I always found it rather thrilling when I loaded a CD into my CDS II, and the ‘hdcd’ logo appeared in red letters on the display. Sadly, mot many CDs were HDCD-enabled - it was obviously not something that caught on, but I don’t know why not.
I would still find it thrilling today, I suppose, to see the ‘hdcd’ display light up, if the CDP were working!
This happened to me for the first time a few weeks ago, and I was suitably impressed, I wasn’t aware of the function until I loaded a recently purchased disc…
Were you playing a newly acquired CD? I ask because I thought that Pacific Microsonics (who I think were the company which licensed the technology) had gone bust.
I seem to remember someone from Naim saying years ago that the Pacific Microsonics (or whichever company was responsible) chip was used because of its outstanding technical performance and that its HDCD decoding function was a (happy) accident. It was not, as far as I recall, something about the CDS II player that Naim advertised or made much of. (But my memory may be faulty here, in which case, I will no doubt be corrected.)
Thank you, Richard, so probably not ‘gone bust’, just ‘gone’.
Microsoft seem to have an unfortunate history of buying technology companies which they think may challenge their status, then killing off the technology once they’ve acquired it. That’s why monopolies are bad for technological progress.
HDCD, somewhat like Betamax, was a good idea which suffered from a number of unfortunate factors which hindered its uptake. One of these was the way HDCD discs were not always labelled as such and, even when they were, the HDCD encoding wasn’t always done correctly. There were many discs that lit up the HDCD light on players but on which no HDCD features had actually been used! This wiki is far from exhaustive but shows the rather confused state of affairs:
There was at least one HDCD sampler disc that offered the same tracks with and without HDCD encoding so you could hear the difference - if I see one at a reasonable price, I would be interested to try it:
Thank you, Mark. There are some spectacular discs in that list, as well as quite a few candidates for a turkey shoot.
I might see if I can acquire a couple of Doors and Neil Young HDCD releases. I have lots (most?) of these as ‘standard’ CDs, so any comparison would be fascinating.
But I need to get my lovely old CDS II fixed first, otherwise there’s no point in buying CDs at all, HDCD-encoded or not.
Since getting the ndx2 I have been streaming about 95% of the time either with my two subscriptions (qobuz and Apple) or my ripped cds through the Core.
I don’t play vinyl anymore so my next upgrade will definitely be a cd player but it’s becoming more and more difficult to justify. Common sense in short supply when buying hi fi though.
Thanks, Ian. Yes, I need to chase up Audio T, to find out if my NAT-01 is back from Salisbury, and to ask if Naim can fix the CDS II - I hardly dare ask about the CDP, for fear of getting the ‘wrong’ answer!
The problem was that Naim’s Service Dept could not lay their hands on the (Philips-made) transport mechanism used in the CDS II, on which production had been stopped years previously. I know that Naim were searching worldwide, but I never head whether they had found fresh supplies anywhere.
This is the current situation to the best of my knowledge:
VAM1205 -
CD3-5
CD5
CDX
CDS2
All good.
VAM1202 -
Uniti1
CDX-2
CD5x & xs
CDS3
Currently having supply issues.
Also note that if/when we source these, we are still unable to offer VAM1250 to VAM1202 updates, due to stocks of the required PCBs now exhausted. This applies to CDX-2 & CDS3.
Regards
Neil.
Please be mindful that this info may no longer be relevant if quoting this post in the future!
Thank you, Neil. So that means, I think, that I need to be asking my dealer to get my CDS II to Salisbury as soon as poss to have a new mech fitted while they’re still available?