Absolutely confused about HDCD, Steve, and AF... please help

I can't find links to the threads, but here it goes.

I remember Steve saying a couple of months ago he didn't like HDCD because it didn't sound anything at all like the master tape - he mentioned colorations, and such.

I have just seen a thread where it says the new AF discs are HDCD encoded, and that Steve is doing the remastering.

I'm absolutely confused here. I trust Steve's ears 100% (or more). I don't like the concept of HDCD at all, and I don't like the HDCD encoded discs I own. I do not own an HDCD player, nor plan to.

Every gold disc by Steve is an absolute knock-out, sonic wise. I feel HDCD is a step backwards in sound reproduction. As Corey Greenberg so well said "what's the use of a technology that supposedly brings better sound to less than 1% of CD players, when it makes matter worse to 99.99% of listeners out there?".

I'll be fairly honest about this. I'm not excited at all about the prospect of the new AF discs being HDCD releases. I may try one or two albums, but I'm not going to eagerly look for them....

Steve, please tell us you are not going to use HDCD! You said it wasn't at all good yourself!

 

Steve had a bit of a change of heart after doing some tweaking. Once again, it's all in the mastering. Read from post #86 on the following thread link: Steve, what are your thoughts on HDCD? (Asked in reference to upcoming gold CDs.)

 

Oh...

Well, I guess I'll pass on the new AF titles, then.

 

Wow, you sure don't like HDCD. Steve said he made sure he was able to get neutral playback on non-HDCD machines: http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showpost.php?p=834742&postcount=94

I personally like the sound of most of my HDCDs, but I do have an HDCD player. Most of them have a much more open sound stage. It's more of a vinyl-like listening experience for me.

 

There mastered by Steve!! and he fixed the issue with non HDCD players!

 

What does it mean to use HDCD, anyway? From what I read, the non-compatible features are optional, which means you can "turn on the HDCD LED" without really using it.

 

Javier,
I really can't understand your negative HDCD experiences. I shipped my D/A processor back to Theta Digital for an HDCD upgrade when it was announced by Capitol Records that the Pet Sounds Sessions box set was going to be HDCD encoded. It was $500 very well spent, in my opinion. As we all know that mastering choices are more important than the A/D processor used to make the redbook master, but I'm very satisfied with HDCD discs.

 

If you have an HDCD-compatible player and load up an HDCD-encoded disc, then your player will detect and decode HDCD. I have not seen an HDCD-compatible player that allows you to defeat it.

 

Hmm, so you don't trust Steve's ears 100 percent like you said in your first post? (Just kidding, Javier.)

From what I've read, the problem with HDCD was never with the process itself but with the A/D converter. With the tweaks Steve mentioned in the other thread that will now allow for neutral playback of HDCD encoded discs on non-HDCD players, why pass on them?

Steve's had plenty of opportunities to compromise on sound quality and other issues over the years. He hasn't yet and I don't think he's going to start now.

 

HDCD freaks me out as well. But if the tonality and the dynamics are identical with or without the decoder I'm fine with it.

 

I've never noticed a difference in the tonality of a HDCD when played back on a CD player with a decoder compared to one without, other than often noticing deeper bass on the HDCD player. I've been an HDCD fan since I got my first HDCD equiped CD player and don't know why so many people don't seem to like it. I hear none of the negative things that people say they hear. Maybe I've only bought well-mastered HDCDs.

 

I trust Steve's ears 100% - afterall he has a faultless track record (no pun intended ).

Despite this I must admit I am also a little uneasy about the HDCD process being used for the AF discs. I can't help it - I am a sceptic by nature (or as an old girlfriend once said, I'm a "sceptimist"!).

I assume Steve has tested this thoroughly by mastering a CD of the same material twice - once using his tried and tested 16/44.1 process, and again using his tweaked HDCD process.

If, as Steve has intimated, the playback of the HDCD processed disc on non-HDCD hardware sounds just as good as the standard (ie non-HDCD) 16/44.1 disc then I guess I have nothing to worry about.

And if playback of the new discs sound even better on HDCD equipment then that's a bonus for those with HDCD playback.

My only problem then will be that I can't imagine there being an HDCD capable player that can outstrip my SCD-1 in terms of playback quality despite the alleged advantage of HDCD. Am I wrong?

 

Well... yes. I don't like HDCD. At all... as I said before, I own a couple of HDCD discs, and I dislike their sound.

For example, the "Cars" disc in HDCD. I feel Steve's version blows it away. Or the "Brothers in Arms" disc, in K2, SBM and HDCD (the greatest hits comp). The HDCD version is inferior.

My main gripe with HDCD is the whole concept - get better sound (probably) in less than 1% of the players, while making things worse for everyone else. SACD doesn't compromise in this regard - we get an amazing CD layer, and an amazing SACD layer. Isn't that the best of both worlds?

I trust Steve's ears 100%, but unfortunately, I have a pair of functional ears myself which tell me I don't like HDCD...

Furthermore, there are so many other issues with HDCD I don't like. First of all, I have one too many CD players right now. I'm not buying another one just to get HDCD decoding - and thus, I feel somehow shortchanged when I buy an HDCD disc (I'm getting an inferior sounding disc, and I'll never get to hear it in its full glory - something I didn't feel when I got my first SACD hybrid). The other thing is - Pacific Microsonics is now controlled by Microsoft. As much as I like MS products in the desktop, I don't feel I'd like to see the company control my audiophile future, so I'll vote with my wallet.

