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XRCD

F

Flibbles

pfm Member
Just browsing the internet and came across XRCD's. They seem expensive but offer improved sound quality over normal CD's. Does anybody have any experience of XRCD's and if so how do they compare to either a normal CD or a 24bit download? Have they been upscaled to a high level which makes them sound really good?

I know from downloading 24bit albums the quality varies a lot. I wondered if these were more consistant and mastered to a noticably higher level. I dont want to spend £30 on a slightly above average CD.
 
I’ve heard a few, and there’s nothing I’d attribute directly to the advertised technology (they are still red-book, so 16/44), but they do tend to be nice audiophile-grade masterings, so depending on the title may be worth having. Mastering > format.
 
I don't know about consistency since I only have one title in XRCD format, but the sound quality of that disc is exceptional. It's a 1973 Pablo Records recording of Duke Ellington in a quartet setting with Joe Pass, Ray Brown, and Louis Bellson called "Duke's Big Four". On something as humble as a Rega Saturn-R, that disc would fool many seasoned vinyl aficionados. They do tend to choose great sounding masters for this type of format, at the risk of stating the obvious.
All that aside, the music on this disc is some of Duke’s finest small combo jazz. And that’s saying a lot...
 
XRCD is just Red Book done properly, proving that higher resolutions were not really needed, just better production
 
I have a Bill Evans XRCD, it is very nice but nothing amazingly better. I actually have a normal CD of the same but have never done a side by side comparison.
 
I think I'll buy a couple of albums and report back. Bit costly but I suppose I can ebay them if they are terrible and not lose too much money.
 
I have a collection of audio wave / Blue Note XRCD's. They are vastly superior to the common (and much cheaper) 'RVG remasters'. They are not perfect, there are a tad loudness war compression on them, on one song the snare hits excactly 0 dB evey time.

As noted above, it's still 16/44.
 
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