Unknown HDCD's

[Rabid1981]

just been listening to spiritualized - let it come down
thing is the hdcd icon just lit up on my copland, but it doesnt display the logo anywhere on the cd case. just wondering if there many more unknown hdcd cd's out there? I was told there arent many of them out there in the first place, around 250. anyone else come across some?

[Rare Bird]

They didnt always have the HDCD logo on the back cover..

[Stratmangler]

There are loads of them out there without any HDCD logo anywhere in the packaging.

Dave Brubeck - Time Out is one.
Van Halen's remasters are all HDCD encoded.
I've also got one which bears the HDCD logo but does not have the HDCD content (just as well it came as part of a 2 disc set, and one of the discs is a DVD-Audio disc).

[Rabid1981]

hmmmm, how are you supposed to find out? how about a list, with just those cd's that are HDCD encoded, but unknown. good/bad idea?

[Stratmangler]

Someone started to compile a list once...........

Then Microsoft bought Pacific Microsonics (creators of HDCD), and the lists that were available vapourised:(

[webby]

What's that album like?

[markf]

Some SACDs have a HDCD layer which you will find if you play them on a CD player rather
than a SACD player so that is something to try if you have any SACDs. I don't think HDCD
is mentioned anywhere on the disc.
And yes there was a very good website with a list of HDCDs but it seems to have gone now.

[dave2010]

I went looking and found this thread - http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/65414/hdcd-list - though it does seem perhaps rather old.
If anyone has a clue about where the original list was, then it might just be possible to recover it from the Wayback Machine - http://www.archive.org/

[HighFidelityGuy]

Well I've just googled "HDCD list" and THIS (http://www.goodwinshighend.com/music/hdcd/hdcd_recordings.htm)was the 2nd result. It seems like a fairly comprehensive list to me. :eyebrows:

[WAD62]

What's that album like?

I have the HD version too, and an HD compatible DAC

Musically it's excellent, but I'm a big spiritualized fan so a bit biased there I'm afraid,

Design wise, bloody annoying as they've emulated a 'gold disc' on the CD press so it's very easy to put in upside down, particularly after a few...

The sound quality is very good indeed, as it's a massive wall of sound, but it never seems to get out of control.

However it's the only version I have so I'm not in a good position to compare it to a non HD version, if one was ever released.

[WAD62]

I wonder what the effect is of ripping an HDCD to FLAC, presumably ripping it must reinterpret it back to standard 16 bit, and as I've just checked that the HD light is not activated when I played back the FLAC version, I assume that this must be the case.

Can anyone confirm this from a technical point of view?

I'll have a bit of a check later, as I can not differentiate between the FLAC and the CD normally, this might be a good comparison for HDCD V CD

[WAD62]

I use dBpoweramp, and apparently if I reprocess everything via it's 24bit DSP the HD's will be expanded to 24 bit, and the non HD's will be left as 16...

With 2.5k cd's I think I'll do the HD ones individually, where's that HD list again?

[WAD62]

This may be me having a thread with myself...but at least I can use it for notes:)

Just sent my original ripped FLAC version of Spiritualized 'Let it come down' through the HDCD DSP plugin for dBpoweramp (apparently it only converts to 24 if it detects HDCD encoding, otherwise it leaves it as 16bit), and it's now been converted to 24bit successfully.

I've also applied ReplayGain to the new 24bit versions, as apparently they loose volume (something to do with the 24bit simulation in 16bits)

I've put the dBpoweramp file properties in an attched file (sorry too big to upload), the left hand side is the new 24bit version, right hand side the original.

Check out the difference in ReplayGain +6 for the 24bit, and -9.5 for the 16bit, nearly 16dB!

In comparison via winamp(24bit allowed)/m-audio 2496, the 24bit sounds noticeably better, particularly the smoothness of the mid range and top end, the vocals strings and horns sound smoother.

Bugger! I've got a lot of money invested in 16bit CDs...now I'm off to check that list again...:rolleyes: