HDCD on Berkeley Alpha DAC Series 3 - Any Others?

[Vinyl Rules!]

I have a large number of HDCD encoded CD’s.

Are there any other relatively modern DAC’s besides the Berkeley Alpha DAC Series 3 that offer HDCD decoding?

I have an old Adcom GDA-700 DAC that has a Pacific Microsonics HDCD decoder chip, but I suspect newer DAC’s sound much better on Redbook CD’s than my ageing Adcom DAC.

I’m finding it difficult to justify spending $10,995 on the Berkeley Alpha DAC Series 3 just to play back less than about 1,500 HDCD encoded CD’s.

Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[Puma Cat]

Personally, I don’t know of any. As you likely know, Pacific Microsonics, who developed the format, folded in 2000, and HDCD format was discontinued by Microsoft in 2005. So, looking at it from the perspective of “technical” product development, sales, and distribution, I don’t why any current DAC manufacturer today would expend the fully-burdened cost of R&D, product development, parts & logistics, QA, and QC, as well as sales and warranty support, to support a digital encoding format that was discontinued almost 20 years ago. It doesn’t make sense from a business perspective because the additional sales revenue they’d obtain from the very small installed-base of customers with your exact product requirements that MAY buy it, isn’t likely to return a profit from the fully-burdened costs of developing, manufacturing, selling, and supporting it.

Acc. to Wikipedia, Panasonic DVD players and the Oppo line of players featured HDCD decoding, several Yamaha Blu-ray players, and some Emotiva CD players could decode HDCD, so maybe you could find a used Oppo or an Emotiva player that could be used as a transport.

HDCD is a good example of why I’ve personally stayed away from these more “esoteric” encoding formats…because they’ve had this history of “coming and going”, and why, when buying discs which I’m going to rip anyway for my music server library, I’ve standardized on “Redbook” 16/44 content. Personally, I found that the quality of the mastering is far more important than the actual digital encoding format. For example, the best sounding digital recordings that I personally own and have heard are the Audio Wave BlueNote XRCD24 jazz recordings remastered by Alan Yoshida. These are all Redbook 16/44 recordings.

So, with that, for listening to these over the long term, while it would be a major project, IMHO, your best bet would be to see if you could rip your HDCD library to FLAC using dBpoweramp. Alternatively, you could use MusicBee or Exact Audio Copy.

That way, you could use any DAC of your choice, now and in the future.

[Formerly YB-2]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

Personally, I found that the quality of the mastering is far more important than the actual digital encoding format.

IMHO, your best bet would be to rip your HDCD library to FLAC using dBpoweramp. That way, you could use any DAC of your choice, now and in the future.

Could not agree more on the quality of the mastering to be more important than the format when it comes to digital (though SACD is well done in my experience). As I've gotten more into streaming & downloads, I'm finding only about ~60% of digital to be 'up to snuff' for being well mastered. By comparison, I find that ~90% of new vinyl to be well done.

And, have also found dBpoweramp to be easy to use for ripping CDs to file.

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by Formerly YB-2

Could not agree more on the quality of the mastering to be more important than the format when it comes to digital (though SACD is well done in my experience).

Yup!

Originally Posted by Formerly YB-2

As I've gotten more into streaming & downloads, I'm finding only about ~60% of digital to be 'up to snuff' for being well mastered. By comparison, I find that ~90% of new vinyl to be well done.
And, have also found dBpoweramp to be easy to use for ripping CDs to file.

I haven’t tried it, but dBpoweramp is “legendary”, as it were, for these applications, as you know. Personally, I use XLD for ripping any new content to FLAC as it’s really easy to use, but then again, I’m presently only buying well-mastered Redbook content on disc. What I’ve been doing, Glenn, is if I find a recording I really like from discovering it on Qobuz, then I’ll buy the disc, rip it to FLAC, and put the files onto the hard drive for the music server. Job done.

Cheers!

[vintage_tube]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

Personally, I don’t know of any. As you likely know, Pacific Microsonics, who developed the format, folded in 2000, and HDCD format was discontinued by Microsoft in 2005. So, looking at it from the perspective of “technical” product development, sales, and distribution, I don’t why any current DAC manufacturer today would expend the fully-burdened cost of R&D, product development, parts & logistics, QA, and QC, as well as sales and warranty support, to support a digital encoding format that was discontinued almost 20 years ago. It doesn’t make sense from a business perspective because the additional sales revenue they’d obtain from the very small installed-base of customers with your exact product requirements that MAY buy it, isn’t likely to return a profit from the fully-burdened costs of developing, manufacturing, selling, and supporting it.

Acc. to Wikipedia, Panasonic DVD players and the Oppo line of players featured HDCD decoding, several Yamaha Blu-ray players, and some Emotiva CD players could decode HDCD, so maybe you could find a used Oppo or an Emotiva player that could be used as a transport.

HDCD is a good example of why I’ve personally stayed away from these more “esoteric” encoding formats…because they’ve had this history of “coming and going”, and why, when buying discs which I’m going to rip anyway for my music server library, I’ve standardized on “Redbook” 16/44 content. Personally, I found that the quality of the mastering is far more important than the actual digital encoding format. For example, the best sounding digital recordings that I personally own and have heard are the Audio Wave BlueNote XRCD24 jazz recordings remastered by Alan Yoshida. These are all Redbook 16/44 recordings.

So, with that, for listening to these over the long term, while it would be a major project, IMHO, your best bet would be to see if you could rip your HDCD library to FLAC using dBpoweramp. Alternatively, you could use MusicBee or Exact Audio Copy.

That way, you could use any DAC of your choice, now and in the future.

You answered Tim's question & recommended a solution better than I or probably anyone else could Stephen. Well done Sir.

Bob

[clpetersen]

Great post Stephen.

agree - convert the HDCD format to a more mainstream format.

[jpgr4blu]

Spectral CD players still have HDCD decoding. They are expensive.