HDCD into a Nova?

Hi-Fi Corner
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Does anyone know if a Nova can fully enable the HDCD encoding if sent to its coaxial or optical input from an HDCD capable CD player?

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No, the Nova does not have the HDCD filter necessary. It will if course replay just fine as a standard 16bit disc. Best bet here if you want to take advantage of HDCD encoding is to rip the disc using something like DBpoweramp with the HDCD plug in enabled. It will rip the disc into 24BIT files.

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Is this available in certain releases of DBPoweramp. I have this but it is an old release. Interested because I have a quite a few HDCDs

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In retrospect, HDCD seems to have been a commercial failure. Is there a reason for this? Did the big manufacturers of CD players, such as Sony, have a reason not to support the format, or was it perhaps the record companies who didnā€™t support it?

I donā€™t think that Naim ever made a big thing of the fact that the CDS II was HDCD enabled. I was amazed the first time that the ā€˜hdcdā€™ legend lit up on the display when I (unknowingly) put an HDCD enabled disc into the player.

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Wasnā€™t the company who developed HDCD(Pacific something or otherā€¦) bought by Microsoft or Apple and then the format disappeared, anyone know any moreā€¦?
I do as Richard suggested rip to 24bit using dbpoweramp works fine.

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Thanks Chris & Richard. I donā€™t have a PC/Mac to rip with unfortunately, but thatā€™s good to know for another time.

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I have a vague memory that the company which developed the HDCD chip was a US company called Burr Brown.

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Here you go looks like Microsoft buried it:

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I remember I had a Rotel CD player that supported HDCD. Didnā€™t even know it did until I played an HDCD (didnā€™t even know it was) and thought, ā€œWow,this CD is an excellent recording,damn does this sounds good!!ā€
It was only then I noticed the HDCD indicator was lit.
For me proof it is something that actually works. Pity it never was a succes.

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I somehow ended up with a HDCD copy of Tubular Bells and the 2016 remaster CD. On my CDS3 the standard CD is far more enjoyable.

Itā€™s open and detailed whereas the HDCD disc sounds artificial and unnatural.

But this might just be one off, has anyone else managed to compare the same music?

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Never compared but the Mark Knopfler HDCDs I have sound fantastic on my CDS3.

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I have ā€œLocal Heroā€ (of course). On line it looks like this is HDCD so Iā€™ll dig it out when I get back next week. Last played on a CDI

Could pick up Golden Heart for just over Ā£3, is it worth it?

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I love a lot of the stuff on that album.

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Pacific Microsonics

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