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Help Ripping an HDCD Encoded CD...

Problem: When I rip HDCD Encoded CDs and create lossless wav, flac or m4a files I can’t get the “HCDC” indicator to light up in Windows Media player when I play the file back. I normally use Jriver and/or Foobar to rip. I can however to get the indicator to light up in Windows Media Player when I play directly from the disc. 
Do foobar or JRiver have specialty plug-ins? Is there a option-setting I’m missing when I rip? Or is it simply not possible to get the indicator to light up with file playback. 
Thanks in advance for any help. -rocketroom
128x128rocketroom
rocketroom's avatar
rocketroom OP
36 posts
 

Great info... Thank you for your responses!


milpai's avatar
milpai
2,420 posts
 
I was wondering, if I can get the FLAC file "HDCD decoded" when ripping the CD to FLAC in Foobar2000. Meaning - the DAC does not have the capability to decode the HDCD flag. So the FLAC should already have the HDCD encoding. Does Foobar's plugin do that? What does the flag "Enable decode postprocessing - for decoding DTS, HSCD, etc." in Foobar2000 do?
gasnsteering
58 posts
 
Late to the party".........DB power amp works great for ripping HDCD
jaybe
753 posts
 
foobar has a plug in that doesn't work for me, JRiver does not natively process HDCD and I'm not aware of any plug-in.
dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
JRiver can decode HDCD. The file just needs to be tagged as HDCD. Use Audio Analyze to do that.

dBpoweramp will decode an HDCD and create a 24 bit file with the HDCD bits decoded.  So, when you play it, the blue light on the DAC will not light, since the HDCD bits have already been decoded.

If you DAC decodes HDCD, you should let the DAC do it. The software decoders are attempts to duplicate what the chips in the DAC do, but they do an incomplete job. 
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