HDCD cd's

[ArveS]

Hi,

I am in the process of ripping my cd’s using Windows Media player, version 12 on a laptop with Windows 10. I have some CD’s which are decoded in HDCD format, for instance Neil Young’s album Silver & Gold. When I try to playback this CD on the computer with WMP, it sounds scrambled/distorted. It sounds good on the CD player in my home stereo system. I have read that Windows media Player support HDCD cd’s and a HDCD symbol should lit up in the player to indicate HDCD media. That does not happen. The result is that both playback of audio cd and ripped cd in FLAC or Wav format have distorted sound.

I have also tried to install foobar2000 player and added HDCD component for this player but with the same result as in Windows Media Player. Thankful for any input in this matter.  

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi ArveS, what’s question?

[davide256]

4 hours ago, ArveS said:

Hi,

I am in the process of ripping my cd’s using Windows Media player, version 12 on a laptop with Windows 10. I have some CD’s which are decoded in HDCD format, for instance Neil Young’s album Silver & Gold. When I try to playback this CD on the computer with WMP, it sounds scrambled/distorted. It sounds good on the CD player in my home stereo system. I have read that Windows media Player support HDCD cd’s and a HDCD symbol should lit up in the player to indicate HDCD media. That does not happen. The result is that both playback of audio cd and ripped cd in FLAC or Wav format have distorted sound.

I have also tried to install foobar2000 player and added HDCD component for this player but with the same result as in Windows Media Player. Thankful for any input in this matter.  

Hydrogen audio does say the rip has to be lossless for WMP to work. HDCD had a lot of features that few understood how to implement. It may be more reliable for

you to use dbPoweramp and its HDCD decoder with HDCD rips, that will get you a 20 bit recording that should behave well in any media player.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Windows Media Player can only identify HDCD. It can’t decode it. 

[pkane2001]

5 hours ago, ArveS said:

Hi,

I am in the process of ripping my cd’s using Windows Media player, version 12 on a laptop with Windows 10. I have some CD’s which are decoded in HDCD format, for instance Neil Young’s album Silver & Gold. When I try to playback this CD on the computer with WMP, it sounds scrambled/distorted. It sounds good on the CD player in my home stereo system. I have read that Windows media Player support HDCD cd’s and a HDCD symbol should lit up in the player to indicate HDCD media. That does not happen. The result is that both playback of audio cd and ripped cd in FLAC or Wav format have distorted sound.

I have also tried to install foobar2000 player and added HDCD component for this player but with the same result as in Windows Media Player. Thankful for any input in this matter.  

 

dbPowerAmp can rip HDCDs with decoding to 24 bit format. That's what I used for about 20 or so HDCDs I had in my collection a few years ago.

[sandyk]

Does EAC correctly rip HDCD encoding? | Steve Hoffman ...forums.stevehoffman.tv › ... › Audio Hardware
Apr 3, 2009 — Yes. EAC rips an HDCD encoded disc exactly they way it's on the disc - IOW, bit perfect. Which means that the 16/44 PCM file has a HDCD flag and EAC accurately reproduces that flag in the ripped wav file.
HDCD ripping properly to 24bit FLAC | Steve Hoffman Music ...
30 Nov 2017
How to properly rip CD's with HDCD encoding? | Steve ...
30 Oct 2007
EAC (Exact Audio Copy) Question | Steve Hoffman Music ...
1 Jan 2017
Ripping HDCD/SACD | Steve Hoffman Music Forums
20 Nov 2012
More results from forums.stevehoffman.tv
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/does-eac-correctly-rip-hdcd-encoding.179278/

[ArveS]

Thanks for replies. I have not tried DBPowerAmp yet. How ever it seems to me in that the hardware/software in my laptop will not detect this specific CD, (Neil Young - Silver & Gold), as a HDCD disc. It is a little bit strange since I have successfully ripped other HDCD discs to FLAC files with the same equipment and software, (for instance Neil Young's album Prairie Wind). For the moment I will keep this CD in my collection for playback via the CD player in my stereo system instead :)  

I guess I could use DBPoweramp to tell me if the CD is recognised as a HDCD cd? (but if the problem is for instance the CD-ROM in my laptop I will still not be able to rip this HDCD disc successfully I guess..)   

