Will Microsoft kill DVD-A and SACD?

Hi everybody,
me too, I've never understood why Microsoft bought a couple of months ago HDCD licensing. I see nothing in common between computers and music licensing except if
Microsoft would have wanted that the CD players installed on the PC should be able to decode HDCD : was is the advantage ? don't know....

about HDCD itself : I own two 'reference recordings' CD's that are sampler CD with HDCD and non HDCD tracks. The difficulty to compare the same track in HDCD vs non-HDCD mode is not easy, just because the HDCD track has a higher output level (+3dB), and just because of that, you have the impression that you hear more things. Frankly, I don't find a huge difference with HDCD.

HDCD is an improvment, for sure, but now we have other solutions like upsampling or oversampling DAC which are IMHO far better than the HDCD technology itself (and these DAC don't require any licensing !!!)

Hey, maybe the first time a CD is inserted we will have to "Agree to the terms...." and find that we only leased the music....and, when the disc identifies your player it will not play in another machine and report this finding to M$.

Go Linux, go.

Happy listening,
Patrick

Zaikes,

There is such a thing as multi-channel HDCD. My business neighbor is a post production recording studio. When I first purchased my Sim Audio Eclipse with HDCD the engineer was surprised, and wondered why it had HDCD but wasn't multi-channel.

I haven't seen nor heard of any HDCD multi-channel recordings myself, but that doesn't mean they don't exist or as others suggest - can't be made.

As for the MS purchase of HDCD, it must have a catch. Maybe MS wanted the PMD digital filter to launch some proprietary copy protection. There are a lot of companies who've been trying (one way or another) to skin that cat. Microsoft might believe they have a new wrinkle.

As for the SACD DVD-A formats, there are even better formats in existence (that use similar recording techniques to SACD). Various recording studios (engineers) are trying to sell these to the big boys. ...But there's too much investment in the current formats (and constant infighting amongst the various 'players') - All vying for control.

I, like most of you am very mistrusting of MS, and if the purchase of HDCD leads to lower-tech & lesser sound then they ought to be strung up by the nads.

Zaikeman's and Awdeeofyle posts are well stated and right on,IMO. I'd just add that HDCD is an improved redbook CD format, but it is still 16/44 technology and thus does not have near the potential of either SACD or DVD-A, each of which have several times the storage capacity of a redbook CD. My Levinson 360S DAC does decode HDCD, and while I like it, it's a relatively minor improvement over a "regular" well recorded CD. In fact, I think the best CDs are those done using JVCs XRCD2 system.

Could it be that MS wanted the HDCD technology for some other purpose? Cheers. Craig

I hope so, then he and Karl Rove can take over the rest of the world and show us how we can all, finally, be happy - just as the Constitution says we should be!! Alas, I just don't think with this Enron/WorldCom inconvenience that we are going to see that anytime soon. Why don't people just leave poor 'lil Bill and the rest of his friends in the corporate aristocracy alone, they only care about you?

Thanks for the belly laugh, Lugnut.