Even if you do not use or have an HDCD decoder, CDs using the technology always sound better. The format is still being used, including on a hybrid SA-CD of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra where they used HDCD on the PCM CD tracks.
A higher dynamic range on playback that exceeds 96dB (16 bits) is highly undesirable as low level sound will be inaudible under ambient room noise or loud peaks would be screamingly loud.
Agreed. I see the problem as extremism. Either to much compression, which highy fake and annoying, or just the opposite, which is also annoying in a typical living space. Even if you’re listening environment is reasonably quiet and you like the peaks to have some impact, even 80 dB can be overkill territory depending on what you’re listening to. I believe the reason for so much dissension on this subject is at times the lack of synchronization between the technical mind and the practical one.👨🏻
For many years I have been listening so many cd's and I have compared them with streaming, various digital formats, including DSD. What I've noticed is that there are many conditions for an album to sound magnificent or not so much, and it's not so much the format and resolution of the recording in simplistic terms. In addition to the quality of the artists (crucial factor), the studio's acoustic conditions, sound capture (types of microphones), instruments capture individually vs globally, stereo spatiality, dinamics, degree of compression, mixing and mastering play determining factors in final playback quality. There are excellent cd's only with 16 bit/44 kHz of resolution and don't need more, because work was made before, in the right phase. In many recent recordings we have so many bad sound capture at beginning, loudness war (that don't make the instruments "breathe") in a context, sometimes bad mastering. In these contexts we can record in DSD and will have bad results. I don't doubt that a Octave Record on 16 bit it's good because recording it was made in proprer way.
There are still some mastering engineers like David Glasser that still use the Pacific Microsonics HDCD Model Two ADC/DAC converters for mastering recordings. They aren't released in the HDCD format, but are released as hi-res downloads. A lot of those guys still swear that the Model Two ADC/DAC is the best sounding unit they've ever heard.
It may very well be the best-sounding PCM ADC. As far as I remember it'll only go up to 24/192, which of course is enough, just saying, it will do neither DXD nor of course DSD. The other problem is servicing these units - anyone who's so much as had a peek inside will know what I mean. But great sound quality, no doubt about that.
I’m the lucky owner of a Krell KPS-28C which houses a HDCD chip. The few HDCD CD’s I’ve got are sounding fabulous, love to see the red LED lighting up when a HDCD recording is recognized. But in the end all that matters is the quality of the recording. A Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab or a JVC XRCD2 are also great to listen to!
I got a Lunachicks CD from 1995 that is red-book spec and yet casual listeners - till now - often mistake it as a DVD-audio recording because of its clear and effortless highs.
You can tell the guy who wrote the letter, from his description, is still listening on a cd player which makes cds sound like they have edge exaggeration. Up until several months ago, that edge emphasis is something I thought was part and parcel of cd sound. My new sound has fortunately evolved past that. I hear no edge accentuation with cd anymore. As analog sounding as analog. I haven't A/B compared an lp versus a cd in a long while, so I'll hold off on my overall judgement. Sometimes memory of how something sounds needs a refresher. It's so nice to be able to pick up cds so cheap, for a buck sometimes, and they are such sonic jewels often. When SACDs first came out audiophiles were chomping at the bit to hear a million times per second sampling rate. They did sound a bit sweeter and more open, but it still mostly came down to mastering. 44.1K is enough to get you there. They chose well. If your redbook cd player is better than your SACD player, you are better off playing redbook cds. I see no problem with your average cds sound now. I figured out a way to get rid of glare, which I think is one of the main things that plague most folks cd playback. Too bad so many audiophiles spend so much of their time and money chasing after the perfect lp pressing. Getting a great cd player could be the better way to go for many. I was listening to some of The Beatles latter 1960s/70s cds the other day. Their recordings, while not quite audiophile standards, are nothing to complain about, is what I hear now. What a joyful revelation. The greatest rock band ever was recorded pretty well. I never got that impression before, at least to that degree. The Stones are the next thing I'll try. With my fingers crossed.
The Beatles are known as the most successfull best selling rock group of all time; so I guess they DID play rock. Maybe they weren't heavy metal rock sounding often, but they let loose at times. Unlike heavy metal, they had the aptitude to be melodic and inventive. They sold more records than anyone ever.
