HDCD CDs and transcoding

[vkshankar]

(23-02-2021 20:31)simoncn Wrote:  Is there a setting on the BDP-83 to enable or disable HDCD? If so, how do you have this set?

It could be that the HDCD decode plugin in foobar2000 (when constrained by 16-bit output) is adjusting the average level down as part of making a best effort to reproduce the original waveform with some compromise because the full 20-bit range is not available.

Edit: see this page.

Yes. there is a setting to enable HDCD in the Oppo menu and I set it to enabled all through these experimentations. I will disable it and see if I still see the reduced output levels for a stream from fb2k server w/ HDCD plugin. This should confirm if f2bk HDCD plugin is doing a best effort or if indeed Oppo decoding the incoming stream. Will report on this soon.