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Teresa wrote, "So Pacific Microsonics has made claims that are untrue?"

I wouldn't say "untrue" as I don't know of any flat-out lies they made, but I would say definitely misleading. The most egregious example of this was when they released their sampler that allegedly compared non-HDCD against HDCD. What they negelected to tell you was that the non-HDCD track was made using the (atrocious sounding) Sony 1630 A/D converter and the HDCD track was made with the (excellent sounding) Keith Johnson A/D converter. This was an unfair, depceptive "comparison".

They could have chosen to make a valid comparison by simply turning the HDCD features on and off when using the Keith Johnson A/D converter. But they instead chose to sell by misleading the public.

Teresa wrote, "It is often hard to seperate advertising from science."

Agreed, which is what I've been attempting to do in this thread.

Teresa wrote, "Anyway I am quite pleased with HDCD recordings that originate from HDCD masters."

Also agreed. When first introduced, the HDCD A/D converter was head and shoulders above anything else on the market. It is still one of the best converters out there. (It was discontinued a couple of years ago, but is still used by many mastering houses.) The only thing I was trying to clarify was *why* HDCD recordings sound good in general.

Specifically, the primary sonic advantage of HDCD discs is due to the high performance of Keith Johnsons's circuitry. The compansion scheme optionally used on the encode side (and that is the *sole* basis of HDCD decoding) only provides an arguable sonic improvement, and one that is clearly smaller than KJ's circuitry. Finally, there is an unknown percentage of "HDCD" discs that are encoded without any compansion features enabled, and that there is no benefit *whatsoever* to playing back these discs on an HDCD-equipped playback machine.


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  • You're welcome - Charles Hansen 22:00:32 12/21/05 (0)


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