I agree with you ON the sonics of a CD through an excellent CD player. Which one do you have? I have a Luxman D-10X and it is so natural sounding, dynamic, and smooth. The only other CD player that was naturally sounding was my Sony SCD XA5400ES. And yes CDs are so cheap it's a pleasure to just buy them💿
There were many HDCD recordings released between the mid 90s and 2010. The Beach Boys, Scott Walker, Roxy Music, Chris Isaac, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell are just a few of the artists whose back catalogue were reissued in HDCD and sound superb. Many country artists released alums in HDCD. All of these are still available to buy today- a careful search will be very rewarding and the prices are very reasonable, you can pick many up for pennies. There isn't the same inflated price racket that there is for SACD and other audiophile formats. I still have a LINN CD player with an HDCD chip. Even playing these discs in an ordinary CD player or an SACD player will give superior results that you can clearly hear.
My old Yamaha player decoded hdcd and I miss it not being in my Sony. One particular CD. Supertramp's Some Things Never Change sounded amazing on the Yamaha. Most of Tom Petty's 90's was also hdcd. I definitely felt like I noticed the difference with his CDs. Not much else beyond those.
Pacific Microsonics invented it, and Microsoft acquired the company in 2000. It was defined as 20 bits format. Guys from PM later established Berkley Audio Design with support for never adopted HRX format. The first converter they built hosted around 5K and was so-so. Perfect with HRX but not so good with “standard formats.” HRX was a bit-perfect copy by Reference Recordings, and the lack of music basically destroyed the format.
@@birgerolovsson5203 I use Foobar2000 to play CD rips, and I also own a Denon DVD-3910 that has HDCD decoding, and a vintage Parasound DAC-1100HD with HDCD.
Definitely no insane amount of bits and sample frequency can change the fact that a bad recording is a bad recording. One of my favorite Coldplay albums X&Y has been butchered with compression that no matter how high res file I’m being served by Apple Music (192/24) it still sounds awful vs great recording/ mix in CD quality (for example my latest obsession Eva Cassidy’s Nightbird album) (44.1/16 on AM) I like to think there is a special place in hell for all those sound engineers who dare to destroy excellent music with awful mixes. (Looking at Max Martin with what he did with Adele’s 30 album)
@@Snolferd wow. Thanks for that insightful reply.. you’re clearly a master of technology and know everything. Thanks for taking the time for re-iterating the title to me. I might’ve missed its point.
One of the two Masterminds behind the hdcd codec is Prof. Keith Johnson. And of course Referece Recording is using hdcd on their CD's, guess who is sticking behind Reference Recording? And actually I'm with Paul, all the Labels are using Hdcd, are known for their high quality records and thats rules first. The quality at the beginning of the chain.
The question is this, “what is good enough?”… when you sit 8 feet from a tv with a resolution of 1080p, then you compare it with a 4k tv at the same distance, can you really tell the difference? The answer is no!… but in technical terms you know you are looking at an image of twice the resolution of 1080p, so you are telling your brain “it has to be better”, but it’s actually no different from 8 ft away because the human eye is not that good, I do wish “audiophiles” would cut the bullshit!
Hey maybe give Paul a break. He did a hdcd video on here, but it was 4 years ago. That means he came up with 1,400 different topics in between then. Back years ago, cartoonists tried to space about a four weeks apart, jokes about Joey Butafuco.
I compared various HDCD rips to CD rips and, other than the rare occasion when peak extension is actually used, the 20-bit (packaged in 24-bit) files are identical to 16-bit CD. Same exact bits. No benefit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As far as I can remember there was a Freeware HDCD-Decoder at that time and maybe still around. You have to rip the CD-track and then run the Decoder over it! It's all about the least important bit turning an algorithm on or off, that has an effect on the 15 bit before or not.
Even if you do not use or have an HDCD decoder, CDs using the technology always sound better. The format is still being used, including on a hybrid SA-CD of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra where they used HDCD on the PCM CD tracks.
A higher dynamic range on playback that exceeds 96dB (16 bits) is highly undesirable as low level sound will be inaudible under ambient room noise or loud peaks would be screamingly loud.
Exactly - who wants to listen to music peaks of 120 dB?
Agreed. I see the problem as extremism.
Either to much compression, which highy fake and annoying, or just the opposite, which is also annoying in a typical living space. Even if you’re listening environment is reasonably quiet and you like the peaks to have some impact, even 80 dB can be overkill territory depending on what you’re listening to. I believe the reason for so much dissension on this subject is at times the lack of synchronization between the technical mind and the practical one.👨🏻
The NYA VOL. 2 box is all HDCD encoded. They sound great!
