I've been away from this thread for a couple of days, and I haven't been able to read every single post in detail - so hopefully I am not repeating what someone has said before.
As far as I can tell, there really has been no progress on ability to decode the additional HDCD info via software. In fact I think it is intentionally not possible to decouple the process of recovering the additional HDCD data and the D-A conversion process. With hardware based HDCD players, only 16bit redbook data is sent out from the digital outputs at all times - the HDCD data is only recovered at the stage of D-A conversion (whether internally in the disc player or in a receiver or DAC). So the effects of HDCD encoding can only be realized in the analog domain. Probably it is the same deal with Windows Media Player as well. I believe that the HDCD indicator simply tells you if you have an HDCD disc or not. If you have a 16 bit card, then regardless of what the indicator says you probably only get 16 bit redbook data. On the other hand if you have a 24 bit card it might upscale the 16 bit data to 24 bit data in the digital domain without doing anything with the HDCD information. However the analog outputs of the 24 bit souncards can probably use the additional HDCD information when used with WMP. So no matter what we do, we can't ever convert a 16 bit HDCD stream into a 20 bit or 24 bit linear PCM stream solely in the digital domain. It should however be possible to re-digitize the analog output of a high end HDCD converter - but I doubt there will be any advantage. Am I making sense? -- Nikhil ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nikhil's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=993 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=32967 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
