It's all done with the DAC by employing a special decoder chip/filter. Pacific Microsonics makes one if not all of them. When HDCD's first came out the contract for HDCD playback required the DAC/CD player designer to attenuate the gain on normal CD's. It may still. This guarantees that HDCD's played on HDCD enabled units will always sound louder than normal ones. It's quite a gimmick.
My Theta Data Basic II transport sometimes has trouble initializing HDCD's on the first try, but always gets it on the second. If there's such a thing as a HDCD transport I've never run across one.
My Theta Data Basic II transport sometimes has trouble initializing HDCD's on the first try, but always gets it on the second. If there's such a thing as a HDCD transport I've never run across one.