Kazu Matsui - The Stone Monkey (HDCD)[Flac24bit]

This is a recording that I urge everybody to give a try! Kazu Matsui is a composer who has done soundtracks for movies like "The Return of Zorro" and here he gives us something that really defies classification. At best I would call it "Progressive World" but there are many elements of Rock, Jazz, New Age, Electronic and the whole thing is very cinematic.



You can read a review of the disc HERE.



This particular pressing is a High Definition Compatible Disc, or HDCD. HDCD uses some additional data encoded into the disc that, when decoded by an HDCD decoder, recreates 20-bit sound, instead of Redbook 16-bits. HDCD encodes the equivalent of 20 bits worth of data in a 16-bit digital audio signal by utilizing custom dithering, audio filters, and some reversible amplitude and gain encoding; Peak Extend, which is a reversible soft limiter and Low Level Range Extend, which is a reversible gain on low-level signals. HDCD encoding places a control signal in the least significant bit of a small subset of the 16-bit Red Book audio samples (a technique known as in-band signaling). The HDCD decoder in the consumer's CD or DVD player, if present, responds to the signal. If no decoder is present, the disc will be played as a regular CD. A number of universal CD and DVD players include HDCD decoding, and version 9 and above of the Windows Media Player software (on personal computers with a 24-bit sound card) are capable of decoding HDCD. An HDCD-encoded CD usually, but not always, has the HDCD logo printed on the back cover. An HDCD logo will be displayed in Windows Media Player 9 or above when an HDCD encoded disc is played.



This rip, however, has been processed to have the embedded additional HDCD information directly restored to the music so the recording can be accurately reproduced by any software player. This is for audiophiles, please note that the resulting flac files are 24bit and cannot be burned to CD!



I recommend playing this in foobar2000 with the following settings:

- Replaygain set to none (Proper dynamics have already been restored through HDCD)

- Output 24bit (Must be supported by soundcard)



I have tons more of HDCD stuff, and your seeding behaviour on my torrents will determine if I share more.

One other thing: I choose not to go into technical details of the conversion. Please don't ask about it. If you've listened to my previous torrents you already know this is high quality.