HDCD DACS

[Blumlein 88]

@Blumlein 88 - I know you are a smart guy, and I sure hope you are right about jitter being pretty much of a non-problem. It would make my equipment decisions much easier . . .

Enlightened Audio Design DSP-1000 Series III D/A processor Measurements

Sidebar 2: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

According to this it has low measured jitter. This with the PMD100 filter. The method of measurement was done differently than is done today.

 

[AudioStudies]

Enlightened Audio Design DSP-1000 Series III D/A processor Measurements

Sidebar 2: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

According to this it has low measured jitter. This with the PMD100 filter. The method of measurement was done differently than is done today.

Article depicts 1000 series, mine is the 7000 series Mark III, however I speculate the 7000 series would match or exceed the 1000 series.

 

[Sbud51]

I am also interested in opinions on the best stand alone CD players that offered HDCD. EAD made one that I had quite a while back, and it was a very good one for its time. I just bought a California Audio Labs unit that is on the way to me.

I have an Ultech UCD-100 that I’ve owned since 1998. Still working fine ( display lights are burnt out). I believe it has a Texas Instruments PCM 17xx ( 82,84,92?) dac chip. When I bought it I had been using your standard $100 CD player and the Ultech ( about$1400 at that time) completely blew my mind. I got to play my entire CD collection over again like they were something totally new. That’s before I even bought an HDCD disc. No idea how it measures up today, but I still keep it hooked up to play my HDCD discs. If you can find one I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t cost you much.

 

[Toad]

This is the problem with being a Neil Young fan who has collected nearly 30 years worth of Neil CDs within the HDCD era. Of course the "problem" is solved if you are OK with replacing everything in your collection with hi-res files, as you can mostly stop worrying about HDCD decoding. For 25 years I had an old carousel Denon CD player hooked into a Parasound DAC that handled HDCD. But when the carousel player finally broke down, I upgraded to a new CD player (two years ago) that has USB capabilities. So I obtained lots of hi-res stuff on memory sticks that replace HDCD discs. But there are some things that have not been replaced and this new Denon DCD-800NE CD has a great DAC (superior to the Parasound) but it doesn't decode HDCD. Fortunately, I still have the1995 Parasound external DAC that handles HDCD. So I can listen three different ways now:

1) Denon CD player analog out to my 2009 Denon receiver. (Denon 800NE CD player DAC, no HDCD)
2) Denon CD player digital out to the Parasound and then analog out to Denon receiver (Parasound DAC, HDCD)
3) Denon CD player digital out to Parasound and then digital out to the Denon receiver (Denon Receiver DAC, HDCD)

I can choose from three different DACs and compare. I do hear more bass through the Parasound (#2: analog out option) when playing HDCD discs compared to not using it and just playing them straight through the new 800NE player (option #1). If I do digital out from the Parasound into the receiver (#3), I think I am still getting the HDCD info decoded before the receiver's DAC takes over, but the volume is lowest using this option and makes it sorta hard to compare. It seems that usually, the overall sound is best skipping the HDCD decoding and just going with the first and simplest option: Denon 800NE CD player analog out to receiver (example: Neil Young Archives II HDCD discs sound VERY smooth and good in option #1 that decodes none of the HDCD data). An exception seems to be Mirror Ball. It does sound best with option #2. And I found a disc that seems to sound best using the 3rd method (HDCD Big Time single with bonus tracks).

So to summarize this mess, new DACs that can't do HDCD may sound better than old DACs that can but there are occasional exceptions. If you can upgrade to hi-res, do that. Or you can try doing all that laborious computer work with the fancy programs to turn your HDCD discs into files if you are into that sorta thing.

 

[AudioStudies]

So to summarize this mess, new DACs that can't do HDCD may sound better than old DACs that can but there are occasional exceptions. If you can upgrade to hi-res, do that.

Yes, this is the same thing that I have found but the exceptions are a bit more frequent than occasional.

 

[Toad]

Yes, this is the same thing that I have found but the exceptions are a bit more frequent than occasional.

In my case, the new DAC that can't do HDCD sounds better than the old one that can in most instances. But there is about a 25 year difference between the two. The new one has a more natural sound when compared to the old one, regardless of HDCD abilities.

 

[Al So Rand]

Ha,

I was surfing around the topics here being a fairly new member and I was surprised to see people still talking about HDCD equipped DAC's.
I built my first stand alone kit DAC in the early 90's because that's all I could afford at the time while starting a young family.
I built the Parts Connexion Assemblage DAC 2.0. I mated it up with the Sonic Frontiers Ultra Jitterbug, which had the same chassis dimensions.
The 2.0 came equipped with HDCD and I used to play a few of those CD's in the day.
My DAC has the Burr-Brown 1702 DAC chip. The 3.0 kit came out shortly after with the much sought after 1704 DAC chips but that was out of my price range back then.
I fabbed some nice BNC digital interconnects and also installed a BNC port into my old Philips CD 650 turning it into a Transport.
Ah, those were fun times...
I still have everything even the Phillips CD 650 from the early 80's.
A really stunning display of what HDCD could do was the band 311's Transistor CD... The word holographic comes to mind..
And a few others CD's of bands that I forget were also HDCD...When I ripped those CD's to Foobar I engaged the HDCD toggle...

 

[Dialectic]

IMHO, the only reason for anyone to be interested in HDCD CDs/files is that they must have been mastered using a Pacific Microsonics Model One (or Two) - there's no other way of encoding any HDCD processes. The PM was considered pretty much the best ADC around in the late-90s/early-00s.

I owned a Model Two for many years (before selling it to a mastering house in Paris). I tried all of its HDCD 16-bit processing, and remained sceptical, so just used it in 24-bit mode instead. Though I personally have no need for this, were I to want to create a 16-bit file from one of these 24-bit files, I would simply use dither.

If you're on the lookout for an HDCD DAC, I'd suggest you try to find one with the PMD200 filter. The only one that I've had experience with is the Esoteric D70 (which I also owned for many years).

I've ripped all my HDCD CDs with HDCD.exe engaged, though I'm not sure exactly which HDCD processes it actually decodes.

FWIW, I don't think MQA is analogous to HDCD. At least with HDCD, you know that the absolute best equipment available at the time was used during mastering. MQA is all smoke and mirrors.

Mani.

We need to find a way for Amir to measure the PM converters....

 

[manisandher]

We need to find a way for Amir to measure the PM converters....

I have the measurements taken at the time for my actual PM2 unit. Good for the early '00s I think, but not competitive with modern equipment I suspect. Here's the DAC/ADC loopback measurement:



Mani.