HDCD Rip

Streaming Audio
22

So after much reading on the subject and testing 3 albums toe to toe 16-44 and 24-192 rips, i do not hear any differences in sound quality. Here’s also an interesting fact:

“ CDs are 16-bit.

Increasing the bit-depth of a digital source only adds zeros to it.

This is not “upsampling” and will not affect the audio quality in any way. (better or worse)”

There you go.

HDCD, 2xHD, Telarc, Dorian, Sheffield lab, Analekta, cd recording are all superior to normal cds. Probably from better source and recording techniques. They will sound better than normal cds. But there is no benefits to fake upsampling them in sound quality.

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23

Why am I reminded of the now-dead MQA?

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24

Haha there you go! Real hires Flac will eventually replace all MQA.

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Thank you for your detailed response. Perhaps the HDCD version is mastered differently and it is this that makes it seem better.

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Never understood how a lossy recording (MQA) could be an improvement. I did give Tidal a go for a few months about 3 years ago but was never convinced vs Qobuz hi-res.

I have to add though, perhaps the fact that MQA used a different version of the master recording is why I did prefer some recordings over Qobuz/CD rip.

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I have Spotify for all the albums suggested. Its a way of discovering new music, new artists with my interests. For quality i use my SSD. Maybe i will give a try someday, to one of the hires streaming company. Hopefully Spotify will offer hires content in a near futur.

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I was mistaken about SACD. As @djh1697 pointed out to me. They have the same size as dvd, and they are DSD64 encoded.

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From Wikipedia:

SACD discs have identical physical dimensions as standard compact discs. The areal density of the disc is the same as a DVD. There are three types of disc:

  • Hybrid: Hybrid SACDs have a 4.7 GB SACD layer (the HD layer), as well as a CD (Red Book) audio layer readable by most conventional compact disc players.
  • Single-layer: A disc with one 4.7 GB SACD layer.
  • Dual-layer: A disc with two SACD layers, totaling 8.5 GB, and no CD layer. Dual-layer SACDs can store nearly twice as much data as a single-layer SACD. Like most dual-layer DVDs, the data spiral for the first layer is encoded from the inside out, and the second layer is encoded starting from the point where the first layer ends and ending at the innermost part of the disc. Unlike hybrid discs, both single- and dual-layer SACDs are incompatible with conventional CD players and cannot be played on them.
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