The third one, and this really confuses me, is this one. Most of us expressed our dislike of HDCD on the threads pointed above - now, since Steve said HDCD is OK, we are all for it? Aren't we all individuals? I mean, I do trust Steve, but lets look at the facts...

1) HDCD loses one bit of resolution in order to gain perceived benefits. Most of us hate lossy compression - HDCD is not much different than that.

2) That bit is used to digitally manipulate the signal, adding dynamics and such (IIRC). Aren't we trying to get as close to the original signal as possible with the cleanest path? That's the reason most people cite the analogue - DSD - PCM convertion as not necessary. HDCD is, IMHO, not the cleanest path around.

3) Making things worse for most people who don't have HDCD is not my idea of progress.

Of course, all of my points should be moot, since Steve's ears tell him everything's OK... and I'm fine with that. But for the non audiophile reasons cited above, I'm against HDCD... so... I might give the discs a try, and I hope to be pleasantly surprised, but I'm not as excited as I should be.

 

So if I've got this right sound quality will be

NEUTRAL without HDCD decoding
and
BETTER with HDCD decoding?

 

I like the cd's I have that are HDCD encoded a lot. That said I don't know if that's because of the HDCD encoding or the mastering since I've never been able to listen to them without the HDCD encoding (non of them come without HDCD, and all of my cd players have HDCD).

 

Javier,
Just two points to nitpick -
1) Your "two disc" sampling of HDCD is ridiculously small to be basing your conclusions on. There are several bad HDCD discs, but there are also so many wonderful sounding ones too. It all depends on the mastering. Listen to the Reference Recordings Classical discs which are encoded in HDCD. In my opinion several rival some of the best SACD's in terms of clarity - something I've found on almost no other classical cd's.
2) Your statement that most people here dislike HDCD is not accurate if you have followed the (all too many) posts related to HDCD here.
Outside of that, you are making some very good points...

 

Is it absolutely certain that the "least significant bit" on an HDCD disc is unusable/noise/garbage when played back on a standard CD player? There's no audio information stored there for regular CD players to use? Is it really that much different than using 1-bit of dither?

 

If by "neutral" Steve means tonally neutral (ie his tweaked HDCD process adds no colouration) then this must surely apply to both HDCD and non-HDCD playback or else this would not be in keeping with Steve's mastering ethos.

The benefit of the HDCD playback must be in terms of resolution - or else I am missing something.....

 

Hi Javier,

I think these are the two concepts/statements worthy of second thought..... because, imo, neither are close to reality. My Reference Recordings, Grateful Dead, and Jerry Garcia HDCD's played back on non-HDCD compatable players sound VERY good! All of them are my idea of progress!

Take care,
Jeffrey

 

Hi Javier,

Please buy this cd and take a listen to how really good an HDCD disc can sound on ANY player. Listen to the tonality of the acoustic guitars which, imo, is spot on.

http://www.gdforum.com/store/music/pizzatapes.html

Take care,
Jeffrey

 

Javier my friend, let's not throw out the baby with the bath water here. I agree with what you've said about crappy sounding HDCD recordings (my ears still remember the pain of the S/T Cars). However, what you are referring to is a mastering issue and not a format situation.

 

In response to your points:

1) The 16th bit is RARELY used for signal information. I'd be surprised if there are more than a few CDs in existence that use all 16 bits for signal. The dynamic range would make them almost unlistenable. The 16th bit is almost always used for dither and noise shaping, an example of this being Sony's SBM (Super Bit Mapping).

2) The bit is used to digitally manipulate the signal to make it MORE LIKE THE ORIGINAL SIGNAL, not less. HDCD encoding/decoding is designed to compensate for the compromises inherent in the redbook standard.

3) HDCD encoding does not make things worse for everyone else.

HDCD encoding does not change the tonality of the sound. It provides more dynamic range (if desired) and better decoding of the redbook signal by changing the "filter" used based on the type of signal being decoded.


I've been a strong advocate for HDCD from the beginning. It is only now that Steve has realized the error of his ways.

 

Thanks... I can't think of any HDCD discs I own other than The Cars, Panorama (the Cars), Avalon (Roxy Music), 1984 (Van Halen) and Dire Straits Greatest Hits. Still, every one of those discs is outclassed by the normal release. It's pretty hard to get HDCD discs when there are so few releases out there...

 

Dave, Jeffrey... points well taken. I may have never heard a properly mastered HDCD disc, so I have come to think of the technology as not up to par of audiophile recordings.

The only gripe I'd then have with HDCD is mostly conceptual, and therefore, probably invalid - except for the Microsoft association. I like Windows XP and lots of MS products - I don't want a computer as a part of any music system, that's all. It's just too much complexity where things should be lots of fun.

I'll give a try to Steve's HDCD discs. The only thing I'll not be too happy about is knowing I'll never get the full enchilada by not buying an HDCD compatible player.

Then again, I could always fire up Windows Media Player 10 and let it decode the discs...

 

You're not a Beach Boys/Brian Wilson fan obviously or you'd have a ton of 'em.