What ever happened to HDCD?

[PHC1]

I never had a significant amount of HDCD but I do recall they were generally very good sounding. Is HDCD dead altogether now?

[crwilli]

I had a few HDCD discs. One was Willie Nelson’s Teatro. It seemed to be about 4 or 5 dB louder than all my other CDs. Didn’t sound any better when I adjusted the volume.

[vintage_tube]

It's not dead if you still have some.

Is MS still licensing this format? Wonder how long the licensing was for? dunno. They bought it from Pacific Microsonics.

To me, it just sound louder not fuller as Craig mentions. Some mention it also degraded the sound.

I recall reading something Steve Hoffman wrote to Stephen Marsh (Stephen Marsh Mastering) and found it. It states:

"Steve,

".....In the interest of giving the HDCD system the fairest of all shakes, I again today ran our completed Bad Co. master through it D to D in 2 additional configurations. First I took our fully prepped, edited 24 bit/44.1 out of converter aes through the HDCD box, outputting 16/44.1 HDCD. Second - I took our 24/88.2 captures and ran those through the box to 16/44.1 HDCD. In both instances we found the HDCD box to be at least as detrimental to the sound as we heard while A to D'ing with it Friday - if not more! In particular - I listened to the HDCD encoded material in un-decoded fashion so I could get a sense of what most consumers are going to hear. Even through the best converters in the room the results were very unsettling: Namely - there was a dip at around 8K that took all the snap and sparkle out of the snare and deflated the air out of the tracks. Engaging the decoding circuits and monitoring through the HDCD D to A's lent an overall 'generic' feel to the sound - it sounded fine, don't get me wrong - but it didn't sound special and was certainly not an improvement.

I would strongly recommend that we keep going with our present tried and true pure signal processing and A to D configuration as I am now certain it provides the absolute highest fidelity available in a 16 bit CD format. When I play the Phil Collins, James Taylor and Byrds albums we have mastered I can't imagine degrading the sound just to get the HDCD. While I completely understand Audio Fidelity's desire for consistency in this regard across all their CD releases, moving forward with HDCD on future releases that you and I master together would run counter to the ethos of the Audio Fidelity brand and our personal mastering styles."

Best,


-Steph


Stephen Marsh Mastering
Hollywood, CA 90028"

There were many, many CD's encoded with HDCD format but did not mention nor print the logo anywhere on the CD nor case. For example, a couple:

ZZ Top - Eliminator Collectors Edition is HDCD. No HDCD logo on the package or CD.
'97 Sony remaster of Dave Brubeck Time Out is encoded in HDCD but not listed anywhere.
Stephen Stills - Manassas

With the increase in loudness and comments from many others, I never bought into the format.

Best Sir,

Bob

[jdandy]

Bob.......

[PHC1]

Originally Posted by vintage_tube

It's not dead if you still have some.

Is MS still licensing this format? Wonder how long the licensing was for? dunno. They bought it from Pacific Microsonics.

To me, it just sound louder not fuller as Craig mentions. Some mention it also degraded the sound.

I recall reading something Steve Hoffman wrote to Stephen Marsh (Stephen Marsh Mastering) and found it. It states:

"Steve,

".....In the interest of giving the HDCD system the fairest of all shakes, I again today ran our completed Bad Co. master through it D to D in 2 additional configurations. First I took our fully prepped, edited 24 bit/44.1 out of converter aes through the HDCD box, outputting 16/44.1 HDCD. Second - I took our 24/88.2 captures and ran those through the box to 16/44.1 HDCD. In both instances we found the HDCD box to be at least as detrimental to the sound as we heard while A to D'ing with it Friday - if not more! In particular - I listened to the HDCD encoded material in un-decoded fashion so I could get a sense of what most consumers are going to hear. Even through the best converters in the room the results were very unsettling: Namely - there was a dip at around 8K that took all the snap and sparkle out of the snare and deflated the air out of the tracks. Engaging the decoding circuits and monitoring through the HDCD D to A's lent an overall 'generic' feel to the sound - it sounded fine, don't get me wrong - but it didn't sound special and was certainly not an improvement.

I would strongly recommend that we keep going with our present tried and true pure signal processing and A to D configuration as I am now certain it provides the absolute highest fidelity available in a 16 bit CD format. When I play the Phil Collins, James Taylor and Byrds albums we have mastered I can't imagine degrading the sound just to get the HDCD. While I completely understand Audio Fidelity's desire for consistency in this regard across all their CD releases, moving forward with HDCD on future releases that you and I master together would run counter to the ethos of the Audio Fidelity brand and our personal mastering styles."

Best,


-Steph


Stephen Marsh Mastering
Hollywood, CA 90028"

There were many, many CD's encoded with HDCD format but did not mention nor print the logo anywhere on the CD nor case. For example, a couple:

ZZ Top - Eliminator Collectors Edition is HDCD. No HDCD logo on the package or CD.
'97 Sony remaster of Dave Brubeck Time Out is encoded in HDCD but not listed anywhere.
Stephen Stills - Manassas

With the increase in loudness and comments from many others, I never bought into the format.

Best Sir,

Bob

Interesting. I had mostly Jazz and some Blues but not many. Thanks for the info Bob.

[vintage_tube]

Audio Fidelity eventually dropped HDCD from their remastering efforts -- and concentrates now on SACD hybrids (for the most part anyways - used to be a subscriber & dropped out -- so now pick and choose from their offerings).

Best Sir,

Bob

[vegaracer1]

Thanks for the info Bob.

[tima]

Perhaps the most continuous source of HDCD recordings has been Reference Recordings.

I reviewed this RR album (as an LP) a short while back. It was released in 2015 and available as a hybrid SACD and stereo CD with HDCD. It is a great example of this symphony





Quite a few albums in the Reference Recordings current catalog available in HDCD.

[eljr]

Originally Posted by PHC1

I never had a significant amount of HDCD but I do recall they were generally very good sounding. Is HDCD dead altogether now?

always annoyed me that the Grateful Dead supported the format so heavily

[phishphan]

The Grateful Dead still release all their archival releases on HDCD. I use DB poweramp to rip the CDs.