HDCD help please


Hi. I just bought a gently used Arcam Alpha 8SE CD/HDCD player. I have been looking on ebay and other websites for CDs designated "HDCD", with limited success. Some of the sites mention that contains music that "has been digitally remastered using HDCD technology." Does this mean that these discs will offer greater performance in my Arcam HDCD player? Does anyone know of a source for HDCD discs? I'm beginning to think I should have gone the SACD route, but there doesn't seem to be many of those either. Thoughts?? Advice?? Many thanks.
klipschking

Showing 1 response by carl109

My limited understanding is that HDCD discs are encoded using 20bit instead of 16bit, giving a more accurate and detailed analog waveform result. It should be an improvement on standard Redbook CD's, and I would assume that discs labelled "digitally remastered using HDCD technology" means they have the 20bit samples; standard CD players must ignore the extra 4 bits, but will still play them.

Unfortunately, HDCD didn't seem to catch on, probably due to SACD and DVD-A. I had a basic DVD player that was HDCD capable, but could find very few discs here in Australia, so ended up buying a good standard CD player instead.