Don Pearce wrote:

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

My old Marantz DVD player did a terrible job of playing CDs.
It missed off the first half second or so of every track.
Other than that it sounds as good as any other CD player,
especially if you know how much it cost.

As for HDCDs, I have one which both uses 'Peak Extend' and needs it.
That's Mark Knopfler's 'Sailing To Philadelphia'. Most of the time the
signal is above -3dB so is seriously clipped without an HDCD decoder.
All the others only venture above -3dB once or twice per track at most
so you wouldn't notice if not decoded.

--
Eiron.