Steve, what are your thoughts on HDCD? (Asked in reference to upcoming gold CDs.)

Ian,

Thanks. That's mostly been my approach, but every once in a while I hear someone say that it makes a difference, and since the *relatively* small number of HDCDs that I have (that is, a few dozen in a collection of a few thousand) do cover some music very dear to me, I've wondered if it might be time to upgrade with HDCD and other matters in mind. So I'm trawling for opinions!

L.

 

My opinion - on a short budget, don't spend money on digital doodads. Save it for more music!

 

Louis,
My "love affair", with PM's HDCD digital filter, sprang from reviews from What HiFi. I was researching DVD-A players, way back in '98. In a comparison review of, then current, DVD-A capable players, the reviewer notice HIS fondness for the more open presentation presented by the HDCD units (especially the topend, on DVD-A. The reviewer even speculated, that the HDCD filter's need/ability to handle HDCD encoding, aided it in handling 24/96 as well), over their non-HDCD counterparts. The PM's digital filter has been recognized by many reviewers & manufactures too be the superior digital filter, for many years. Hence, the perceived 'improved' playback of non-HDCD's (red book) on a HDCD equipped unit. To my mind, it's only been in the last three years, that other producers of digital filter's, have caught up (or surpassed).
There are so few HDCD titles, that the red book playback has alway's been why I seek out source and/or preamp's with HDCD.
Your mileage may very!

 

I will NOT buy the box set solely for the reason that it is HDCD encoded. Recently, I purchased the Jerry box out of weekness, even knowing it was HDCD. They will sit unplayed, passed over for the original cd's and vinyl. Which I will play quite regulary.

 

Steve, alway's the fair guy!
Cool.
I remember (yikes!) Steve saying on an endless Door's thread, that there were NO bad sounding Door's CD's. Which, at the time, included the PM's discs.

 

Your loss, as the bonus material is as good or better than some of the original material on those albums.

 

I've been thinking about this. Maybe I like HDCD because I do not have 15 inch Tannoy speakers. Apogee Duetta Signatures couldn't be farther from Tannoys.

I guess they must be much worse. I'll live with them. Ignorance is bliss, I guess. Or maybe I just haven't had a drink of the Kool Aid yet.

Goodbye.

 

DVD-A players in 1998? Some mistake here surely?

 

Not being able to actually compare HDCD and non-HDCD tracks (of the same remaster), I've come to think of HDCD encoding sorta like gold discs. I think we all realize that the gold itself doesn't impact the sound quality, but that it's the more careful mastering that goes into making a gold disc that's important. I think HDCD discs may be "better" (not necessarily, as Steve points out, more "honest") because of more careful mastering going into because the producers know that they can market them as HDCD, which suggests a sort of audiophile quality.

Then again, I could just be full of it...

 

So, when you say "record an analog tape to digital" you mean you physically burnt 2 cds, one HDCD encoded, one not and played them back on cd players, correct? If so, then I thank you for putting things into perspective for me and I will evaluate HDCDs in a different light from now on. I just have found them to be more analog sounding than regular cds. Maybe the joke's on me.

I never knew that there was any enhancement going on, I always thought that HDCDs were just delivering some of the bits that were lost on regular cds. I agree about getting cheated.

 

Steve, I am glad you did talk about this - I like to learn as much as I can about audio and mastering, even if it's not necessarily always what I want to hear (or read)! I'm not going to sell all my HDCDs or anything, I just am going to pay more attention to what I'm hearing. I value the opinions of those on the "inside". I don't have to always agree with those opinions. I have found this to be a very interesting topic and appreciate what you shared with us.

 

People really expect perfection from an imperfect industry...

 

One of the reasons we're all here is for your opinions. So, I sure hope we can take it. In any case, don't stop.

 

Steve,

I, for one, am grateful for your comments on this. If I understood them correctly--and I think I did--they helped me to understand more clearly the relationship between what HDCD does and what, in the end, makes a remaster good or bad (it turns out that it depends on what you're trying to achieve). It wasn't clear to me, for example, that the issue for a mastering engineer like yourself would be how it affects the transfer to digital, and therefore how it affects how you can or cannot do what you want to do with your mastering (I'm really a dummy about some of these things). So this, to some extent explains why an HDCD remaster can sound good, but also why it won't sound like the kind of thing *you* strive to achieve (a thing, by the way, that I value a great deal).

I'm still learning a lot about the process. Now I know something I didn't know before. One more better educated listener! That kind of demystifying information is exactly what I hang around here for.

L.

 

Was it ALL the way back to 2001???
My BADD!!!

 

Here's my understanding of HDCD (the technology, which I didn't know anything about until after I decided that I wasn't hearing an improvement).

HDCD steals 1 bit of the music, about 5% of the time. So what was once 16-bit music is now, a small amount of the time, only 15-bit music when played on normal CD players. But they say we can't hear the bit theft. Anyhow, so this gives them a very small additional amount of data (only a couple of megabytes on an entire CD) to play some games with. They use this data to control some additional filters and other processing on the back end to boost the dynamic range and total signal/noise in a matter that they think approximates 20-bit audio.

Some think that these are 20-bit CDs. That would require magically, losslessly compressing 4-bits of additional resolution into about 1/20th of one bit of space...an 80-to-1 lossless compression ratio. Not possible. These are not 20-bit CDs. They (imperceptibly?) degrade the 'regular' playback in order to get a little bit more data for controlled processing on the back end with HDCD CD players and DAC. That's not 20-bit CD.

If I've got this wrong, somebody feel free to correct me.

 

Michael,

Thank you. In some way, this process reminds me of DBX expansion...

Bob

 

In a world of hi-res it's like trying to squeeze that last bit of mayo from the small jar and then wishing you brought a big jug at the supermarket. Too much effort. I never was a fan of the whole HDCD concept. It's almost like the super-bit DVD's. The moment HD-DVD's come out everyone will be scratching their heads about what the (tiny, tiny) difference was....

 

I agree that the bonus material is excellent. But the loss is for all, not just me. Maybe, I'm just a little less tolerant these days after suffering many such losses. Please realize, I'm not saying HDCD is unlisteneable. There are much, much worse types of digital processing in use today.

 

Hi,

I still disagree. Me thinks the new cd releases are sonically superior to the original cd's. I have extreme respect for SH's mastering skills & opinions but there's more to the mix than just the encoding...... The Pizza Tapes and two new GD boxsets are very good, imo. Please feel free to send me your Jerry box that "will sit unplayed" b/c i'll gladly play the hell out of it. Will you take $20 for it? Might as well!

Take care,
Jeffrey

 

As much as I'm not an HDCD 'believer', I don't let it stop me from buying anything. The performance, recording, and mastering are far more important than whether they use HDCD encoding.

And I'll pay $23 for the Jerry box.

 

Hi Michael,

Be nice..... that box is mine!

Take care,
Jeffrey

 

Thanks. THAT makes sense and is consistent with what others (esp Steve) are saying. It is a digital "enhancement". Whether or not it is an improvement is obviously a matter of personal opinion and is surely a case by case issue. If the comparison is made on two different machines, the HDCD decoding capability is not the only factor that could cause the CD to sound different between them.

Does anyone make an HDCD capable player where it is defeatable?