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Is it the transport or DAC that enables HDCD/Red?

Good morning all,
I am new to transports and seperate DAC's. I recently purchased a Parasound CBD 2000 Belt Drive Transport and am looking to buy a DAC.

However, I am not sure what signal the transport is to provide in order for me to play HDCD as well as Redbook CD's. Should I expect the transport to provide the HDCD and Redbook signal or does the DAC do all the work?

Does balanced in/outputs produce a better sound than does regular RCA in/outputs?

Right now I am looking for a compact DAC (the smaller the better) that offers good to excellent sound for not a lot of money. I listen to classical (choral/orchestral) and jazz music. I love the human voice and large scale orchestral and choral works.

What shoud I be looking for since this is all a mystery to me at this point. I am just being honest. I really don't know what's happening in this area. By the way, I would be pleased if you would offer some of your choices please.

Finally, I am reading more so that I can learn more. Thanks so much for your understanding and input. Have a great and wonderful day and weekend.
rbwinterlink
rja's avatar
rja
2,370 posts
 
I believe the recently released BADA is a DAC that does HDCD.
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swanny76109
382 posts
 
The grateful dead continue to release HDCD recordings and they generally sound reaaly good. Still anachronistic after all these years. I believe they were early supporters of the pacific microsonics technology that they used in the mastering process-- being from berkeley and all
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
Bob - did you compare HDCD to exactly same Redbook. I'm asking since I noticed that only great sounding mixes ended up as HDCD creating impression of great sound in general. Do you know of any poor recordings on HDCD?

I don't have any experience with HDCD but whole scheme is a little bit weird. It has 15 bits of music and 1 bit (LSB) switching dynamic range. Techniques like that are called "in-band signaling" but I'm not quite sure about the purpose. In redbook CD one more bit (MSB) serves similar purpose (unless range in HDCD is greater than 2:1). In addition HDCD disk played on regular CD player will perform as 15 bit of weird dynamics + 1 bit of constant noise.

As I said - I don't have any experience with HDCD but judging by lack of any effords to improve quality of the recording/mixing, schemes like HDCD or SACD are attempts to force strong copy protection. I don't know why HDCD is more expensive - manufacturing is identical and royalties are the same. What about SACD - what costs another 100%? Greed killed many good standards before.
daveyf's avatar
daveyf
2,871 posts
 
You might want to seek out an EAD 7000 Mk 2 or 3 from a few years ago. It's an exceptional DAC and will decode HDCD.
What's more it also has an invert switch so you change polarity onthe fly....VERY VERY useful IMHO
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