Is HDCD much Better?

[superpanavision70mm]

Ok, thanks for your insight.

[shokhead]

I would worry more about having DTS for music the HDCD myself.

[noddin0ff]

I still believe that my statement is correct. But obviously, I'm just some anonymous dude on a web forum so if you want to be safe, by all means listen to tech support. It would be easy to test though. Take any ol' CD player with a digital out an hook it up to the HDCD capable receiver...

IMO, the bit stream is the bitstream, the HDCD info is embeded into the 16bit info. The same bits are read regardless. The HDCD is a decoding issue not a playback issue.

I suspect the tech support guy doesn't understand how HDCD works. And to back up that suspicion I'd point out that if you own a CD player that decodes HDCD, you don't need to have a HDCD decoding receiver! So what is the point of making a HDCD decoding receiver then? The obvious answer, to me, is so you can decode digital outputs from a non-HDCD capable player.