Best sounding Grateful Dead CD with HDCD encoding?

Studio or 'regular' live album, Jerry Band, Phil Zone, Dick's Picks or a couple of the Dave's Picks is what I have.

I want to do some testing of 2 different disc players (one of which lacks HDCD but is claimed to be great - Oppo-205; the other does have HDCD and was xlnt in its day - Cal Audio Icon w/PowerBoss)

For this test, I don't care about the energy of the show, etc. - just the SQ on the disc.

Thanks!

 

Probably will only matter if a disc has peak extend or not. Would great to have a complete list of this for Dead HDCDs since almost every title they released is in this format.

 

I believe the 2 box sets Beyond Description and Golden Road don't use peak extend. So all those should not have any difference.

Would be interested to know if these titles use peak extend or not:

One from the Vault
Two from the Vault
Steal Your Face
Infrared Roses
Europe 72 box set
Dick's Picks 15-36
Road Trips series
Dave's Picks

 

This has been discussed in some detail in the Grateful Thread. Not that I'm suggesting that you wade through all 2,000+ pages to find that info, but the bottom line seems to be that while many are marked as HDCDs, the features of HDCD are inconsistently enabled and thus there is some confusion as to what is what. Someone who understands all this better than I will hopefully chip in.

That said, Steppin' Out with the Grateful Dead is labelled as HDCD and sounds great, with Keith up in the mix relative to the E'72 box shows.

 

Someone like @rbbert

 

I'm also curious to know - if you "rip" a CD that has HDCD encoding, is it somehow 24-bit? I know someone who says they have done this but I don't understand. Is it possible to "rip" the HCDCD encoded CD and have that encoding transfer into the digital file (FLAC, etc.)?

 

The Dave's Picks series sounds really good.

 

Nightfall Of Diamonds

 

You can rip to FLAC and get a 24 bit file . . . at least in DBPowerAMP. You have to add the HDCD extension. If I remember correctly, you really get a 20 bit file in a 24 bit container (so common dacs can read it). This makes the resulting file a bit quieter (less gain, which you can adjust for in the ripping program - I don't bother - volume knob and all). There is also a program (a player I think) called foobar that lets you see if peak extend is enabled. I can't give you step by step as you set this up once and it works thereafter and its been a while. I'm very non-tech and was able to figure it out using google. Most GD recordings sound very good to these ears whether HDCD encoded or not. I particularly like the sound of the GD Movie soundtrack and the recent Get Shown the Light box.

 

American Beauty.

 

Yes, the ripped data will be a normal 16bit/44.1kHz file, and you can "unfold" this to 20bit (in a standard 24bit file) with some programs that can decode HDCD (even "on the fly" with Foobar).
It only works if the rip is a bit-perfect lossless copy of the CD.

 

One from the Vault - IIRC the was not originally released as having HDCD but the re-release says it does, although no remastering was done. The Europe '72 box is all over the place. Who knows what's going on there.

As to the question: Dick's Picks 14 because that's what I am currently listening to. Some great whale farts in the fall of '73.

 

The Vault series are not true HDCD. Steppin’ Out, the E72 box and Dick’s Picks 15-36 are “true” HDCD. Road Trips and the Download Series are inconsistent. Dave’s Pick through the end of 2014 (I think) are true HDCD; definitely no HDCD from 2015 on. Not sure about Steal Your Face, but probably not; all the other albums originally released when Jerry was alive aren’t, Phil Zone is not, 2-11-69 is not. Fillmore West ‘69 box is.

 

At best, HDCD is only 17 bits. However, current convention only allows 16, 24 and 32 bit in workstations and editing programs.

 

by true HDCD, do you mean they use peak extend, or the other 2 or 3 things that HDCD can do?


BTW, ripping rips everything into the file - all the HDCD features, but you still need a way to get those features out...

 

HDCD.exe (available in dBPoweramp and Foobar 2000, Windows versions only) will “decode” Peak Extend and Low Level Expansion into the 24/44.1 file. The transient filters apparently don’t need “decoding”, they are used only in the recording/encoding process.

 

See, even when someone explains this I still don't understand it. Then again, I'm just a musician and scientist.

 

the plugin works in the newest mac version of dbpoweramp too (at least, it claims to have done so on my iMac)

 

HDCD list

scroll down a bit - Chansen is the late Charles Hansen, Ayre engineer

 

So... I think I need to transmogrify my question into: Which of albums in the OP used Peak Extend?

 

Back in the day, using I believe it was Window Media Player 7 or 8 (I'm not sure if the current WMP can still do this), you could easily turn on or turn off HDCD decoding in the setup options. The HDCD logo was displayed when decoded. This was in the mid-'00s, mind you, so it has been awhile, but over the course of several months I went through every HDCD title in my collection to compare the sound (through headphones usually) of the decoded vs. undecoded tracks. I almost always could hear a difference. Sometimes it was very subtle (most likely when peak extend and other features weren't used) and at other times very obvious. Some discs were dramatically more dynamic (heavy peak extend used) and often had smoother, better eq as well. Note: the volume drop pretty much always occurred when HDCD was decoded, whether (after adjusting the volume higher) the dynamic range had changed much or not. Admittedly, there were some discs that sounded virtually the same (likely, no special features used), but I'll tell you something: I never had a disc sound worse overall when decoded vs. being undecoded.

My main regret is that I didn't document, either on paper or computer, the results that I found. I simply made mental notes of the titles that sounded noticeably better with decoding. Tom Petty's Playback box, The Teardrop Explodes remasters, Beck - Mutations, The Cars remasters and some of the circa 2000 Beach Boys reissues were some of those. As far as the GD goes, I don't think peak extend was ever used on a high setting, but certain titles definitely had slightly better dynamics when decoded. The main thing I noticed was a slightly smoother, less harsh EQ when decoded. Maybe Jeff Norman mostly used certain digital filter features for the most part?

 

A simple answer sometimes is best. Relatedly the Garcia-Grisman-Rice The Pizza Tapes also sounds outstanding.

 

You weren’t very specific about which albums you have, but read post #16

 

A big “problem” not only with the Grateful Dead and HDCD, but with albums in general with the HDCD logo, is that most sound exactly the same decoded or not. Unfortunately, a large minority do use HDCD features which benefit from decoding, and without consulting a list (which AFAIK are incomplete) the only way to know is to decode and compare or analyze

 

I don't use software to understand technically what HDCD decoding is doing for each HDCD in my collection. I just listen on my Oppo BDP-103 with HDCD decoding on. These sound fantastic to me:

• Ladies & Gentlemen...The Grateful Dead (NYC April '71)
• Steppin' Out - England '72
• Two From the Vault (8/24/68)
• Fillmore West 1969
• Nightfall of Diamonds (10/16/89)

There are many more - these jump out at me as sounding stellar in HDCD (they are also all multi-track recordings).