Digital remastering of CD's

Yes Kijanki, technically correct.
(From Wikipedia: "HDCD encodes the equivalent of 20 bits worth of data in a 16-bit digital audio signal by utilizing custom dithering, audio filters, and some reversible amplitude and gain encoding."

My point was that the market ignored a very good, backward compatible improvement on standard CD's (HDCD) back when CD's were still being sold in high numbers. The proliferation of digital compressed music in the mass market will eventually spell the end of redbook CD's, let alone any high-res discs.

Carl109 - I have bad suspicion that the only thing that drives them to create new standard is desire to implement copy protection and raise pricing. SACD has pit modulation technique where watermark of CD is implemented by modulating sizes of each pit. It can be read only by specific device and therefore cannot be copied. What they failed to do is to lower price first to sway people into new standard but instead they put prices over $30 on CD that cost the same to manufacture as regular CD. They shot themselves in the foot but we all are suffering.

In my opinion they will never release 24bit/192kHz recordings since it would deliver perfect master tapes to all countries where copying for sale is done at large scale. I remember even record I had once that was made in Cuba. Russian government was copying for years records from all over the world since they did not sign international agreement. Formats released are always "equivalent" to 20 bits and not more. SACD is equivalent to 20-bits as well even though they store master tapes in wide DSD that contain at least 4x information.

I have never heard master tapes nor I have equipment to appreciate them but I read posts of people who did and they say sound is out of this world.

It is all very sad that bureaucrats and marketers control progress of an audio but I would even settle for SACD if I could afford $30 CDs.

Both HDCD and SACD contain not more than 4000 titles each but HDCD wasn't as expensive as SACD and the sound was decent (never heard one).

Thanks for all of your responses. It's really too bad that it has to be this way. I'm curious what Absolute Phase Tweak is? Can you explain this Hifisoundguy?

Absolute Phase is when you reverse the hook ups at the source..cd player's outputs and at the other end of the interconnect you (do not) reverse the cable hook ups...you do the same thing to your speaker cables too...amp you reverse the hook ups and at your speaker hook ups you do not reverse the cables....For (some systems) this is one of the best things you can do to it to make it sound better!.........

As KOPS suggested,check out SHM-CD. Stands for super high material CD. It's an improved CD material. Makes for better bits and eliminates laser splatter. See Bob Levi's report on Positive Feedback.

Frank