Is HDCD much Better?

[superpanavision70mm]

Ok, thanks for your insight.

[shokhead]

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

[guaje]

Hey mate, I am looking to the Rotel RCDs because the one I have got till now is one of them, and it sounds great with my AVR Harman Kardon 5500, that enhances HDCD (although I am just trying to probe it but I could not: neither through the Xbox console or Samsung DVD player, both conected digitally to the AVR, and playing direct stereo with a Mermen's HDCD but it doesn't light on the HDCD symbol in the AVR ¿?).
Anyway could you tell me what Marantz are you talking about?
About the price, the retailer told me that new equipement are cheaper (if they have not any innovation ¿?, I am not sure at that point, what do you think?

Thanks again.

[guaje]

I'm not sure about that since the technical dept. from Harman Kardon has told me that my AVR 5500 that is prepared for HDCD ONLY could perform it if the player is HDCD too. That means that it doesn't work only with the digital imput from any player...

[guaje]

If your receiver supports HDCD then if you connect any CD player DIGITALLY to the receiver, you will decode HDCD. HDCD is a little extra info encoded into the bitstream. It only needs decoded once. No need to get a HDCD CD player AND a HDCD receiver.

The previous post is an answer to this one...

and the band played on

[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.