Differences with the hdcd are subtle .I had a arcam cd92 with hdce it sounded good,with hdcd cd's it still sounded good,but definitely was nothing groundbreaking.I've heard from more then one who said it definitely should have did better then it did.Of course going to greedy microsoft i'm sure didnt help its future either.
Why HDCD did not become a dominant format?
I've been listening to Reference Recordings 30th Anniversary Sampler while evaluating a Sony NS 9100ES and it was so obvious the HDCD decoding through my modest older Toshiba SD 9200 was "vastly" superior to the new Sony playback. I just don't understand why HDCD did not become the new standard as the musical quality is much enhanced. What happened?