Upsampling vs. HDCD, etc. HELP!,... Steve??!!!

I'm in need of some technical advice here. I am looking at purchasing a new cd player known as the Philips DVD963SA. This unit plays cds, cdrs, SACD, and DVD, but does not play HDCD. It also "Upsamples CD audio to 192kHz / 24-bit performance". I have questions:

1) Let's say I have a title that is HDCD encoded. This cd is then supposed to sound "better" on a player that supports the HDCD format. However, from what I understand, upsampling greatly improves cd performance as well. What I am getting at here is that I am wondering if there would be any reason to buy a separate player that supports HDCD if I want to squeeze that much more out of my cd collection. In other words, what would sound better: A) the HDCD disc played on a standard HDCD player. or B) the HDCD disc played on a player that does NOT support HDCD but DOES upsample to 192kHz/24 bit performance???

2) I have, as a rule, avoided "bargain-basement" cd players that often sacrifice sonic performance for excessive and fancy features. These "bargain-basement" players in the audiophile world are those such as the typical machine you could walk into any large corporate chain and purchase. What I have looked for instead are "audiophile" players that have minimal features and little in the signal path, focusing instead on sound and build quality so as to provide superb performance that is natural and without coloration, or if there is coloration, it is usually "warm" and "smooth". Looking at a Philips mass-market player kind of rubs me the wrong way in terms of my neurotic audiophile instincts. I'm afraid of getting something that sounds "tinny" and "boomy", etc. So my next question is this: Would upsampling to 192kHz/24 bit improve cd audio so drastically that the Philips player would sound generally better than most non-upsampling standard audiophile cd players in the under $1,000 range??

Hopefully my questions are make sense. Can anybody help me out here???

 

As far as HDCD encoding goes upsampling may allow it sound better than other players but you cannot enjoy the benefits of HDCD without an HDCD encoder...period. The enhancement is "built-in" to the actual wav data by using unique word bits.

This explains it better:

HDCD White Papers

Hope this helps a bit.

 

I understand what HDCD is and that you must have an HDCD player to use it BUT, would the standard redbook portion of the HDCD disc sound better on an upsampling player or would the HDCD player blow away the upsampling player's playback simply by adding the benefits of the HDCD encoding? 192kHz/24 bit or HDCD?? Assuming, the upsampling player doesn't have HDCD capability, that is.

 

Upsampling is a marketing term. CD players have been doing this for years - it's called oversampling. The two may differ in implementation, but they achieve the exact same thing.

They both make it easier to use a gentler digital filter. a lot of reviewers swallow the hype of upsampling without understanding it. I'm not saying an upsampling player won't sound good, just that it isn't doing anything that an oversampling player doesn't do. You can't recreate information that isn't there to begin with. In fact, more harm than good (in terms of accurate reproduction) when taking a 44.1 cd and upsampling it to a non-integer sampling rate (96 or 192).

I would listen and compare cd players rather than worry about which oversamples and which has hdcd.

For what it's worth, out of over 1600 cds, only 18 are hdcd encoded.

 

Not to be argumentative but...isn't over-sampling where the CDP samples ahead of the actual audio output at a rate of 44.1 16 bit, and upsampling actually takes the signal and boosts it up to 96.2 24 bit? Or am I way off here?

I would take Gabes advice on the listen, listen, listen though.

 

Could you elaborate on this a little bit?

 

I think you are correct, although I don't really understand exactly what it means, what you've said sounds like an explanation I was given of the difference between the two a while back. Gabes advice to listen is of course fantastic advice. The problem is that where I live, I don't have the option of going to a dealer and listening to all the players I want to hear. It's unfortunately a mattter of buy, listen, sell, buy, listen, sell....and that doesn't account for the defects I receive from buying over the net without seeing first and shipping damage. It really sucks. That's why I'm thinking, to hell with it, I'm joining the masses and I'm gonna go and buy a Philips or something.

Gabe has an excellent point with regard to the HDCD issue. As of lately, I've been obsessive about owning a player with HDCD capability, when in fact I can only think of a few cds out of my collection of 1,000s that have HDCD encoding. What I should be most concerned with is what player is going to give me the most enjoyment out of most of my collection.

 

I'd say that you've come to the right conclusion. Although HDCD discs sound better through an HDCD player, makes sense to concentrate on the bulk of your cd collection which are not HDCD. If it turns out that the player you decide on has HDCD than that's a bonus. Keep in mind that HDCD discs are coming out less and less often. There was a time when a large part of Nashville product was HDCD. As those studios upgraded their equipment much of it does not have HDCD capability.

 

Upconversion has been controversial and these articles are from manufacturers that don't practice it, but they explain things much better than I can:

http://www.madrigal.com/UPCONVERSION.htm

http://www.simaudio.com/pdf/Upsampling.pdf



The Simaudio article in particular explains why upsampling to 96k is a bad idea.