Sorry I am not in a position to help you on this but I too have a few discs that says HDCD on cover but they are not HDCD coded, for example

1. BeeGees , One night live
2. Neil Young - Prairie Wind
3. Mark Knopfler - Sailing to Philadelphia.

I thought it must be an India way of short charging the customers, all these were Indian made CD's.

On the other hand there are a lot of Country music that is HDCD encoded but without any credit on labels.

I will try to give you an explanation by giving you an example.Greece has the rights for a certain cd title.Say, the newest Roger Waters's "On an island" which is recorded in hdcd.Depending on the company,when they record it,in this instance in greece,their equipment are not hdcd compatible.In a few words,they make a copy of the original cd,not hdcd encoded,but still use a copy of the original cover that says "hdcd encoded".In a few words,it is a legal copy only the companies don't care too much about quality as long as their sales are up.

That is usually called "consumer fraud". Improperly labeling the product, claiming it to be/do one thing when it's not. they might as well label them SACD, then see if anyone notices that they ain't.

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Last year I bought Brad Paisley's album "Time Well Wasted" on CD. It says on the back that it's an HDCD recording but when I try to play it in HDCD mode on my Audio Alchemy rig (DDS Pro, DTI Pro32, DDE v.3), the HDCD light doesn't come on.

The signal that tells the decoder that the CD is HDCD-encoded is buried in the LSB of the audio data. Incompetent mastering or processing of the audio data post-mastering can both eliminate this buried code, unfortunately.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

And, if the code is "eliminated", the player will default to which set of operations? Is this a user selectable choice somewhere in the menus?

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Say, the newest Roger Waters's "On an island" which is recorded in hdcd

Actually, that's David Gilmour, and I will have to look again, but I do not recall the USA version being HDCD encoded. I may have missed it.

Also, I think HDCD is used in the mastering process, not the recording, right?

And to add one more title to the improperly labeled (or improperly encoded) list, the Dixie Chicks previous effort, "Home".

Brian

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if the code is "eliminated", the player will default to which set of operations?

The default setting is to play the CD with the HDCD decoding inactivated.

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Is this a user selectable choice somewhere in the menus?

No. The switching is intended to be automatic, activated by the buried code in the LSB.

HDCD encoding, BTW, is applied in the CD mastering when the hi-def original data are reduced to 16-bit word-length and 44.1kHz bandwidth. It preserves some of the quality of the original.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

Mr. Atkinson, could you elaborate on the concequence of loosing the HDCD bit on the quality of such discs, please? Asked because I had noticed slightly longer reverberaion of bass notes when playing HDCD cd's on non HDCD encoded players.

If the last bit is lost is it just the HDCD decoder wont kick in and will it be like playing the disc on non HDCD player? asked becase I did not feel the looser bass with the discs I mentioned.

I had this same issue come up a number of years ago with a customer who bought the Music Hall 25 and they were upset that the light did not come on with a certain supposedly HDCD encoded disc. Come to find out it would not decode on any HDCD player we could find and a note to the disc manufacturer claimed a problem in the mastering/ (I think pressing process?) that caused the problem in some runs of discs. It was NOT the fault of the Music Hall Player.

Maybe someone could enlighten us as to the difference in the pit structure for HDCD and if this is a mastering or a pressing problem.

No need to look.It IS david Gilmour.My mistake,although i only wanted to give an example.There is nothing wrong with that particular cd.

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No need to look.It IS david Gilmour.My mistake,although i only wanted to give an example.There is nothing wrong with that particular cd.

I knew it was Gilmour, what I was going to check was whether or not it was HDCD....I just don't recall.

Cheers!

Brian

Hi brian
Nope,neither.as i said,just an example.

Here's an ongoing HDCD thread at head-fi.org. It seeks to identify HDCD-encoded CDs that are either unmarked or unidentified on other websites.

http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=67082&highlight=hdcd

My player isn't HDCD capable, but I sure do like the way HDCDs sound through it. There must be some residual benefit even for non HDCD players. Or, and possibly more accurate, the discs were simply recorded better.