Pauly
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Post by Pauly on Jan 7, 2013 14:37:21 GMT -5
I thought the ERC-2 did HDCD It does. |
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Post by wintermute on Jan 7, 2013 14:49:25 GMT -5
I don't see the point of having the XDA-2 support DSD since it is only two channel. Most if not all SACDs have a multi-channel (5.0 or 5.1) track, but must I've purchased lately do not have a 2.0 DSD track.
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cawgijoe
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Post by cawgijoe on Jan 7, 2013 15:03:47 GMT -5
So can the ERC-1.....HDCD.....
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Post by geebo on Jan 7, 2013 15:05:50 GMT -5
I don't see the point of having the XDA-2 support DSD since it is only two channel. Most if not all SACDs have a multi-channel (5.0 or 5.1) track, but must I've purchased lately do not have a 2.0 DSD track. And to do so would require an HDMI input. So it would require a hardware change in addition to a firmware change. |
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Post by Cory Cooper on Jan 7, 2013 15:12:06 GMT -5
So can the ERC-1.....HDCD..... Yes, the ERC-1 and ERC-2 both have HDCD playback capability. C |
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Post by reedermw on Jan 7, 2013 15:59:42 GMT -5
So if the XDA-1 is derived from the DAC of the ERC-2, does that mean that the XDA-1 supports HDCD? There is no light on the front panel to indicate whether it does or not.
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Post by garbulky on Jan 7, 2013 16:01:51 GMT -5
I don't think it works that way reedermw. The XDA-1 only accepts PCM signals. So whatever the CD player outputs digitally in PCM it will take. The CD player is the one that has to deal with the HDCD conversion to PCM.
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hemster
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Post by hemster on Jan 7, 2013 16:10:23 GMT -5
FWIW, HDCD requires decoding and as such is a function of the player, not the DAC. The ERC-2 does indeed play HDCDs.  |
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Post by reedermw on Jan 7, 2013 16:11:28 GMT -5
Hmm, I thought that HDCD was just encoded into the redbook audio PCM format kind of like the early Dolby Digital codecs. The extra info is encoded at some really low volume like -80db and when a player recognizes it, it adds it into the resulting output and bumps up the volume of the data to normal. I thought this feature was part of the DAC itself rather than something extra a CD player did.
I found another discussion where someone suggested converting a 16/44 flac into a 24/44 wav that included the normalized HDCD content in the file and thus bypass the question of hardware support. I've heard of this process in the past but many of my CD's don't indicate that they are HDCD and sadly my CD transport doesn't have a HDCD light so I'm kind of in the dark about which recordings to even attempt it on.
These are the manual steps to convert the flac:
Just Google "hdcd.exe" for the utility.
1. Rip to FLAC
2. "flac -d track1.flac", to get the equivalent WAV
3. "hdcd.exe < track1.wav > track1_hdcd.wav"
4. "flac -e track1_hdcd.wav", to get the HDCD decode into FLAC format
5. Import the HDCD version of the file into my library, marking the album as [HDCD]
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Post by monkumonku on Jan 7, 2013 17:08:07 GMT -5
FWIW, HDCD requires decoding and as such is a function of the player, not the DAC. The ERC-2 does indeed play HDCDs. Question on HDCD: what happens if you rip a CD into a flac file on your hard drive and stream it - are the benefits of HDCD in the flac file or do you have to actually play the CD in an HDCD-capable player such as the ERC-2 to realize the benefit? [edit] Gee as I was typing my question someone was posting an answer. So you need some sort of utility in order to have HDCD within a flac file, it sounds like. It isn't automatically there. |
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hemster
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Post by hemster on Jan 7, 2013 17:15:57 GMT -5
FWIW, HDCD requires decoding and as such is a function of the player, not the DAC. The ERC-2 does indeed play HDCDs. Question on HDCD: what happens if you rip a CD into a flac file on your hard drive and stream it - are the benefits of HDCD in the flac file or do you have to actually play the CD in an HDCD-capable player such as the ERC-2 to realize the benefit? [edit] Gee as I was typing my question someone was posting an answer. So you need some sort of utility in order to have HDCD within a flac file, it sounds like. It isn't automatically there. Yes, it can be done. Also note that being owned by Microsoft, all recent versions of Windows Media Player supports HDCD decoding. However, bear in mind that WMP and HDCD.exe do not apply transient filters even if the disk has this feature enabled so software decoding will not be as good as hardware. |
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Post by ribbonking on Jan 7, 2013 17:17:51 GMT -5
I don't see the point of having the XDA-2 support DSD since it is only two channel. Most if not all SACDs have a multi-channel (5.0 or 5.1) track, but must I've purchased lately do not have a 2.0 DSD track. There is a growing interest and increasing availablility of 2-channel DSD files via download. I went to a very interesting presentation at THE Show in Newport Beach, CA last year on this very topic. The panel felt that DSD is the future for audiophile quality recordings. Blue Coast Records is one source. See the link. bluecoastrecords.com/I have also downloaded free DSD sample files from www.2l.no/I don't yet have a DSD capable DAC but if you use the J. River Media Player it will convert DSD files to PCM and play them through an XDA-2. I do that now and the the recording quality is excellent. I do plan to buy a DSD capable DAC in the future once the market develops. There are a few available now and I expect that number to grow and the price for DSD capable DAC's to decline over time. Here's a link to an article that lists currently available DSD capable DAC's. www.audiostream.com/content/dsd-ready-dacs-short-list |
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hemster
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Post by hemster on Jan 7, 2013 17:22:23 GMT -5
Found the information below which may be of interest to those considering conversion: HDCD.exe will input the 16-bit WAV data and if it finds the embedded HDCD info, it will upconvert it to 24-bits. The last 4 bits of this 24-bit file are empty, so your DAC just sees it as a 20-bit file. For more information on how to use this command line utility read this thread at Doom9's forum. Apparently it will still work with non-HDCD encoded files, but the volume will be cut in half. So maybe this isn't the best method. Or, supposedly there's a way to check if the file is HDCD encoded using hdcd.exe in test mode. So it's probably a good idea to check if the file is HDCD encoded first.Alternatively you can use dbPoweramp which I believe has a plug-in for HDCDs. This works better and lets you use all 24 bits. |
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Post by reedermw on Jan 7, 2013 17:34:20 GMT -5
monkumonku, It's my understanding that if your DAC knows how to decode HDCD, that the information is embedded within the flac file and thus will work if present. The specs of the AD1955 are located here: www.analog.com/static/imported-files/data_sheets/AD1955.pdf I noticed that it states: "The AD1955 also has an interface for SACD playback and an external digital filter interface for use with an external digital interpolation filter or HDCD decoder". That makes it sound like HDCD support is provided by an external component and not part of the AD1955. So unless the XDA-1 (or XDA-2) specifically contained that external component, it wouldn't know how to decode HDCD. |
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Post by reedermw on Jan 7, 2013 17:38:03 GMT -5
Nice find hemster, dbpoweramp pro is a nice utility. I think I'll write a script to scan my library and run the hdcd.exe in test mode to report back which files have embedded HDCD.
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