Steve, what are your thoughts on HDCD? (Asked in reference to upcoming gold CDs.)

I will certainly second bloated bass and a loss of naturalness.

 

Count me in as another who feels that HDCD reduces sound quality; I've felt that way for years.

(my opinion, however, is purely subjective and is not based on a controlled test like Steve describes...I could be totally wrong)

 

I've never noticed that. Most of the HDCD cd's I have sound great to me, but I really can't tell if that's because of the HDCD encoding ( I do have HDCD playback) or the remastering.

 

Hiya,

A couple of you anti-HDCDer's really dig The Grateful Dead. If HDCD is half as bad as ya make it sound then why do ya think the boyz used it on both of their recent boxsets??? What do you think of their boxsets??? Do they display "Loss of transparecy, air , soundstage, naturalness and a bloated bass"???

Take care,
Jeffrey

 

I don't think you can ascribe those to HDCD. Perhaps it's the mastering engineer? I have many HDCD titles and some sound great, others not so great. What I was disappointed in was when I got my Rotel CD player (with HDCD decoding) and I didn't notice much difference when the discs were decoded. Maybe a slight improvement in low level detail but nothing I could pin down. Again, the quality of the sound on the good HDCD discs was probably due to proper care taken during the mastering.

 

I love the sound of those Dead reissues...

I'm hoping Santa will remember me at Christmastime...for the new boxed set!

 

I am a big fan of HDCD, please don't hate me. One HDCD in particular, Ron Sexsmith's "Blue Boy" sounds absolutely amazing on my HDCD compatible Toshiba DVD/DVD-A player. It has all the things that you find lacking on HDCDs! (Well, it does have a lot of bass, but I like bass. ) When I first played it I played it on a non-HDCD compatible player and thought the fidelity was pretty good, but when I put it in the Toshiba I couldn't believe the difference. It sounded like the singer was in my room singing 'live' - the sound "opened up", the drums and guitars had life to them. I have to admit I haven't heard another HDCD that sounds quite as good as that one but I do really like HDCDs.

 

Interesting that the 3 folks here who like HDCD (I do too, BTW), have as their avatars: Neil Young, The Grateful Dead & Brian Wilson, HDCD's greatest proponents!

 

This is kind of a moving target since you can't compare the exact same mastering with and without HDCD encoding as Steve described. I only have about 20 encoded discss, some are good and a few not so good. I don't have hdcd decoding presently so this is based on the burr brown df1704 filter. What I'd like to know is how far off the intended sound undecoded disc are.

 

Hmm...you're right! And I do like the Beach Boys & Brian Wilson HDCDs (and have most of them).

 

HDCD?

Some really do sound ultra sucky - The remastered original Van Halen catalog and
Bee Gee's "The Record" immediately come to mind.

Others however, I feel are generally great:

The Doors Box Set (Complete Studio Recordings)
Roxy Music's first 5-6 LP's
Recent Steve Earle and Lucinda Willaims recordings.

 

Yes, that's the key issue for me, too. I would love to hear more from you all who have the capacity to play HDCD's both with and without the decoding. How much difference does it make? How much (if anything), in other words, am I really missing when I play an HDCD on a player that can't decode it? By the way, I have dozens of HDCD's, including the Grateful Dead reissues, and some sound good (G-Dead, Neil Young) and some not quite so good (Joni Mitchell), depending on the quality of the mastering. It makes me suspect that, once again, that the real distinction is in the mastering. But I'd like to know if these would all sound significantly better decoded.

L.

 

The difference in the one I mentioned above (Ron Sexsmith's "Blue Boy") is like night and day. I haven't done many comparisons of my other HDCDs however, but will get back to you on that in the next day or two. Unfortunately, I don't have any Dead, Young or Mitchell though.

 

Hi,

Here's what The Grateful Dead stated about their current boxset:

"All music on the Box Set was mastered in HDCD from the original analog tapes, and only available here, for a very limited time. The bonus disc is not HDCD-encoded.

