By Michael Miguest
Last year I retired my Proceed CDD transport with a mint Mark Levinson 390S I found on ebay. The Proceed CDD was always tagged as the poor man's Mark Levinson. Feeding it to my modified Monarchy NM24 tube Dac, it provided me a formidable digital front-end for many years. However, the Mark Levinson 390S is on another level. The build quality, parts, and design are exceptional. The 390S has the HDCD decoder inside. It utilizes the 37 transport that in and of itself, is an inimitable work of art. The 390S' sound when combined with my Monarchy NM24 Dac that uses two 1965 Siemens & Halske CCa tubes, and powered by my Monarchy AC-Regenerator set at 120 hz is very life-like, with full bodied, articulate, tuneful bass, an exceptional musical mid and airy, fluid highs with incredible 3-dimensional sound. It throws a wide and deep soundstage as it breathes the music and subsumes you in a more realistic. quasi analog presentation.
Let's talk HDCD which is the subject of this blog. This format is High Definition Compatible Digital. Professor Keith O. Johnson co-invented the HDCD technology with Pflash Pflaumer, and in 1996, they formed Pacific Microsonics to introduce the concept of high-resolution audio. In 2000, Microsoft purchased Pacific Microsonics and continues to incorporate HDCD technology into its PC offerings. Johnson now consults with Microsoft; his latest project, Speaker-Correction, uses modeled correction of speakers to improve computer sound and can be found in XP software.
In the midst of his work as a developer, Johnson's ongoing relationship with Reference Recordings gives “The Professor” a platform with which to engineer and experiment with loudspeakers, microphones and other equipment designs. To record renowned ensembles such as the Dallas Wind Symphony, Chicago Pro Musica and the London Philharmonic, Johnson uses some manufactured equipment — Tascam recorders, Microsonics Model 1 and 2 HDCD processors (he's admittedly biased) and a Neumann U47 here and there — but mainly uses gear he's either custom-built or extensively modified at his shop in Pacifica, Calif.
HDCD is claimed to improve Audio CD in two general ways. One is to increase the available dynamic range - from the 16bit standard of Audio CD to (a claimed) 20bits (Reference Recordings do 24 bits). This nominally represents an increase in dynamic range from around 90dB to 114dB. The other is to mimic a wider effective bandwidth and provide an audible effect that makes musical transients sound more like you’d hear using a sample rate higher than the Audio CD standard. It is important to bear in mind each of the various types of alteration it can apply are provided as options from a ‘menu’ that those recording/mastering a disc can choose to apply (or not!) when making a specific HDCD.
The expansion of dynamic range is said to be achieved using two methods. The first is a form of soft limiting for musical peaks. The second adjusts the gain for long quiet passages of music to make the recorded sample values larger. This makes them bigger compared with the quantisation level. Effects like these may well be applied when recording and mastering anyway. But the key feature of HDCD is that it should embed ‘control codes’ into the audio data that an HDCD player can detect. They then tell it how to ‘correct’ the alterations done during recording and mastering the CD.
The sound difference between red book and HDCD is not subtle. It is more dynamic, expansive, lively, beautiful. and 3-D. My connection to this digital presentation in HDCD is much closer to analog and as a result, listening fatigue and digital glare are markedly close to non-existent. The Reference Recordings by Professor Keith O. Johnson are exemplary and will go toe to toe with sacd or any other digital format.
In conclusion, it's ironic that this format which Professor Johnson co-invented in the mid 1990s is teetering on extinction. My thanks to Professor Keith Johnson and Reference Recordings for keeping this format on life support by continuing to record titles in this extraordinary sounding format. It's also ironic that not that long ago vinyl was in a very similar place and now is the De Facto standard of quintessential sound reproduction. This clearly brings to mind the old adage: "The more things change, the more they stay the same".
https://referencerecordings.com/
Last year I retired my Proceed CDD transport with a mint Mark Levinson 390S I found on ebay. The Proceed CDD was always tagged as the poor man's Mark Levinson. Feeding it to my modified Monarchy NM24 tube Dac, it provided me a formidable digital front-end for many years. However, the Mark Levinson 390S is on another level. The build quality, parts, and design are exceptional. The 390S has the HDCD decoder inside. It utilizes the 37 transport that in and of itself, is an inimitable work of art. The 390S' sound when combined with my Monarchy NM24 Dac that uses two 1965 Siemens & Halske CCa tubes, and powered by my Monarchy AC-Regenerator set at 120 hz is very life-like, with full bodied, articulate, tuneful bass, an exceptional musical mid and airy, fluid highs with incredible 3-dimensional sound. It throws a wide and deep soundstage as it breathes the music and subsumes you in a more realistic. quasi analog presentation.
Let's talk HDCD which is the subject of this blog. This format is High Definition Compatible Digital. Professor Keith O. Johnson co-invented the HDCD technology with Pflash Pflaumer, and in 1996, they formed Pacific Microsonics to introduce the concept of high-resolution audio. In 2000, Microsoft purchased Pacific Microsonics and continues to incorporate HDCD technology into its PC offerings. Johnson now consults with Microsoft; his latest project, Speaker-Correction, uses modeled correction of speakers to improve computer sound and can be found in XP software.
In the midst of his work as a developer, Johnson's ongoing relationship with Reference Recordings gives “The Professor” a platform with which to engineer and experiment with loudspeakers, microphones and other equipment designs. To record renowned ensembles such as the Dallas Wind Symphony, Chicago Pro Musica and the London Philharmonic, Johnson uses some manufactured equipment — Tascam recorders, Microsonics Model 1 and 2 HDCD processors (he's admittedly biased) and a Neumann U47 here and there — but mainly uses gear he's either custom-built or extensively modified at his shop in Pacifica, Calif.
HDCD is claimed to improve Audio CD in two general ways. One is to increase the available dynamic range - from the 16bit standard of Audio CD to (a claimed) 20bits (Reference Recordings do 24 bits). This nominally represents an increase in dynamic range from around 90dB to 114dB. The other is to mimic a wider effective bandwidth and provide an audible effect that makes musical transients sound more like you’d hear using a sample rate higher than the Audio CD standard. It is important to bear in mind each of the various types of alteration it can apply are provided as options from a ‘menu’ that those recording/mastering a disc can choose to apply (or not!) when making a specific HDCD.
The expansion of dynamic range is said to be achieved using two methods. The first is a form of soft limiting for musical peaks. The second adjusts the gain for long quiet passages of music to make the recorded sample values larger. This makes them bigger compared with the quantisation level. Effects like these may well be applied when recording and mastering anyway. But the key feature of HDCD is that it should embed ‘control codes’ into the audio data that an HDCD player can detect. They then tell it how to ‘correct’ the alterations done during recording and mastering the CD.
The sound difference between red book and HDCD is not subtle. It is more dynamic, expansive, lively, beautiful. and 3-D. My connection to this digital presentation in HDCD is much closer to analog and as a result, listening fatigue and digital glare are markedly close to non-existent. The Reference Recordings by Professor Keith O. Johnson are exemplary and will go toe to toe with sacd or any other digital format.
In conclusion, it's ironic that this format which Professor Johnson co-invented in the mid 1990s is teetering on extinction. My thanks to Professor Keith Johnson and Reference Recordings for keeping this format on life support by continuing to record titles in this extraordinary sounding format. It's also ironic that not that long ago vinyl was in a very similar place and now is the De Facto standard of quintessential sound reproduction. This clearly brings to mind the old adage: "The more things change, the more they stay the same".
https://referencerecordings.com/
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