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Wrong again

There are many implementations of HDCD playback.

There are only one-and-a-half implementations of HDCD encoding -- The Pacific Microsonics Models One and Two. Both of these were designed largely by Keith Johnson. The Model Two adds support for higher sample rates.

I'll say it again, as you didn't seem to catch it the first time. The main reason that HDCD sounds good has *very little* to do with the compansion that is alleged to be the heart of the HDCD process.

In fact, the compansion can be switched off by the mastering engineer. In that case you are left with exactly three things that contribute to good sound:

a) Selectable dither.

b) Two anti-alias filters that are selected on-the-fly on the basis of the spectral content of the music. (This process was duplicated on the playback side by Meitner with his Bidat.)

c) Good sounding analog circuits, clocks, power supplies, et cetera designed by Keith Johnson.

And if you stop to think about it for a second, you will realize that exactly zero of these sonic benefits require HDCD capabilities by the playback machine.

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