For many years I have been listening so many cd's and I have compared them with streaming, various digital formats, including DSD. What I've noticed is that there are many conditions for an album to sound magnificent or not so much, and it's not so much the format and resolution of the recording in simplistic terms. In addition to the quality of the artists (crucial factor), the studio's acoustic conditions, sound capture (types of microphones), instruments capture individually vs globally, stereo spatiality, dinamics, degree of compression, mixing and mastering play determining factors in final playback quality. There are excellent cd's only with 16 bit/44 kHz of resolution and don't need more, because work was made before, in the right phase. In many recent recordings we have so many bad sound capture at beginning, loudness war (that don't make the instruments "breathe") in a context, sometimes bad mastering. In these contexts we can record in DSD and will have bad results. I don't doubt that a Octave Record on 16 bit it's good because recording it was made in proprer way.
There are still some mastering engineers like David Glasser that still use the Pacific Microsonics HDCD Model Two ADC/DAC converters for mastering recordings. They aren't released in the HDCD format, but are released as hi-res downloads. A lot of those guys still swear that the Model Two ADC/DAC is the best sounding unit they've ever heard.
It may very well be the best-sounding PCM ADC. As far as I remember it'll only go up to 24/192, which of course is enough, just saying, it will do neither DXD nor of course DSD. The other problem is servicing these units - anyone who's so much as had a peek inside will know what I mean. But great sound quality, no doubt about that.
For me... Better recordings is THE KEY !
I actually think it's all about how well the source is recorded.
You are a great salesman Paul! You say all the right things to draw in the uneducated!
Dats why me dun see Paul.
Me no dang edicated.
I’m the lucky owner of a Krell KPS-28C which houses a HDCD chip. The few HDCD CD’s I’ve got are sounding fabulous, love to see the red LED lighting up when a HDCD recording is recognized. But in the end all that matters is the quality of the recording.
A Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab or a JVC XRCD2 are also great to listen to!
Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and the Grateful Dead all release HDCD's today,.
I’ve got CD’s of Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Tom Petty in HDCD…the Joni Mitchell recordings especially are sounding great!
I got a Lunachicks CD from 1995 that is red-book spec and yet casual listeners - till now - often mistake it as a DVD-audio recording because of its clear and effortless highs.
My room might not handle more than 13 bits. I listen music, CD bit depth is fine for me. Paul's advise is what really matters in my experience.
You can tell the guy who wrote the letter, from his description, is still listening on a cd player which makes cds sound like they have edge exaggeration. Up until several months ago, that edge emphasis is something I thought was part and parcel of cd sound. My new sound has fortunately evolved past that. I hear no edge accentuation with cd anymore. As analog sounding as analog. I haven't A/B compared an lp versus a cd in a long while, so I'll hold off on my overall judgement. Sometimes memory of how something sounds needs a refresher. It's so nice to be able to pick up cds so cheap, for a buck sometimes, and they are such sonic jewels often. When SACDs first came out audiophiles were chomping at the bit to hear a million times per second sampling rate. They did sound a bit sweeter and more open, but it still mostly came down to mastering. 44.1K is enough to get you there. They chose well.
If your redbook cd player is better than your SACD player, you are better off playing redbook cds. I see no problem with your average cds sound now. I figured out a way to get rid of glare, which I think is one of the main things that plague most folks cd playback. Too bad so many audiophiles spend so much of their time and money chasing after the perfect lp pressing. Getting a great cd player could be the better way to go for many. I was listening to some of The Beatles latter 1960s/70s cds the other day. Their recordings, while not quite audiophile standards, are nothing to complain about, is what I hear now. What a joyful revelation. The greatest rock band ever was recorded pretty well. I never got that impression before, at least to that degree. The Stones are the next thing I'll try. With my fingers crossed.
The Beatles didn’t play rock
The Beatles are known as the most successfull best selling rock group of all time; so I guess they DID play rock. Maybe they weren't heavy metal rock sounding often, but they let loose at times. Unlike heavy metal, they had the aptitude to be melodic and inventive. They sold more records than anyone ever.
@@sidesup8286 they are more like band music or pop not rock, people are not the final judge in anything
@@sidesup8286 AC/DC is the most successful, still to this day no one can play like them, just because you make a lot of money it doesn’t make you good
I agree with you ON the sonics of a CD through an excellent CD player. Which one do you have? I have a Luxman D-10X and it is so natural sounding, dynamic, and smooth. The only other CD player that was naturally sounding was my Sony SCD XA5400ES. And yes CDs are so cheap it's a pleasure to just buy them💿
There were many HDCD recordings released between the mid 90s and 2010. The Beach Boys, Scott Walker, Roxy Music, Chris Isaac, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell are just a few of the artists whose back catalogue were reissued in HDCD and sound superb. Many country artists released alums in HDCD. All of these are still available to buy today- a careful search will be very rewarding and the prices are very reasonable, you can pick many up for pennies. There isn't the same inflated price racket that there is for SACD and other audiophile formats. I still have a LINN CD player with an HDCD chip. Even playing these discs in an ordinary CD player or an SACD player will give superior results that you can clearly hear.
