"David Looser" wrote in
message
"Eiron" wrote in message
...

hdcd -o newtrack.wav track1.wav

IT WORKS!

Thanks for all your help.

I've tried it out on the only HDCD disc in my collection,
a "Best of Dire Straights" CD. I've yet to find a track
where the dynamic range after decoding is any greater
than that straight from the disc.

This is 100% in accordance with investigations by many others. There remains
no evidence of a commercial recording in any format that cannot be properly
coded and decoded from the standard CD format. The CD format is not a
practical limit to the dynamic range of real-world musical recordings. Such
practical limitations to musical dynamic range as do exist, are due to other
areas of the production chain than the CD audio delivery format.

I haven't decoded then
all yet but, to be honest, I'm not expecting the other
tracks to be any different. All that the decoder does is
to drop the level by around 3dB. So what was the point of
making this an HDCD disc, or is it all just marketing?

It was all marketing hype all along.

One significant differences is that the marketing hype extended into the
pages of the JAES. There is at least one JAES article allegedly proving the
existence of practical benefits for the HDCD format.