[s m @]

No surprise, the first release of Neil Young's archives, Crazy Horse at the Fillmore 1970, is a labelled HDCD. And a damn fine one at that.

 

[Mr.PD]

I just picked up John Fogerty - Centerfield (Dream Works #0044-50306-2) it is labeled on the back HDCD and on the disc.
It lights up the HDCD indicator on my Arcam and it does sound nice.

 

[law1979]

Category: Electronic

Title: The Symphonic Jean Michel Jarre

HDCD is written on the back

 

[FalconP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by law1979 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Category: Electronics Title: The Symphonic Jean Michel Jarre HDCD is written on the back

That's really interesting; thanks for bringing it up. Jarre's music can certainly take an orchestral reworking. The samples from Amazon sound very full and awe-inspiring, but the arrangement is a bit straightforward.

 

[HiWire]

Wasn't there an article on Hoffman's forums a while back about "false" HDCD?

It seems that a lot of CDs are mastered on the HDCD equipment, but are not actually 20-bit recordings... I guess it would take some fancy equipment to tell for sure, certainly more than the HDCD light.

 

[s m @]

^^^ A link would help to know exactly what they mean. It could very well refer to the Chinese versions of some discs. They reportedly sometimes put 16/44 recordings through an HDCD encoder just to be able to label them as such. Apparently HDCD is more of a marketable label there than here, where generally no one really knows what it is. As far as N. American CD's go, I can't really see it happening too often. There are so many releases that they don't even bother to label as HDCD (most?) that I'd say it'd be completely pointless to do on purpose. And then a lot of the labelled ones are often part of mass remastering efforts, or releases that the label or artist have made a point of saying that they want it, so a lot of those I think it's safe to say are legit. I don't really know how easy it would be to inadvertently encode a master. There's at lease a couple of instances I know of where the initial pressing of a recording is not HDCD, and later ones are (or different countries have it or don't)... I guess I just don't know exactly what stage the encoding happens in, and how likely it'd be to happen to a regular recording. I'd be interested in reading the article.

 

[jwatney]

I didn't notice these two posted to this thread yet. No markings on the package but my HDCD light lights up on my Rotel.

Behemoth - Demigod
Blood Red Throne - Altered Genesis

Jonathon.

 

[HiWire]

Found the link... it wasn't on Hoffman's forums (that I could find):

http://www.positive-feedback.com/pfb...rview.8n1.html

Enjoy!


I concluded that a lot of recordings are coming out of a Pacific Microsonics boxes without the full HDCD process. They automatically trigger the HDCD light on many players, however.

 

[s m @]

Quote:

So there is an entire spectrum of creative choices to be made (I won’t tally up all the permutations). The most complete is putting an analog mike preamp output into the Pacific Microsonics HDCD™ box analog input, electing to use all the processing algorithms, and outputting encoded, re-dithered, 16 bits. My understanding is that this is how Reference Recordings does it...... <snip> Another option, the one we chose for Music for a Glass Bead Game, is to take a hi-bit digital source, such as from a Nagra D, and use the Pacific Microsonics HDCD™ box only to re-dither it to 16 bits. This use of the Pacific Microsonics box puts the HDCD™ flag in the digital word that triggers the light to go on, on an HDCD-capable player or converter. But the light going on does not necessarily mean that the original recording was made using the Pacific Microsonics HDCD™ box as the analog to digital converter, or that processing was used to try to stretch dynamics beyond conventional 16-bit CDs.

That was very interesting, thanks. To be honest, I never knew that part of the HDCD process actually involved using the technology as the actual A>D converter itself. I always assumed it was just there to try and keep the extra four bits of a higher rez digital recording. IMO either use would be perfectly valid. I actually went to the Hoffman forum to look for that, but you have to join to use the search function, and I was too lazy.

 

[drogulus]

Off topic but relevant to the discussion:

My experience of playing ordinary (unencoded) CDs with WMP and capturing the 24/44.1 output results in a considerable improvement in SQ with every CD I've tried. Clearly the HDCD process is lowering average volume and applying peak unlimiting, which is especially useful on over-compressed pop CDs (the only kind I've bothered with so far). You can certainly hear the difference on an iPod, where my 24/44.1 versions sound much more lifelike than the 16/44.1 files they were made from. So the claim that HDCD processing improves the sound of ordinary CDs is confirmed, at least under the conditions I've described.

Edit: You must burn the files to CD, otherwise WMP will just copy them.

 

[usagi704]

Found an HDCD when I played it today on WMP.

Dir en grey - "MACABRE"

 

[deandob]

I have another HDCD disk, a compilation from Asia - Voyage, the essential world beat collection.

I also have a question about HDCD in Windows Media Player 11, in earlier versions you would see a HDCD indicator on screen when playing HDCD but it seems to have been dropped in the current version. Has anyone worked out how to tell if the player has invoked the HDCD decoder?

Regards,
Dean

 

[Megaptera]

This may or may not be helpful, but Wikipedia says:
Quote:

Version 9 and above of Windows Media Player running on Microsoft Windows XP is capable of decoding HDCD on personal computers with a 24-bit sound card enabled. [1] [2] This is currently the only purely software-based HDCD decoder available. This feature must be enabled by changing a "Properties" setting of the Speakers involving 24-bit audio. The path to this setting is: Tools - Options - Devices - Speakers - Properties - Performance Note that although 24-bit audio output is enabled, decoded HDCD is still a 20-bit standard. Because sound cards are typically set at 16 or 24 bits, it is necessary to "step up" to 24 bits before the 20-bit HDCD output can be used.

I run Linux, so I can't personally look too deep it. My understanding is that the current version is still decoding them even if they've removed the indicator.

 

[deandob]

Thanks. I knew about this and have the right settings, however it would be good to know if the PC player was actually decoding HDCD. I have a couple of HDCD disks but dont know if the PC is actually using the HDCD decoder or if the disks are actually HDCD.

Regards,
Dean

 

[Megaptera]

Hmm, weird. I'll try to remember to look into it myself next time I'm sitting in front of a Windows box. Might be a few weeks though.