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Anyone still excited about HDCD ?

With all the talk about SACD an DVD-A no one seems to bring up HDCD. Note: I not looking for a HDCD vs SACD battle here.. I will be picking up a universal player for my HT system but for 2 channel I decided SACD did not buy me much especially given the lack of software. I just picked up a redbook player that includes HDCD so I thought why not give it a try.. and I like it. It seems to me that there are more choices for high end player that include HDCD than SACD (altough this seems to be changing) I have my cd player behind me in the room which makes it really easy to do a blind A/B test. It HDCD sounds better to me than normal decoding. I mostly notice a deeper, bigger soundstage. Naturally it does not do multi-channel but then again multi-channel has a whole set of requirements and issues that 2 channel does not. While it may not be "perfect" (since nothing ever will) or not as accurate as SACD/DVD-A maybe HDCD is good enough for 2 channel...
btrvalik
lafish
151 posts
 
loads of recordings at my area uses HDCD technology. So, there are someone to support it.
pehare's avatar
pehare
835 posts
 
not necessarily excited but it seems like alot of the cd's i buy these days are hdcd. lucinda williams, dead reissues, chris isaak, buddy miller, ryan adams, mark knopfler, etc. glad i bought that used cary 303/100 for $950 now.....happy accident.
golden_ears
224 posts
 
The 96/24 and 192/24 DACs in the CD and DVD players coming out now are rendering HDCD irrelevant. They make fidelity accessible without needing a "decoding" chip.
I've heard HDCD discs (I have several) played on a 192/24 player that I brought home for evaluation, and they sounded better than they did on my player that had the HDCD decoding chip. I sold the HDCD player.
HDCD was also being used as a marketing tool by some music companies that, unfortunately, issued badly-recorded music. HDCD cannot help a recording that was engineered by morons.
jetkitty
53 posts
 
I hope that HDCD doesn't die. I have a handful of HDCD discs that I enjoy on a regular basis, and I plan on purchasing more to be certain. Time will tell...
theo's avatar
theo
2,680 posts
 
So far I have not found a redbook/SACD player the used the Pacific Microsonics Chip, therefore not supporting HDCD, I am thinking that the manufactures have written off any chance of new releases with HDCD. So the HDCD will die and the excisting titles will eventually be unplayable as the new generation of CD/SACD players emerge. A terrible shame, because I too have some favorite discs in HDCD.
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