Hdcd

what is it, what do i need to play it? basiclly i dont know anything about it, just seen it somewhere, how many cd's are availible on hdcd?
thx

 

http://www.hdcd.com

 

thx, do you need a special hdcd cd player? or i could i use any player and a hdcd dac?

 

Yes.

Soundwise HDCDs are definitely a step up on standard CDs, but the material available is limited and I wouldn't be too sure about it's long term future. A real shame IMHO since these discs play as regular CDs too without the need for the multilayer complications (and costs) of SACD.

 

IMO it's not worth getting an HDCD player/DAC and I certainly wouldn't base a buying decision on this feature - if you have it, great, but it's not worth worrying about. HDCDs are very thin on the ground - I have one (Ocean's 11 soundtrack) which I only know is HDCD because my old DAC20 had an HDCD LED that lit up on it.

My DAC64 doesn't do HDCD and I can tell you the Ocean's 11 sountrack sounds a lot better through it than it ever did on the DAC20

btw, HDCD processing is all done in the DAC so you can have a non-HDCD transport and an HDCD DAC and still get the benefit. If however you were using an HDCD CDP as a transport to a non-HDCD DAC then you wouldn't get the benefit.

Michael.

 

One of my all time favorite albums, Lateralus by Tool, is HDCD, yet I've never heard it via a HDCD cabable player, so I couldn't tell you if it's better on one of them. I'd be interested to listen though.

 

I have a few HDCD discs (one track on Clapton Chronicles, Clapton - Reptile, Best of the Mavericks, Lene Marlin - Another Day), and I used to have an HDCD player (Rotel RCD-991).

Before I had the player reclocked, there was little if any difference at all (since the resolution difference between 16 and 20 bit is easily swallowed up by the jitter level of most stock players).

Since I have a non-HDCD encoded edition of The Mavericks Collection, which shares some tracks with the best of, I was able to make head-to-head comparison of HDCD and non-HDCD encoded versions of the same recording. After the player was reclocked, there was some difference.

The HDCD encoded version was slightly smoother and less grainy. Fractionally more musical also, but all the differences were subtle at best.

The real strength of HDCD is not the 20 bit encoding, but that material that is sold as HDCD is generally recorded and mastered sympathetically and capably, so you know that it is a good quality recording. That benefit comes across on non-HDCD players very well. As for HDCD decoding itself, I don't have it on my present set up, and I don't miss it at all.

 

Janis Joplin is fantastic on HDCVD,if that helps

 

is there a place which sells hdcd? or has a section on them?

 

:ffrc:

 

This HFC thread may be of interest, since it has links to a couple of sources:

http://forum.hifichoice.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=8454

 

HDCD player - Arcam CD92

My Arcam CD92 has this "feature"- even the salesman could not sustain eye contact when mentioning it... I'd like to compare normal and HDCD out of interest but as Michael suggests I'm not about to make it part of my hi-fi auditioning criteria.
I assume there are other players around which similarly included it as a side-bet.

 

Re: HDCD player - Arcam CD92

The Arcam Alpha 9 has it. I don't think I own any HDCDs though