Don Pearce wrote:

If you master it 6dB lower then it'll be 6dB quieter than everyone
else's CD. And that would never do.
But an HDCD disc doesn't play back correctly on a conventional player -
it is actually distorted. When it is played back as intended it is
identical to mastering 6dB lower and allowing the high peaks. So
loudness doesn't come into it.

It's no more distorted than a "loudness mastered" CD would be. The
advantage with HDCD is that there's at least some way to get some
dynamics back, by using the decoder.

I've not yet found a DVD player that does a poor job of CDs - what on
earth have you been buying?

My original DVD player (2nd generation Toshiba SD-2107) was shockingly
bad playing CDs. Worked ok as a transport but the on-board DAC was poor.

My second DVD player (Toshiba SD-100, bought to replace the 2107 that
died) wasn't much better from the analogue outs. The SD-530 wasn't too
bad when playing DVD-Audio discs but wasn't great on CDs. At the time I
was using a Technics SL-PG590 CD player.

One interesting thing I noticed was that the DVD player did a better job
as a transport than the Technics CD player (tested into a Yamaha
DSP-AX620, Arcam Black Box 50 and Arcam AVR250). Using the DVD as a
transport sounded noticably better than the Technics... any ideas?

No, I mean about seeing the difference between 24 bit WAV, and 24 bit
dithered down to 16 bit by LAME. I've done this (although not by LAME,
just within a DAW) and as far as visibility goes, there is no difference
- I can't hear one either. Do you mean that LAME does really poor
bit-depth reduction?

Ah, my fault for posting whilst trying to sort out a client's problem. I
meant the difference between the HDCD and non-decoded versions, whether
24-bit or 16-bit.

--
Squirrel Solutions Ltd Tel: (01453) 845735
http://www.squirrelsolutions.co.uk/ Fax: (01453) 843773

Registered in England: 05877408