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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
cbucki
69 posts
 
Golden Ears is exactly right.

If you have a high-quality DAC, HDCD is irrelevant. It is very "tinny"- sounding when compared to good 96 or 192 upsampling. It does however, improve the sound significantly on good lower-level units like Rotel, for example.
mrderrick
292 posts
 
Interesting thoughts all accross the board. Right now I am comparing playback between my Classe DAC1 and MSB Platinum Plus DAC. I been comparing HDCD discs on both DACs. Some sound better playing back through the HDCD Classe. Patricia Barbers Cafe Blue in HDCD sounds far superior to standard playback through the MSB (with the upsampling on) . Holly Coles Helplessly Romantic is another example. Most of the "unmarked" discs that trigger the HDCD decoder sound better with the MSB as do regular "Redbook". I am concluding that discs that are done correctly with HDCD, sound best that way.
laetulos
1 posts
 
Interesting thought that the upsampler makes HDCD irrelevant. I have a Cary 303-200 with 96/24 upsampling and HDCD. You can compare the upsampling to the use of HDCD, but not to use of neither, by switching on the upsampling while playing the CD. The differences between the upsampling and HDCD are very very small to my ears. When I was testing out CD players I thought that the Jolida was much better with HDCD, other redbook disks sounded very bad on the Jolida as compared to a rega player (for example) but the HDCD discs sounded much better on the Jolida. So, perhaps you are right that it helps with lower end CD players w/o upsampling.
dmitrydr
221 posts
 
The problem with HDCD is that Pacific Microsonics chip limits the dinamic range to 6 dB, which is already not good for today.

Interesting... RR Reveries HDCD, being played on non-HDCD player sounds with lower level then on HDCD player, so I have to push the volume significantly. I haven't noticed such a difference on regular CD, they sound the same level on both players...
jayctoy's avatar
jayctoy
4,127 posts
 
No I am no longer excited about HDCD,So many format
I like better than HDCD,Like the SACD, DVDA,XRCD,
Golden ears is correct.
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