[vortecjr]

I complied some information you might find useful here:

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/56113-hdcd-feedback-and-information-thread/

 

[davide256]

10 hours ago, ArveS said:

Thanks for replies. I have not tried DBPowerAmp yet. How ever it seems to me in that the hardware/software in my laptop will not detect this specific CD, (Neil Young - Silver & Gold), as a HDCD disc. It is a little bit strange since I have successfully ripped other HDCD discs to FLAC files with the same equipment and software, (for instance Neil Young's album Prairie Wind). For the moment I will keep this CD in my collection for playback via the CD player in my stereo system instead :)  

I guess I could use DBPoweramp to tell me if the CD is recognised as a HDCD cd? (but if the problem is for instance the CD-ROM in my laptop I will still not be able to rip this HDCD disc successfully I guess..)   

Any possibility that you have a normal CD, didn't get the HDCD version? I ran into that trying to get the HDCD version of "the Princess Bride" where

there was the original non HDCD and a subsequent remastered HDCD version. The annoying part of HDCD is it often doesn't say it on the case  label

and sometimes not on the disc artwork either. dbPoweramp will tell you in the logfile if the HDCD converter is enabled that it was used.

[ArveS]

Hi,

Yes, the CD front label is marked with HDCD. How ever I have tried to rip the CD with DBPoweramp also. The CD does not pass the Accurate check. It seems that DBPowerAmp does neither detect the disc as a HDCD disk. I guess that's the reason why the sound is distorted during playback of the CD on the computer. ( The computer does not detect the CD as a HDCD disc and therefore all songs on the cd sounds distorted, while my CD player in my stereo system detect the CD as a HDCD cd and plays the entire cd correctly without distortion ).   

 

from DBPoweramp log:

Tried to rip the the cd with DBPowerAmp with secure ripping, unsuccessfully:

Information ripping to FLAC, 'Track 1' to 'C:\Users\Arve Sundstrøm\Music\Neil Young\Silver & Gold\01 Neil Young - Good To See You.flac'

   Track 1:  ERROR Ripping LBA 0 to 12795 (2:50) in 18:26. Filename: C:\Users\Arve Sundstrøm\Music\Neil Young\Silver & Gold\01 Neil Young - Good To See You.flac

   Audio File Passed Verification

 

It seems like it is right at the beginnng of the tracks that the read errors occur when I look at the gui information in DBPowerAmp when ripping in accurate rip secure mode. :) 

(Maybe my CD-Rom has some trouble reading the HDCD disc information on this cd). 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Here's my take on HDCD physical CDs. Rip them as bit perfect copies of the original and call it a day. Any ripping program can handle this. If you have HDCD hardware, then it will decode the HDCD of the bit perfect rip. If not, enjoy the CD as regular CD. 

[Rubysea]

Neil Young CDs often are HDCD encoded. And from the ones I have I think many all of the more recent ones have at least peak extension enabled, where the extended peaks then can be restored after extraction from the ripped original files.

If you have used foobar with the HDCD plugin for checking your CD, what did the plug-in say for peak extension and transient filter? Were any of these flagged as enabled? (Example: Neil Young - Psychedelic Pill: Peak Extension: enabled; Transient Filter: Intermittend)

If eg. peak extension is enabled, than you can activate the foobar decode processing for HDCD in conversion and it will restore the extended peaks (usually by halving the outout volume of the decoded file).

However, there are a lot of HDCD encoded CDs that flag disabled for both flags. One example here is Tool - Lateralus. So nothing seems to be won here with additional decode processing (provided the read-out information was correct).

Did you activate the decode processing on the files (after having conifigured the plug-in)? And if so, the decoded file with the extended peaks did still sound distorted? (Assuming that this NY CD is also using Peak extension)

 

[ArveS]

Hi,

I just want to emphasize first that the Neil Young CD in question sounds distorted when played back directly (before ripping) both in Windows Media player and in foobar2000. That’s leads me to think that neither detects this cd as HDCD and the result is destorted sound. ( I guess that is the expected resuIt if the player tries to play back a HDCD cd as a standard cd? ) I have ripped other Neil Young HDCD cd’s with success ( for instance Mirror Ball and Prairie Wind) though  I was not aware that they were HDCD cd’s so I did not alter any settings regarding this). I just ripped them to flac files and I am satisfied with the result. :)

