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While I, waken up by Mani’s idea to us MP as the only DAC, was playing with new Pacific I have researched deeper the HDCD subject in the BSO recordings. Mark Donahu, from AudioMirror with his slightly patronizing attitude might consider himself as a person with “absolute understanding about the technology” but in his quest for being “special” he stepped away from Truth.

His sentiment that BSO files were HDCD encoded intentionally to in order to “utilize better reconstruction filters” was not accurate. I did find a suitable for myself configuration with my Pacific how I can read the HDCD and I can testify that it make absolutely no difference at 88/22. Further research of this subject led me to realize that the problem was not that there is no difference between “with HDCD” or “without HDCD” but that Pacific has non-defeatable HDCD decoding. Using different configurations it is possible to make Pacific to show off the presents of HDCD code or not but if Pacific does not indicate the HDCD presents but the HDCD exist in Digital_ IN then the HDCD filter is engaged automatically. So, the Mark warring that “If you can turn off the HDCD decoding you will find a significant decrease in the spatial imaging and overall imaging acuity” was absolutely incorrect. There is no ways to turn off the HDCD decoding PROPORLY in Pacific but Lavry Gold that do not understand HDCD does not indicate any “decrease in the spatial imaging and overall imaging acuity” what it runs against Pacific with HDCD EXPLICIT on.

Also, AudioMirror sentiment that the HDCD was used “strategically” during them “mastering” the files was not exactly accurate. Pacific during DD operation and rate or depth change automatically reinsert the LSB code. So, Mark Donahu most likely recorded in SACD as most of those folks unfortunately do nowadays (they believe that it is DSD), then they converted it into PCM, most likely 172kHz. Then they “master” it and down converted it to 88kHz. The down conversion they did with Pacific, which is unquestionably the best tool for the job. While Pacific run the 172kHz- 88kHz it inject the LSB code that makes people to feel the material has HDCD code.

It will be interesting if AudioMirror crate two parallel masters in 172kHz and SACD during recording, but it is hard to know truth. The negative moments that we hear at the BSO files are not from the technology but from “Mastering” and heavy use of multi-microphones…. but this is a whole another story....

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