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Anyone still excited about HDCD ?

With all the talk about SACD an DVD-A no one seems to bring up HDCD. Note: I not looking for a HDCD vs SACD battle here.. I will be picking up a universal player for my HT system but for 2 channel I decided SACD did not buy me much especially given the lack of software. I just picked up a redbook player that includes HDCD so I thought why not give it a try.. and I like it. It seems to me that there are more choices for high end player that include HDCD than SACD (altough this seems to be changing) I have my cd player behind me in the room which makes it really easy to do a blind A/B test. It HDCD sounds better to me than normal decoding. I mostly notice a deeper, bigger soundstage. Naturally it does not do multi-channel but then again multi-channel has a whole set of requirements and issues that 2 channel does not. While it may not be "perfect" (since nothing ever will) or not as accurate as SACD/DVD-A maybe HDCD is good enough for 2 channel...
btrvalik

Showing 1 response by golden_ears

golden_ears
224 posts
 
The 96/24 and 192/24 DACs in the CD and DVD players coming out now are rendering HDCD irrelevant. They make fidelity accessible without needing a "decoding" chip.
I've heard HDCD discs (I have several) played on a 192/24 player that I brought home for evaluation, and they sounded better than they did on my player that had the HDCD decoding chip. I sold the HDCD player.
HDCD was also being used as a marketing tool by some music companies that, unfortunately, issued badly-recorded music. HDCD cannot help a recording that was engineered by morons.
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