 

[davide256]

1 hour ago, ArveS said:

Hi,

I just want to emphasize first that the Neil Young CD in question sounds distorted when played back directly (before ripping) both in Windows Media player and in foobar2000. That’s leads me to think that neither detects this cd as HDCD and the result is destorted sound. ( I guess that is the expected resuIt if the player tries to play back a HDCD cd as a standard cd? ) I have ripped other Neil Young HDCD cd’s with success ( for instance Mirror Ball and Prairie Wind) though  I was not aware that they were HDCD cd’s so I did not alter any settings regarding this). I just ripped them to flac files and I am satisfied with the result. :)

 

HDCD's have about 6db gain compared to normal CD. If the album hits peak limit more often, that may cause distortion for output. You may want to fiddle with recording gain

to compensate since the apps aren't recognizing the disc as HDCD

[Mayfair]

Per @vortecjr's list, JRiver (current version is 27) can recognize and decode HDCD. 

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,121124.0.htm

 

There is a delightful amount of the Grateful Dead's catalog that is HDCD encoded, which I find especially delightful listening to their live albums.  Moreover, the HDCD encoding is alive and well in the 16/44.1 kHz downloads I've purchased of HDCD encoded Grateful Dead CDs.  I hope for the sake of art and yet-unborn Deadheads that they don't get MQA-d

 

 

[Bob Stern]

In @vortecjr's thread, Miska provided a link to the documentation for FFMPEG's HDCD decoder.  One of the decoding parameters is the "code detect timer period in ms".  I expect this means that the sequence of samples includes a "peak extension" flag only at certain intervals, and peak extension should be turned off if that interval passes without another peak extension flag.   If so, proper decoding depends on knowing what the "code detect timer period" should be.  This value either should be fixed by the HDCD standard or should be encoded in the optical disc, or else an HDCD player couldn’t properly decode it.  Does anyone know the answer?  Presumably JRiver figured it out.

 

https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#hdcd

[Solstice380]

@ArveS  You might just have a bad disc.

[Gregory]

On 11/22/2020 at 8:08 AM, vortecjr said:

I complied some information you might find useful here:

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/56113-hdcd-feedback-and-information-thread/

 

 

Bookmarked this, very useful!

As HDCD seems a remnant of times before hi-res audio I'll probably run a pass on my collection to keep a converted copy.

[ArveS]

Thanks for information about HDCD enccoding/setup in different audio encoding ssoftware. I just want to underline again that my problem is not directly about how to utilise the HDCD encoding to enhance the audio guality. My problem is that I have now 2 HDCD encoded cd's (Neil Young - Silver & Gold and Joni Mitchell - Don Juan's wrecklesss daughter) which causes distorted audio during playback from the dvd drive in my laptop. That also result in the same distorted audio on the ripped copies of the cd's. Both cd's are faultfree when played in the cd player on my stereo system. Have anyone experienced that HDCD cd's sounds distorted if they are played directly from the drive station in computer/laptop, but works faultfree in your cd player?    

[rando]

32 minutes ago, ArveS said:

Both cd's are faultfree when played in the cd player on my stereo system.

 

a) Your optical drive is either incapable of reading disc, has a bad driver, or is itself faulty.

b) Sign of a bad PSU

c) ???

 

I'd personally start with reinstalling or finding another device specific driver.  

[ArveS]

That may be so, I guess there must be something wrong with the optical drive or driver, even though it is only audio cd with HDCD encoding that the optical drive can not handle correctly. It is not any problem reading other media from the optical drive, for instance photos,videos or non hdcd encoded music. I think I will bring my laptop in for service and demonstrate the problem,(now they are  temporarely closed caused by local covid-19 restrictions ).

[rando]

There is also a chance W10 default apps or WMP is at fault.  

[Gregory]

Could it be that windows is decoding the HDCD from 16bits to 20bits, but the audio driver is only able to handle 16 or 24 bits, not 20?

[rando]

dBPoweramp isn't so easily tripped up.  WMP, his first stop, is an unknown and variable quantity prone to the fickle whims of any update.

[Gregory]

Yeah, one great feature those updates.... :(