HDCD's

[goldear]

I think that whether the HDCD process is sonically beneficial over well-executed 16-bit dithering is highly debatable. And depending upon which options the mastering engineer chooses when he masters an HDCD, the HDCD decoding on playback can be distinctly audible, but it often it is not. To my ear the Peak encoding is probably the biggest improvement to be potentially experienced with HDCDs. But this is not always implemented.

For me, HDCD decoding ranks at the bottom of my wish-list for a new CD player, and probably would not effect my decision as to whether to buy a given unit. But all things being equal, if two otherwise identical players were only differntiated by HDCD decoding capability, I would probably buy the HDCD capable player.

 

[SoNic67]

Encoding a CD on HDCD denotes the intention of the engineer/recording company to produce a high quality recording. It will be most likely a good mix just because of that, not necesarely because of HDCD.
Also, the existing HDCD mixing consoles are regarded as having one of the best digital filters.

On the decoding side, the digital filter PCM100 used in first generation of decoders is still regarded as one of the best digital filters (and was oversampling to 88.2kHz too). Not sure if the later DSP (software) implementations have the same coeficients.

 

[dewdude]

Encoding a CD on HDCD denotes the intention of the engineer/recording company to produce a high quality recording. It will be most likely a good mix just because of that, not necesarely because of HDCD.
Also, the existing HDCD mixing consoles are regarded as having one of the best digital filters.

On the decoding side, the digital filter PCM100 used in first generation of decoders is still regarded as one of the best digital filters (and was oversampling to 88.2kHz too). Not sure if the later DSP (software) implementations have the same coeficients.

The intention was for the DSP versions to be identical to the hardware. The expansion curves are the same. As far as the digital filters, not sure. I think the software just "decodes" the compansion portion and the rest is up to hardware/software.

I use a software decoder. Any HDCD release I know about in my collection gets decoded to the 24-bit output of the decoder.

Its *not* a major huge difference, can cause slightly less fatigue.