Does a CD Transport need to be HDCD ALSO?

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure it's the filter in the DAC that does it,so you should be ok....

It's all done with the DAC by employing a special decoder chip/filter. Pacific Microsonics makes one if not all of them. When HDCD's first came out the contract for HDCD playback required the DAC/CD player designer to attenuate the gain on normal CD's. It may still. This guarantees that HDCD's played on HDCD enabled units will always sound louder than normal ones. It's quite a gimmick.

My Theta Data Basic II transport sometimes has trouble initializing HDCD's on the first try, but always gets it on the second. If there's such a thing as a HDCD transport I've never run across one.

the transport just reads the bits, whether hdcd or not, and sends them off to the internal or external dac. if an hdcd code is present on the disc and the dac/filter is capable of recognizing the embedded hdcd code in the bit-stream, then the dac/filter will apply the appropriate noise-shaping.

there is more than one level of hdcd encodeing that the hdcd standard allows. there is a demo disc with the same music encoded with different levels of hdcd encoding.

in other words, all transports will read hdcd discs and send the bits containing the hdcd information, but only certain dac/filters can recognize the embedded signal.

i hope this helps