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Well, this has been posted to a.b.s.lossless as well.

http://www.rhino.com/store/ProductDetai ... mber=73295

Umm...what about Deja Vu?

lukpac wrote:Umm...what about Deja Vu?

Two words: Neil Young

This CSN disc is also encoded with HDCD.

Matt wrote:This CSN disc is also encoded with HDCD.

I finally got around to grabbing both of these. Haven't decoded the FLACS to WAV for burning yet though.

Question: Does something like Windows Media Player decode the HDCD flag upon WAV playback? I don't have a HDCD CDP where I'm at right now and would like to hear these as nature intended, at least on my computer.

I use Foobar to play native FLACS. Does that have any kind of HDCD decoding capabilities as well?

TIA,
Hunte

Question: Does something like Windows Media Player decode the HDCD flag upon WAV playback? I don't have a HDCD CDP where I'm at right now and would like to hear these as nature intended, at least on my computer.

I just tried this with one of the WAV files. The HDCD indicator did not appear, so I assume it doesn't.

I use Foobar to play native FLACS. Does that have any kind of HDCD decoding capabilities as well?

I'm unfamiliar with this Foobar. I use Winamp with the flac plug-in to play native Flac's. I don't think the Winamp plug-in decodes HDCD.

I wonder if any media players will play HDCD encoded WAV files with full HDCD decoding? I also wonder how restrictive Microsoft is with software decoding technology of HDCD.

Matt wrote:I just tried this with one of the WAV files. The HDCD indicator did not appear, so I assume it doesn't.

Careful. WMP 10 has issues with the HDCD light. I know when playing a CD, if you skip to a track, the indicator won't light up. But if the player advances itself to the next track, the light will come on. Could be the same thing here.

Careful. WMP 10 has issues with the HDCD light. I know when playing a CD, if you skip to a track, the indicator won't light up. But if the player advances itself to the next track, the light will come on. Could be the same thing here.

Very true. I did let the track auto-repeat, still no indicator. That's all I could figure for the individual file.

I have found advancing a CD track until it has about 5-10 seconds left and then letting the track play and advance automatically, as you mention, the indicator usually works for the next track. Anything less and it doesn't seem to work for the next track. Strange.

As a side note the recent remaster of Duke Ellington's "Blues In Orbit" has some tracks that are encoded (with HDCD) and some that are not! Talk about a mastering error! I could see the HDCD light go out on different tracks on my NAD CD player. I verified the same error in WMP 10. The sound and quality of the music is outstanding though, IMHO.

HDCD is a joke. It should be retired immediately.

Andreas wrote:HDCD is a joke. It should be retired immediately.

The thing that sucks about it the most, is that when it first came out Pacific Microsonics tried to create this facade that there would "even be improvement" with playback on non-HDCD machines.

Of course, we now know that if they elect to use that inverse gain scaling peak thingie in the chain...it'll probably sound a hell of a lot worse than if there was no HDCD at all played on a standard CDP.

Admittedly, Steve's HDCDs don't seem to suffer from HDCD...which makes sense since he wrote that he did not use peak extension. (I asked him.)

But aside from that, every HDCD I have heard (on various non-HDCD players) has this aggressive compressed character which spoils any other supposed advantages for me.

Andreas wrote:But aside from that, every HDCD I have heard (on various non-HDCD players) has this aggressive compressed character which spoils any other supposed advantages for me.

How about the various Buffalo Springfield discs? I've thought those sound pretty good...