Critic's Corner

Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry.

Use this form to submit comments directly to the Asylum moderators for this forum. We're particularly interested in truly outstanding posts that might be added to our FAQs.
You may also use this form to provide feedback or to call attention to messages that may be in violation of our content rules.

You must login to use this feature.

Inmate Login

By default, logging in will set a session cookie that disappears when you close your browser. Clicking on the 'Remember my Moniker & Password' below will cause a permanent 'Login Cookie' to be set.

Moniker/Username: The Name that you picked or by default, your email. Forgot Moniker?	Examples "Rapper", "Bob W", "joe@aol.com".
Password:	Forgot Password?
	Remember my Moniker & Password ( What's this?)

If you don't have an Asylum Account, you can create one by clicking Here.

Our privacy policy can be reviewed by clicking Here.

Inmate Comments

From:
Your Email:
Subject:

Message Comments

Original Message

RE: Whatever happened to HDCD?

Posted by whitedragem on January 2, 2017 at 02:42:20:
Microsoft killed it (aquired the tech to make a 'better' file compression format (vs apples compression format and mp3 etc).

True, when WMA used this feature, at 64kbits per second it was nearly twice the sound quality of the market equivalents (at the time), but due to diminishing returns, the increase was ameliorated at higher bitrates (@320kbits there wasn't much in it).

What we DID get?
a light saying HDCD that would come on in media player.
Microsoft didn't want the feature to exist in the open and to benefit the market; no markets continued to use it and 'software' (audio CDs etc) dried up.

To use the feature in media player a user would have to dig deep into the options menu and 'enable' a high quality formats tickbox.
I loved HDCD (owning various Rotel and Parasound products that supported it, and bought a LOT of media used the feature), and have seldom turned the feature on in Windows being archaic and silly to HAVE to.. (and no real benefit for Audio from my PC; when the high qual stereo is in the family room... / yes, using a $500 sound card)...