Does a CD Transport need to be HDCD ALSO?

This has caused some confusion, especially since some of the early Cal Audio Labs Delta Transports specifically stated HD-CD Transport right on the front of it. CAL meant that it was a "high definition" i.e. "high resolution" CD transport and not that it could specifically decode HDCD discs. When Pacific Microsonics came out with HDCD encoding, CAL was forced to remove this from their faceplates. That is how you can tell the age on some CAL Delta's.

If i remember correctly, i think that Microsoft bought the rights to the HDCD format. Does anybody know what they are doing or plan to do with this ? Sean
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One nice feature of the Levinson No.36 Dac is that you can defeat the attenuation of non-HDCD discs.
Great sounding DAC!!!

The one requirement on the transport is that the output bitstream be an exact copy of the data on the disc.

Some transports (Wadia 270, and at least one ML model I can't remember) perform resolution enhancement by dithering the orginal data on the disc to generate a new bitstream with more bits per sample (24 in the Wadia's case).

On these transports resolution enhancement must be switched off to retain the HDCD encoding in the output bitstream.

Similarly any resolution enhancing digital processor (Genesis Digital Lens, AA DTI Pro family, etc) in the signal chain must have enhancement turned off.

Good points Ghostrider. Thanks for taking ALL of the factors into consideration. Some of the "extra's" are sometimes easy to overlook. Sean
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I really appreciate the help you all have given me. I now THINK I understand what it all means. The main reason I was confused is I saw a transport somewhere that said HDCD.

Thanks again to everyone.
Tom