Comments on: self happiness

By: Acropolis

Acropolis — Thu, 03 May 2007 11:00:41 +0000

hm.. the only tip I can give is: the decoder is in WMP.DLL

By: xaps

xaps — Thu, 03 May 2007 10:15:22 +0000

congratulations for this hack! unfortunately i don’t have the knowledge to copy that, so every tip or trick is welcome

have a nice day!

By: Acropolis

Acropolis — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 01:04:25 +0000

simple answer.
because it is a hack, unless you are my lawyer when microsoft takes me to court.

By: markanini

markanini — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:55:28 +0000

“unfortunately I can’t share any of them ”

As Borat would say: But why?!

Lot’s of people have asked for this feature.

By: Acropolis

Acropolis — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:09:54 +0000

I see.. thanks for your explanation.

By: sonic

sonic — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 21:19:55 +0000

the volume is reduced by exactly 6 dB – the HDCD decoder always decodes with this less volume – to have the bigger headroom for its restoring of dynamic peaks. when playing a normal, non-encoded CD, the music flows through the same filtering alogorithm in WMP (a cd player is equipped with this algorithm via hardware), hence the volume reduction appears also on normal cd´s. the 24 bit resolution is not really there, mereley it´s 17 bit, only achieved by a unique dithering algorithm in the HDCD decoding process. this dithering is also used when playing normal cd´s. by the way, this dithering algorithm is almost as famous as the one from apogee (UV22 HR).

and with ‘lossless experience’ i meant, that there is a site on the net, where you can get lossless music via emule. i did some HDCD rips – and i did them some time ago.

for HDCD goes: it only plays like it should when decoded. if not, it can sound like a CD where the mastering wasn´t finished.

By: Acropolis

Acropolis — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 18:45:28 +0000

I’m happy, because I’m sure what I’m playing in foobar now produces the same 24bit signal as in WMP.

lossless experience? isn’t the CD is lossless already?

I just don’t understand why when a non HDCD stream goes through the decoder to up level to 24bit, the volume reduction also happens, because nothing will be decoded, why not just extend to 24bit?

thanks for your recommendation, I’ll try them later.

By: sonic

sonic — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 17:37:35 +0000

you can be assured, that it truly can decode HDCD – i did quite a few experiments (some of them are presented at some site on the net, where you can have ‘lossless’ experiences) – i have independence day and HDCD does nothing than using a strong dither – so you have at least 17 bit resolution. the promised resolution of 20 bit is occasionally there – especially when the music is very loud.

and the volume reduction is done on purpose for a greater headroom for dynamic peaks. when a HDCD sounds compressed, this effect will be reversed after decoding. try playing some music from mark knopfler, van halen or david arnold with WMP – it uses all the things a HDCD can offer. sometimes the difference will be subtle, sometimes you´ll receive a complete new sound.

By: Acropolis

Acropolis — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:08:27 +0000

I can’t say if my files are really HDCD encoded/decoded, the only obvious thing after using the decoder is that it is more silent than original 16bit one, but it has improvement, for sure, at least not as “fake” as the original.

but I doubt if the decoder from WMP really decodes HDCD, because what I found is, even it is not an HDCD stream, when you pass the audio data to the decoder, it will go through some kind of audio filter (go to 24bit), the resulting signal is more silent than the original too, but it can quite accurately detect if it is HDCD.

sadly I don’t have a CD player that capable of decoding HDCD, otherwise I can have a byte to byte comparison.

afterall, it is still good.

By: sonic

sonic — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 07:12:19 +0000

neat, isn´t it?

did you watch with wavelab or a similar program the ‘bit hopping’ of the files? and that some disc are not really HDCD? just the light goes on…

i´m just listening to a decoded harry potter & the prisoner of azkaban. marvelous. but even better is independence day – this disc is the most impressive proof i´ve heard till now for HDCD…