CD tweaking tips

[evil-zen 0]

why don u try A/Bing it with another software cd player? as far as i know, microsoft bought pacific so I think there might at least be some benefits using wmp9 on hdcd.

[Loky 0]

why don u try A/Bing it with another software cd player? as far as i know, microsoft bought pacific so I think there might at least be some benefits using wmp9 on hdcd.

I've checked out the forum at Hydrogenaudio, and the people there think it's only detection. Very difficult to A/B on my pc system for now, so I won't bother. But if it is confirmed that WMP can decode hdcd fully, I will attempt to connect my Audigy2 sound card analog output to my hi-fi.

 

In the meantime, still playing around with cheap/free cd tweaks!

[ckng 0]

Hi

 

Once, my friend was playing this cd-r copy of an HDCD recording I made for him. When the music played on his system, I was unimpressed. It sounded no better than the system characteristics that I had grown famililar with before this.

 

Then I noticed that the HDCD light was not ON. That means the player did not detect the hdcd flag. But I was sure I had done a 100% dupe. So i restarted the cd player (Nad 541i), reinserted the disc, and this time the hdcd light came on. As you would expect, the sound was improved! The effect is quite subtle, but similar to what I experienced when I activated or deactivated upsampling on my MSB Link III. Sort of like -- more extended highs, more microdynamics, taller deeper soundstage.

 

I have been eyeing an outboard HDCD decoder ever since -- Rotel 1066 looks like the perfect device for me.

 

However, I do note that many audiophiles are not hankering after HDCD. Some say the very fact that a recording and its playback devices has hdcd just means that the pacific microsonic eqpt is used, and these just happen to be very good dacs. Some say that decoding is not necessary as long as the recording was encoded in hdcd, meaning better eqpt and care were used for ensuring a high quality transfer. Some others claim that hdcd is not an attractive proposition for manufacturers, so since it will never catch onto the main stream, they would rather leap one step above hdcd and go for dvd-a/sacd.

 

I, for one, would prefer defeatable hdcd decoding, so that I could do comparisons. I also heard the Pacific Microsonics is hoping to incorporate the technology into dvd-a recordings and normal dts/ac3 soundtracks. Maybe then it will spill over to all cd players.

 

In the meantime, I note that Windows Media Player 9.x detects hdcd encoded recordings. Does anyone know if it actually "decodes" the bitstream? Or it's just a detection feature?

Hi,

 

Interesting observations. I made a CD out of wav rips of some tracks of my RR HDCDs and they were detected without fail on my Rotel RCD-02. Doing A/B of HDCD vs non-HDCD decoding is really difficult, unless you have 2 versions of the exact same recording. Even then, some other variables might have come into the picture, so a defeatable HDCD decoder might help, but I don't know of any that exists. I think the moment one uses a HDCD-decoder chip either from Pacific Microsonics or the likes of Burr-Brown (e.g. PCM1372), you get the HDCD decoding with it.

 

Microsoft has bought over Pacific Microsonics a few years ago, and now WMP9 does the HDCD decoding. Again, without a way of actually doing a good A/B, it's hard to tell if it actually works. My guess is it does.

 

I tried to do A/B with WMP9 vs a non-HDCD software player like Creative PlayCenter, WinAmp, etc when WMP9 first came out, both are played digitally (i.e. DAE method), one is slightly louder than the other, and it's difficult to match levels, so it's not conclusive.

 

Hmm... maybe the mods should split this HDCD discussion into another thread.

 

Regards

CK

 

 

[evil-zen 0]

ckng, if volume matching is a problem, try using foobar2000 with its output set to kernel streaming. for ks, the volume is tied to master volume while wav volume is useless. wmp9 uses both. so if you want to A/B both together, adjust both until the volume matches. just an idea and not sure if it will work.