "unHDCDed" CD actually sounds any different than playing the original HDCD in a non-HDCD player.  A bit difficult to do a blind ABX!
It's your privilege to disagree, but that doesn't make you right and me wrong.

Re: Another HDCD thread...

Reply #54 –
Quote from: fooball on
The real question is whether your "unHDCDed" CD actually sounds any different than playing the original HDCD in a non-HDCD player.  A bit difficult to do a blind ABX!

A "non-HDCD player" should read the same bits as the ripped PCM before "unHDCD"-ing. HDCD is irrelevant to that.

More interesting is whether a HDCD sounds different software-decoded vs hardware-decoded. Microsoft bought HDCD as part of the parent company, and may or may not have implemented HDCD decoding correctly in Windows Media Player.

Re: Another HDCD thread...

Reply #55 –
Quote from: Porcus on
A "non-HDCD player" should read the same bits as the ripped PCM before "unHDCD"-ing. HDCD is irrelevant to that.
Sure, but my point is whether the decoded HDCD then burnt as a regular CD actually sounds better than playing the original HDCD as a regular CD.  If it doesn't, all those gymnastics are a waste of time and effort.
It's your privilege to disagree, but that doesn't make you right and me wrong.
 

Re: Another HDCD thread...

Reply #57 –
Quote from: fooball on
The real question is whether your "unHDCDed" CD actually sounds any different than playing the original HDCD in a non-HDCD player.  A bit difficult to do a blind ABX!
Yes, they do sound different...oops, that's only hearsay.  My unHDCD disks sound better.  The difference is that the music on HDCDs (may) have a compressed dynamic range: the loudest passages are limited and the quietest are amplified.  The hdcd.exe processing does its best to fix that:  it attempts to restore the original recordings' dynamic range.  Since that's all I got, short of getting vintage HDCD playback equipment, I accept that my "unHDCD" disks are as good as it gets, though one could argue my unHDCD disks have less "dynamic resolution", i.e. 24 bit vs. 16 bit, but I'm not going there.
Quote from: Porcus on
More interesting is whether a HDCD sounds different software-decoded vs hardware-decoded. Microsoft bought HDCD as part of the parent company, and may or may not have implemented HDCD decoding correctly in Windows Media Player.
So many variables here.  My bet is that a fully encoded HDCD disk played on a really high-end HDCD player/DAC will sound better than almost all competitors (like my recently decommissioned Denon HDCD CD player with its meh PCM1732 DAC).  Interesting sidebar here is that DAC has leads for implementing "Gain Scaling" to compensate for a -6db gain when Peak Extend is active.