My old Yamaha player decoded hdcd and I miss it not being in my Sony. One particular CD. Supertramp's Some Things Never Change sounded amazing on the Yamaha. Most of Tom Petty's 90's was also hdcd. I definitely felt like I noticed the difference with his CDs. Not much else beyond those.
In other words, is it the mastering up front that makes the real difference?
The Hadouk Trio’s Live à FiP HDCD sounds fantastic
Just….good look to find it 😖
Pacific Microsonics invented it, and Microsoft acquired the company in 2000. It was defined as 20 bits format.
Guys from PM later established Berkley Audio Design with support for never adopted HRX format. The first converter they built hosted around 5K and was so-so. Perfect with HRX but not so good with “standard formats.”
HRX was a bit-perfect copy by Reference Recordings, and the lack of music basically destroyed the format.
Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and the Grateful Dead all release HDCD's today,. I listen to them on an OPPO player
I think Paul's streaming his music, mostly.
The PS Audio Sprout with the Elac speakers, phone or tablet, great for streaming music..😎👍🤗
I've tried to get as many HDCDs I could but only 40 of my +2500 CDs are HDCDs. 😩
@@clickbeetle2720 I bought my first CD-player summer 1986
@@birgerolovsson5203 I think he means a player with HDCD decoder.
@@BB.......... I have an Oppo BDP-95 and that one plays HDCD.
My Oppo UDP-205 plays my dBpoweramp-riped "HDCDs"
@@birgerolovsson5203 I use Foobar2000 to play CD rips, and I also own a Denon DVD-3910 that has HDCD decoding, and a vintage Parasound DAC-1100HD with HDCD.
Definitely no insane amount of bits and sample frequency can change the fact that a bad recording is a bad recording. One of my favorite Coldplay albums X&Y has been butchered with compression that no matter how high res file I’m being served by Apple Music (192/24) it still sounds awful vs great recording/ mix in CD quality (for example my latest obsession Eva Cassidy’s Nightbird album) (44.1/16 on AM)
I like to think there is a special place in hell for all those sound engineers who dare to destroy excellent music with awful mixes. (Looking at Max Martin with what he did with Adele’s 30 album)
That was a hard thumbs-up, you need to turn the fudge-salesman off.
Match the system to the CD.
Not the CD to the system .
That didnt answer the question.
You didn’t touch on SACD…
This video is about HDCD
@@Snolferd wow. Thanks for that insightful reply.. you’re clearly a master of technology and know everything. Thanks for taking the time for re-iterating the title to me. I might’ve missed its point.
I expected him to mention SACD as being better... especially since PSAUDIO OCTAVE are still producing them!
thx for writing guys, Im carefully studying this field.
There used to be ‘gold’ CDs that claimed to be high def. Is that this????
No. They were marked as XDCD.
One of the two Masterminds behind the hdcd codec is Prof. Keith Johnson. And of course Referece Recording is using hdcd on their CD's, guess who is sticking behind Reference Recording? And actually I'm with Paul, all the Labels are using Hdcd, are known for their high quality records and thats rules first. The quality at the beginning of the chain.
The question is this, “what is good enough?”… when you sit 8 feet from a tv with a resolution of 1080p, then you compare it with a 4k tv at the same distance, can you really tell the difference? The answer is no!… but in technical terms you know you are looking at an image of twice the resolution of 1080p, so you are telling your brain “it has to be better”, but it’s actually no different from 8 ft away because the human eye is not that good, I do wish “audiophiles” would cut the bullshit!
I can remember watching an advert for a TV, and I thought "wow, that's got a good picture" then I realized that I was seeing it on my own TV!
HDCD's are simply fantastic
Dsd files are too large for cd
Again you're repeating your videos I'm not sure why
This was on the Octave records channel, not on this one
@@D1N02 I think it was on here as well I don't watch that channel generally
@@hoobsgroove That doesn't stop RUclips from suggesting it to you.
@@D1N02 😂😂😆
Hey maybe give Paul a break. He did a hdcd video on here, but it was 4 years ago. That means he came up with 1,400 different topics in between then. Back years ago, cartoonists tried to space about a four weeks apart, jokes about Joey Butafuco.
I compared various HDCD rips to CD rips and, other than the rare occasion when peak extension is actually used, the 20-bit (packaged in 24-bit) files are identical to 16-bit CD. Same exact bits. No benefit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As far as I can remember there was a Freeware HDCD-Decoder at that time and maybe still around. You have to rip the CD-track and then run the Decoder over it! It's all about the least important bit turning an algorithm on or off, that has an effect on the 15 bit before or not.