I did chuckle, but then I've done some silly things in the pursuit of good sound. Which leads me to the issue of HDCD. This new high-res version of the humble CD is all the rage in Japan apparently, but on auditioning one of these discs last night I can't hear why. Admittedly one needs a player with a decoder but even on standard players we are told the sonic improvements are significant. Not for me, they ain't, although I have yet to listen via Windows Media Player, which does decode HDCD. More assessment and a review will follow.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Doing it in the dark
I've been known to dabble in snake oil from time to time, but some people go a little too far. One particular poster on a hi-fi forum only listens to music in the dark because she believes the strings sound silkier that way. But what about daytime listening, I enquired? Self-adhesive tinfoil, was the answer. Apparently blackout blinds and curtains are no good, so she has applied this stuff to the windows of her listening room to ensure no light gets through.
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HDCD has been around for a while. I have a number of Grateful Dead discs in HDCD format (they're hybrids). However, I don't have a player, and it turns out that Microsoft has bought the technology (or patents or whatever), and has pretty much abandoned it (which leads one to wonder why they bought it) and there are hardly any devices left to play these discs.
ReplyDeleteKirk
ReplyDeleteYes, it is strange that Microsoft should buy the technology and then not use it. that said wmp 10 and above are designed to decoded HDCD, which can then be played via a 24-bit sound card. As for stand-alone players there are only a few with decoders. I will try the WMP test soon and see whether that makes any difference, though ti would have to be a quantum leap before it comes even close to a well recorded SACD, for example.
i know Stereophile and others have declared SACD is dead, yet the number of new releases is actually rising year on year, with more labels joining in all the time (Mariinsky, BR Klassik, for instance).
Well, it may be that the labels are lagging behind reality. There are very few SACD players available - I looked recently out of curiosity. The only ones are very expensive.
ReplyDeleteNot so, the Sony SCD-XE597 costs less than £150. The reality is that the number of SACD titles is rising steadily. But, as Robert von Bahr at BIS has pointed out, SACDs are more expensive to produce, so smaller labels have to pick and choose what to record on SACD.
ReplyDeleteI suppose it may all come down to hard economics and a perceived fall off in demand for physical media. In the meantime there is enough enticing product to sustain this niche market for a while yet.
Dan,
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned, ". . . even on standard players we are told the sonic improvements are significant." Were we, by any chance, also told HOW this was possible?
I've a feeling that the reason they "ain't" for you is simply that they "ain't" at all, not for you, nor for me, nor for anybody else.
A RED Book standard CD player can only play RED Book standard CD audio, nothing less - and certainly nothing more, because the sound quality is limited by its basic design parameters, such as 16-bit linear resolution and 44.1 KHz sampling rate. Or have the Japanese finally developed the legendary "wizard's wand" into a technological tool?
It seems to me that it would require the application of the legendary "wizard's wand" to get anything further.
Standard CD players have improved in sound quality over the years through improvements in DACs, the chips that convert the digital data to sound. Other than that, there's nothing in an expensive CD player that's any better than a cheap one (aside, perhaps, from programming features, etc.).
ReplyDeletePaul
ReplyDeleteYes, I think RR's claims are a little exaggerated. Using the WMP option the music 'fills out' a bit, but it's nothing very special.
Having auditioend the disc seevral times my initial reservations stand. That said, I do realise this is only oen disc and others may be better recorded.
Kirk
Your earlier comment about Microsoft and HDCD is an interesting one. From the research I've done MS aren't exactly falling over themselves to promote it. I wonder why?
HDCD: I don't know. I don't know why they'd buy the technology unless a) they planned to do something with it, or b) they wanted to kill it. Maybe it's the latter.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kirk that that the sound quality from a standard CD player has improved. However, this is only inasmuch as the player is doing a better job of converting the information stored on the CD.
ReplyDeleteThe point I was trying to express, however, was that a standard player can only process a STANDARD CD or, equivalently, a "layer" on some higher-definition format that it recognises as standard CD. It won't even "see" the information that yields higher quality audio.
Hence, popping a HDCD into a standard CD player cannot result in ANY "sonic improvements", never mind "significant" ones. The claim that Dan reports is thus rather more than "a little exaggerated" - it's another case of "it must be better, because the man says it is"!