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HDCD a flash in the pan already??

I started looking for a new CD Player a while back but put the search on the backburner for a bit(needed a new sub & picked up a Onix Rocket UFW-10)so now it's back to CD Player hunting and it seems to me there are less HDCD players coming out then when I orginally researched. For example the new Music Player 25.2 isn't HDCD ready where the CD-25 was nor is Onix's best CD Player CD-2(their lower one xcd-99 is). Even though they're out of my price range players newly released players like the Rega Apollo,Cambridge Azur 640 or Naim CD5i do not appear to be HDCD. Is this another format that isn't going to make it or just a option on lower end players. I was recently at a couple local CD stores (Borders, Fye and Barnes and Noble) and there were at the most 3 HDCD Cds there none of which I would be interested in.. Starting to seem like HDCD shouldn't even be an option to look for in my CD Player search.. Any comments?
pmt1209
robm321
932 posts
 
"your saying it's not important but it's "great".. "
- pmt1209

It improves the sound on all players. HDCD decoding players make it sound better, but it is nowhere near SACD, DVD-A, or even XRCD as far as improvement goes.

Rob
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Robm, I think it depends on which XRCD you are talking about. XRCD24 is very good, but not XRCD or XRCD2. I have not really sought to compare HDCD with these straight-forwardly, but I really like XRCD24s.
vlad1456's avatar
vlad1456
20 posts
 
I own a Sonic Frontiers SFD-1 MKII tube HDCD dac (these can be found for between 500-700$). This baby sings, especially with hdcd disks. The Doors and Roxy Music catalogues have been re-released in HDCD and they sound great. Yes, I do wish there were more HDCD disks, but the 25 or so that I own sound so good, I won't be getting rid of my dac anytime soon.
pmt1209 OP
44 posts
 
This may be a tough question or a non-applicable one but here it goes:
Would a player with HDCD playing a HDCD cd sound better, the same or worse then a "newly released" CD Player using the newer Burr-Brown Dac such as what's in the Music Hall CD-25.2 (Burr-Brown PCM 1738 24 bit/192k DAC) or players using Wolfson WM8740 DAC, 24/192 DAC such as the Arcam Diva C-73, Rega Apollo(which is getting some great reviews, off the point but had to mention it) and the Cambridge Audio 640Cv2 which actually is using 2 Wolfson WM8740 DACs(one for each channel)??
It would be interesting if someone has tried setting up a say a Music Hall CD-25 and a Music Hall CD25.2 both with the same HDCD cd in and toggled back and forth to see the difference.. Or in this whole analogy am I comparing apples to oranges?
timrhu
2,779 posts
 
A while back I went the player with DAC route and had this experience: I had three DACs, an Adcom GDA-700 with HDCD, a PS Audio (forgot model #) with HDCD and a Bitstream (forget model #) without HDCD. The Bitstream DAC was head and shoulders above the other two DACs when decoding standard cds. But when a cd encoded with HDCD was played the Adcom won hands down. On well recorded cds the difference wasn't subtle. I used several different cd players as transports, one of which decoded HDCD and as a stand alone player it bested the Bitstream when an HDCD disk was the subject of comparison. I feel there really is a difference, spatial clues are more evident, smoother quality to music without any loss of detail or resolution.
Of course technology will advance and new developments will make HDCD obsolete as well as cd at some point. Until then I'll make sure I have some means to decode HDCDs.
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