[Folsom]

Just curious, will 20-bit discs work in EAC, and then convert to FLAC, and then work with Foobar, and be able to be sent out to a DAC/PMC2707(or whatever) and then to another DAC ?

[jakepunk]

Check out this thread on hydrogen audio.  It looks like all the elements of the chain treat the data as 16 bit (because it is), but it is up to the final DAC to decode it properly.

It's because HDCD discs are in fact plain 16-bit 44.1 KHz discs. But they have some special information embedded into the 16-bit data that enables to extract 20-bit equivalent information from this 16-bit data, given that there is a HDCD decoder that can detect and make use of it. At the same time, this 16-bit data can be perfectly played as plain 16-bit data when there is no HDCD decoder available. It is quite a tricky system, and if you search at the forums you will find some more information over how it works. However, the exact procedure is not known, since it is not available to public.

So, when you losslessly copy the 16-bit data at the CD, you retain all the special embedded data, and the disc remains to be an HDCD disc.

[Folsom]

Thanks....

I do find it weird that some CCR 20-bit collection I bought for some one would not play on any thing though.