HDCD provides higher resolution when played in an HDCD-equipped CD player, and offers superior sound when played in regular CD players. HDCD CDs can be played in all CD players."

Take care,
Jeffrey

 

What's your argument, Jeffrey? The Grateful Dead use it, so it must be right?

 

I have the Dead Golden Road box also - I think it sounds great, but I can't tell if it's attributable to HDCD or not. I have a lot of CD's that sound great.

My H/K CDR-30 has HDCD playback capability but I can't for the life of me tell the difference between HDCD and no HDCD. I suppose I would need to hear the same mastering in both formats to listen for differences.

 

Hi Michael,

I know that cvila is an extremely knowledgeable Grateful Dead fan/listener and wonder whether or not he feels the boxsets display "bloated bass and a loss of naturalness"? If you've been around the scene as long as he & i have you know these guys know how to deliver superior sound.

As for your specific question..... The Grateful Dead ain't often right but they've never been wrong! There are many sonic geniuses in the family and i definitely trust their ability to deliver superior sound.

Take care,
Jeffrey

 

I think that HDCD has a signature sound. I think part of that signature is in the bass or mid-bass. I am not sure "boomy" or "bloated' are the best adjectives, but something exaggerated is going on in that range. In terms of "naturalness" there again seems to be some kind of exaggeration that approaches a hyper-detail quality. I liken it to an Anton Corbijn black and white photograph. You can count the pores on his subjects face but there is no color in the picture. I know that these terms and descriptions may not make sense to everyone who reads them but it is difficult to describe the tonal palette in words.

By the way, I am not anti-HDCD. I think that there are compromises made in every instance of reproducing music. It just depends where you make your sacrifices. I actually like most of my HDCD discs. But I stand by my assertion that the "Breath of Life" philosophy of mastering does not jibe with what HDCD encoding does to the sound. Hence, both kinds of ice cream - chocolate and vanilla.

 

I definitely agree with Jeffrey here. The bands philosphy to take their music "furthur" goes hand-in-hand with their decision to take their sound "furthur" as well. I think that their decision to use HDCD is made in good faith that it offers a higher quality transfer than the industry standard. And I like the sound of their discs. But the discs certainly would sound different on AF or S&P 24kt Gold Disc mastered by SH.

 

The HDCD process is supposed to enhance resolution and dynamics. It is not intended to alter the frequency range.

When I first read that the Pet Sounds box set was going to be HDCD encoded I shipped my Theta DS-pro Generation III processor to Theta for their HDCD upgrade. It was $500 well spent, IMO.

I've only heard people say good things about The Bee Gees Record, which is HDCD encoded. I think it sounds great.

IMO Prof Keith Johnson who co-invented HDCD and co-founded Pacific Microsonics is a brilliant recording engineer. He has made made excellent sounding recordings on the Reference recordings label, both on LP and HDCD encoded CDs.

I don't find that HDCD has a signature sound, any more so than I think that Steve does. What does Steve's Metallica DCC have in common with his 45 rpm Fantasy Jazz titles? Each may sound the best he can make it, but a signature sound, not IMO.

 

In my experience, HDCD does not benefit all CDs the same. I agree that the Van Halen titles were a disappointment when I got a couple. They sounded equally bad with or without HDCD decoding, in my opinion. I couldn't really tell a difference. The example I always point to as making a difference is Pizza Tapes by Garcia/Grisman/Rice. This is a pretty good sounding CD without the HDCD decoding, but with the decoding it becomes one of the best sounding CDs in my collection. I don't really detect as much difference in bass in the way that has been described in this thread. What I notice is what I perceive to be an improvement in texture and imaging. Like I said though, I don't notice these improvements on many of the HDCDs that I have heard. But some really seem to make a difference.

For reference, I am comparing normal redbook on a Sony ES 999 SACD/CD/DVD player with HDCD playback on an NAD 541i. For the majority of my CDs, I actually prefer the warmer, less detailed sound of the Sony player by a small margin.

