[vorbis] HDCD

[John Morton]

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003 08:21, Andy D. Smith wrote:
> does anyone on this list have any idea of what an HDCD is?  i have a cd and
> that logo is on the back, and windows media player 7 recognizes it as an
> hdcd and displays the logo, but i dont know if that means it is supposed to
> sound better or what.  it sounds fine......feel free to email back to me
> and not to the list as this is off topic...........uhh..........i am
> ripping it to ogg vorbis! =P

HDCD is some sort of CD quality hack to improve the sound, though the precise 
way it does so seem to be shrouded in mystery - does it capture 20bit words? 
Do D/A hinting? Resonate with the Celestial Spheres? None of the articles 
I've read are particularly consistant about it. But I have read reviews for 
high end DAC separates which said that the effect of having an HDCD enabled 
DAC (and an upsampling one, for that matter) is 'pretty subtle', which is 
Hifi speak for 'I couldn't really tell, but I'm not about to admit it'. 

I'm pretty sure you need special hardware to take advantage of it, in any 
case, unless WMP7 does something clever with DAE to get at the extra 
information. It seems to me that this is just another piece of tech to keep 
the hifi propellerheads on the hardware upgrade treadmill.

John
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