Does HDCD make a noticeable difference?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Monosterio, Mar 10, 2013.

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  1. sszorin

    sszorin Forum Resident

    'The Essential Nancy Sinatra' / EMI / barcode 0946 3 56233 2 1 or 00946 3 56233 2 1 ?
     
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  2. rcsrich

    rcsrich Forum Resident

    Location:
    Virginia
    I'm kinda glad this thread popped back up again...had forgotten about the Cars HDCD I decoded & now that I'm burning a bunch of my hi-res titles to DVD I'll add it to the queue. :)
     
  3. Artery1

    Artery1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Coventry UK
    sszorin asked:

    'The Essential Nancy Sinatra' / EMI / barcode 0946 3 56233 2 1 or 00946 3 56233 2 1 ?"

    Yes. That one. Bought in the UK circa 2008 or so.
     
  4. Bill Lettang

    Bill Lettang Forum Resident

    Well I dropped some bucks on Steve's remastering of Joni Mitchell masterpiece Court and Spark, and also picked up an HDCD copy for $5.00 so I could compare. If you listen to the HDCD first it can fool you into thinking it sounds great, but the individual instruments in comparison to the DCC disc are veiled and cloudy. They don't jump out at you distinctly!
    Turn the volume up on Steve's remastering and it will blow your mind. Incredible 3D imaging!! His discs are the only redbook cd's I ever heard that allow volume turn up without a "painful" increase in harshness. His decision to abandon the HDCD process, like all his other decisions, was indeed the correct one.
     
  5. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    The mastering is totally different; you can’t use those discs to make a determination on what HDCD does (not much).
     
  6. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Yup. And the HDCD Court & Spark sounds much, much better than the original disc Warners released, which was muffled and awful. I prefer the DCC, but it's not the night-and-day difference we saw between Warner's original and the DCC.

    I will say, the DCC is one of the best-sounding CDs I own, and calls into question the whole fetishization of high res audio.
     
    Sneaky Pete, Mr. Explorer and bruce2 like this.
  7. Bill Lettang

    Bill Lettang Forum Resident

    can't argue with that!!........
     
  8. samurai

    samurai Step right up! See the glory, of the royal scam.

    Location:
    MINNESOTA
    I've have owned two Berkeley DACs and HDCD sounded better through them, not earth shattering but better.
    With a top notch mastering even better yet.
    An HDCD through a non-HDCD player will sound slightly worse but may be imperceptible.
     
  9. WillytheWoofer

    WillytheWoofer Forum Resident

    Location:
    velddriel
    A computer and a Weiss dac form my cd-player. Has it any use to buy this HDCD's? Good cd's (ripped at the computer) and high ress sounds terriffic.
    I even haven't a cd player anymore. These playback outperforms a Marantz CD80 and a Sony 555 enormous.
     
  10. vegafleet

    vegafleet Forum Resident


    So what to do when there are no more HDCD capable players available? OPPO just dropped support. Who is left?
    I guess the answer is to move into PC based software decoding.
     
  11. DHamilton

    DHamilton Forum Resident

    Location:
    Earth
    For mac users; has anyone tried to convert the CD Files to ALAC ( or FLAC) on iTunes and then burn these ALAC files to a CDR? Does the HDCD coding remain in place? Also, I believe I read somewhere (possibly on here) that sometimes the CDR can be more dynamic than the actual HDCD, on a Non -HDCD player. I might have this all confused, so please forgive me if so.
     
  12. DHamilton

    DHamilton Forum Resident

    Location:
    Earth
    In other words, if you do not have an HDCD player can you bypass this issue by burning the converted ALAC files to a CDR and keep all the dynamics intact so that it sounds like it would on an actual HDCD player?
     
  13. Stone Turntable

    Stone Turntable Independent Head

    Location:
    New Mexico USA
    Just a quick update that although Grateful Dead releases continue to be labeled as HDCD, Jeffrey Norman has for some time now completely phased out use of the format in mastering these releases, and playback sounds identical via standard CD players and HDCD players, per a recent email exchange. So the terrifying graph people were correct, at least about the Dead stuff.

    "I thought it was more important that the sound and level be consistent for all," is the gist of what Norman told me along with various technical details.
     
  14. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    No. There will be no change in sound from the CD. Not without HDCD decoding.
     
  15. DHamilton

    DHamilton Forum Resident

    Location:
    Earth
    thank you...could have sworn I read that on here somewhere. Oh well.
     
  16. DHamilton

    DHamilton Forum Resident

    Location:
    Earth
    sunspot42 likes this.
  17. samurai

    samurai Step right up! See the glory, of the royal scam.

    Location:
    MINNESOTA
    Used Berkeley DAC1 and DAC2 are relatively cheap (in audiophile terms) and sound very good..
    They were designed by the same people that designed HDCD.
     
  18. jerrygene

    jerrygene Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York

    OPPO just dropped support. Who is left?

    Are new HDCD ‘s still coming out?
     
  19. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    Berkeley Audio Designs is still supporting HDCD on their new Alpha DAC Reference Series.

    Anyone can still make HDCD discs if they have a Pacific Microsonics AD converter. Just buy a used Pacific Microsonics converter and go master a CD with it. Grateful Dead and Neil Young continue to release CDs with HDCD. It's not dead yet.
     
  20. caupina

    caupina Forum Resident

    Location:
    Santiago, Chile
    I posted this thought on another thread, you can have a regular CD player connected via HDMI to a HDCD capable receiver and get the benefits of HDCD too...my Denon BR player, DVD 2500 BTCI is connected to a Denon 4310CI via HDMI and gets the HDCD decoded :righton:.
     
    wilejoe likes this.
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