Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions HDCD vs CD

ha, ha! Stupid word. Loved the commander of all pandas idea, CV, (note to self: start writing cheesy screenplay featuring pandas---and a compander, of course, and pitch to Dreamworks).

Cheers,
Alan

Alan,

Replaygain is a scheme that objectively measures the loudness of music tracks or albums encoded to flac, ogg, mp3... and adjusts the volume to a standard loudness. This results in reducing the volume for most recordings to minimize the number that would end up clipped, so if an HDCD recording can make use of some of the (digital) headroom, then great. It is handy for mixed playlists or even one album following another, and if your DAC has more resolution than the recordings, I don't think anything is lost.

Wikipedia has a reasonably easy-to-understand description of Replay Gain.

I have tagged all my 10,000+ tracks with album and track Replay Gain values. With my SqueezeBox I enable "Smart Gain" for playback. This means that when I play a mix of tracks from various albums there are no wild swings in loudness between tracks because it uses the track Replay Gain value to normalize the volume. If I play an album, it uses the album Replay Gain value, which is the same for all tracks on the album, so the tracks sound correct in volume relative to each other as the mastering engineer intended.

Back to HDCD. Again, Wikipedia has a good description.

My take, after trying to hear the difference between an HDCD decoded and not decoded, is that I can barely tell the difference.

On the other hand, it seems to me that when a mastering engineer opts for HDCD it probably means that he/she feels that the source material is of sufficiently high quality to warrant it. Perhaps also the engineer will take extra care and pride in trying to make the recording sound good? In other words, HDCD is an indication that the sound quality has a higher probability of being good.

Thanks, Henry66 and ChrisF for the replay gain explanation. After I posted my question, I came across a reference to it on another forum, where I was seeking info on how to revive my frozen Sansa Clip+, which does nothing but display the SanDisk logo. I think it also has that option, or you can download an "app" to tag all your music with the replay gain values and the Sansa Clip+ will read those and adjust playback gain.

Alan

It sounds like you bricked your Clip+

If your Sansa freezes on power-up, the most basic first step is a soft reset. In the case of the Clip+, this is done by simply pressing and holding the power button for 15-20 seconds, then releasing the button. This powers the device off and resets it.

Then, try powering up as usual. If the device will not operate normally, is this happening after transferring some music to the device? You may have a corrupted music file. In this case, go to your PC first. Open a Windows Explorer window via My Computer, or press [Windows Key] + E.


Press and HOLD the center button on your Clip+ while connecting it to the USB port. In a few seconds, the Clip+ will appear as SANSA CLIPP (E: ) for example. You can then release the center button. Right-click on the icon, then select properties, then the Tools tab, then click on the Check Now button under error-checking to check the volume for errors.


http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/Clip-Clip/SANSA-CLIP-FROZEN/td-p/137832

Here is info if you have make changes to the firmware.

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/185/~/sansa-clip-player-freezes-on-the-%22sandisk-sansa%22-screen

Thanks. I've tried all those fixes and nothing. I dropped it on the pavement as I got out of the car. The trouble began after that. It froze when it was "refreshing your media".

When I do the center button thing, my laptop doesn't recognize the Clip when you connect it to the USB.

It only turns on and off. I think it's likely toast.

I don't think I ever got an answer to this and I am looking at purchasing an HDCD. It would be nice to be able to listen to the disc on my home theater system through my Oppo player. But, I would also like to be able to put the tracks on my iPod in AAC lossless format. Will I run into any issues doing this with an HDCD disc?