 

Amid all the bantering and the (sometimes) friendly bickering (productive and otherwise) that I've read so far on this thread, two clearly useful pieces of information have emerged as far as I can tell. Please bear with me as I go over this, because I'm really trying to get things straight:

1) If I understand what I've been reading correctly, it seems that some people, including Steve, believe that use of HDCD in the transfer of a master tape to the digital universe alters the sound of the master tape in ways that are either not good or simply different enough to make problems for a mastering engineer who wants to deliver either something as close as possible to the master tape, or something altered in some *positive* way from that tape, but clearly built *on* or derived from the original sound, not some altered version of it.

2) Some people believe that these alterations negatively effect the sound of the CD's produced by them, and they therefore don't like any of the CD's produced using the technology. Fair enough, but I assume this has got to do with a comparison between the CD's and the sound of *the original tapes,* their possible potential before the HDCD encoding. I say this because, so far, no one has been able to tell me that the encoding has any sort of effect other than coloring in some way the sound of the original tape. I also say this because others think that the results--whatever relationship they have to the sound of the master tape--sound just fine. In other words, these are decent sounding CD's (the ones that do sound good), and the good sound has to do with mastering issues other than the HDCD encoding. These HDCD remasters may not capture the sound of the master tape--something most of us, in any case, have no access to--but according to many of us folks there seems to be nothing about HDCD encoding that *necessarily* produces *in all cases* BAD mastering.

This last position seems reasonable to me, and it's in line with my own experiences. In other words, in listening to the HDCD CD of "On the Beach," a remastering that I have no complaints about as a listening experience on a player that can't decode the HDCD, I'm prepared to recognize that I'm not hearing the kind of faithful-to-the-master-tape (with sensitive, breath-of-life improvements) that I would get from a Hoffman remaster from the same tapes without HDCD, but I know that I am still hearing a good remastering of the album (it sounds good to me and compares favorably with my old LP, though it *is* different). The G-dead disks sound good to me too. I assume that their sound probably also differs from sound of the master tapes in any number of ways because of the use of HDCD, but it's hard for me to believe that the encoding has altered the sound of those tapes in such a way as to produce BAD SOUND. That's because they do SOUND GOOD. Again, this is not the same thing as the "breath of life" that could have been brought out of the tapes by a more sensitive handling of the master-tape without HDCD, but the use of HDCD has not created an unlistenable, bloated, or what-have-you result either. Again this is my experience with these disks on an machine that is not HDCD compatible.

Now back to my real concern: do these disks sound *a lot* better, though perhaps no closer to the sound of the master tape, when played back on an HDCD *compatible* machine? So far, we've heard about one case. Those of us with discerning ears--and *without* deep pockets--would like to know a little more about the experience of others before digging into shallow pockets for a machine that can read the encoding.

Thanks!

L.

 

I guess I'll agree to disagree. I've learned a lot about sound reproduction these last few years spent on this and the old DCC board. Steve talks about "magic in the midrange" and "breath of life". I chalk that up to his remastering philosophy and his signature sound. I can also usually tell if a disc is HDCD encoded. I don't think I am any extraordinary listener or have better than thou hearing. Again, I think that there is a signature sound there.

 

P.S. In the time it took me to write the above posting, several of you posted stuff that either confirms what I've said, adds details, or helps answer my question. So big thanks to Cvila, David, and especially Ian for his discussion of the "Pizza Tapes" disk. I love that disk--sound, performance, everything--if it really sounds better with the encoding, that might be enough to sell me. I have a bunch of HDCD titles from Acoustic Disk, many of them well-beloved. Hard to believe they could sound better, but if they do.....

L.

 

Louis, as a listener that has been impressed with the sound of some HDCDs over their non-encoded counterparts, I would wholeheartedly recommend to others to not shop exclusively for an HDCD-compatible player. Just listen and buy the best sounding red book player you can find, regardless of whether it has HDCD or not. The number of discs that have HDCD encoding are really not that many in my collection (although you often discover encoded discs when you didn't expect them) and the ones that I really like are still very enjoyable without the decoding. I just wouldn't let HDCD encoding be a big decision maker for me when choosing a player.