HDCD a flash in the pan already??

You don't really need HDCD for playback....16 bits is enough for a good mastering studio to play with and give you a good CD (96 db dynamic range).

A recording studio professional may benefit from the flexibility of extra bits and greater dynamic range to avoid clipping big signals or poorly quantizing small signals.

At home, even very high end home speakers are unlikely to put out very much more than 60 db dynamic range above their noise floor.

So if the recording and mastering studio have done their job well .....16 bits is enough on your source material. Although technology has changed, the engineering constraints that led to the choice of specifications for a the orginal CD format remain largely valid, even today. HDCD, SACD etc. improvements are diminishing returns at best...

PMT1209,

There is a difference to HDCD in bits/dynamic range. The difference is beyond what is practically necessary in terms of dynamic range for home playback. If you exceed the dynamics that your system/room design can deliver/handle accurately then you may actuallly lose audibility of some of the lower level sounds on an HDCD compared to a more balanced sounding CD, even if the CD has a more "compressed" sound.

FM Rock radio stations know this all to well....they modfiy and compress audio for best experience in the noisy car environment..they know that greater dynamic range would mean that lows would be annoyingly inaudible compared to background noise and that if the volume is set high enough to hear these lows then the speakers will distort when a loud passage comes or, alternatively, the passenger will find the loud passage uncomfortably loud.

More dynamic range is not always desirable in a recording...there are limits to what is practical/comfortable for playback.