Why HDCD did not become a dominant format?

You want a great player which is HDCD capable and supported by a superior aftermarket tech service? Find yourself an EAD 2000. It is built like a tank, musical as all get out, and can be had for around $800 on Audiogon. I own the EAD 2000 as well as the Naim CDX...while the Naim may be a bit more resolving, the EAD is the player that I listen to day in and day out, and the one piece of equipment that I would never sell. It does HDCD right.

By the way, there was a great point made about Licensing. Pacific Mirosonics believed at one point that they would be in the drivers seat...but companies like SONY are not big on paying licensing fees to small companies when they can find ways to create their own proprietary technology...marvels like DBX. Once Microsoft had the rights, nothing was going to stop Gates (who owns 30% of Apple) from supporting the Ipod movement.

Two comments:

First, not every high-end CD player included HDCD decoding. Playing an HDCD disc on my former moderately priced CD player was a great improvement, but I wonder the degree of improvement with a very expensive CD player.

Second, I really enjoy the Redbook CD remastering on Hybrid SACD's. Yeah, the SACD layer probably sound better [I don't own a SACD player], but the Rebook mix is outstanding!

Thanks all. Mcpody, I appreciate your info and the EAD 2000 may sound great but I am unwilling to take a chance on the inevitable breakdown for which parts may no longer be available. To my certain knowledge this is already affecting maintenance/repair of some extremely well known and highly regarded units from very established, reputable companies - that are still in the CD reproduction business in a 'very' strong way.

Neither my Sony 9000ES nor my 9100ES process HDCD, but Reference HDCD discs sound great on my system. Could it be Reference recordings and not HDCD per se' that are so good?

db

Fatparrot, Dbphd, just as you both have touched on with the Hybrid layer, and the HDCD re-master, I do believe many cases is the recording is just that much better when done in redbook with these formats on the disc, and the end result is they can sound just as good without the decoder in many cases, meaning sometimes it has less to do with the technology, but the better mix.