[Audio Redneck]

Ok, so I am reading another newsgroup and someone brings up the point that ripping (uncompressed .wav) HDCDs strips this incoding! And that playing them back trough an external DAC (reciever) won't have the "HD" even if the reciever has an "HD processor" circuit

Can anyone comment on this?

 

[Sycraft]

No, it will still work just fine if you have an HDCD decoder. HDCD is just encoded as low level noise in the signal. It survives losless ripping since it doesn't rely on CD subchannels or anything. You just have to have a DAC that knows what to do with it.

 

[ComfyCan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sycraft No, it will still work just fine if you have an HDCD decoder. HDCD is just encoded as low level noise in the signal. It survives losless ripping since it doesn't rely on CD subchannels or anything. You just have to have a DAC that knows what to do with it.

Sky,
Your answer makes sense, and is consistent with what I have always understood. I would also add that since HDCD is now owned by Microsoft, HDCD's can be played with Windows Media Player 9.0 or 10.0 (whether ripped lossless to a hard drive, or by playing the disk in the pc's optical drive).

If you have WMP 9.0, you will see the HDCD logo in the player's window, confirming that the HD information is being decoded. If you are stuck with WMP 10 like most of us, this won't work unless you hit the pause button in the player and then hit play again; then you will see the HDCD logo. Weird, but we are talking Microsoft after all.

By using computer as source, you don't have to worry about finding a CDP that is HDCD compatible. Microsoft doesn't seem to be doing much with this format, and I question how much longer it will be around. But then again, who knows.

 

[sonick]

I've burned HDCDs sourced from FLACs that still retained HDCD capability

 

[thomaspf]

The HDCD decoding in media player only works for live CD playback.

So if even if you rip your CD lossless and preserve the HDCD encoding you can not get the from media player to do the decoding from a file.

The only way I can think of to trick media player is a virtual CD driver that you feed with an ISO image.

Cheers

Thomas