H/K AVR 630 and HDCD (1 Viewer)

I am having trouble getting HDCD to work on my AVR630. I have the "Surround Off' mode selected as suggested by the owners manual. Does anyone know what I could be doing wrong? Anyone else have this trouble?

I am using a Pioneer dvd-563a dvd player using a toslink cable to the receiver. The CD is part of the Tom Petty "Playback" boxset.

Thanks in advance for any help provided.

Tony

Does anyone out there use HDCD with their H/K receivers? (Specifically the AVR 630)


Thanks.


Tony

For laughs, although it shouldn't matter, have you toggled between analog and digital connections to see if the receiver "picks up" the HDCD signal, as it should?

Actually I have not as I do hot have the player connected with analog cables. (The DACs aren't all that great in the player)

I could try that though. Even with no analog cable connected, I should be able to switch from analog to digital.



Do you happen to have a H/K AVR 630? If so, when you play an HDCD, does it display "HDCD" in the lower display line permanently while the cd is playing?


Thanks,


Tony

Yes, I had an HK 630, but I had to return it to them for a refund. (It was a refurb that worked perfectly for 6 months, but then some fluke breakdown happened internally, causing the unit to shut itself off after 30 seconds.)

You're right, it shouldn't make any difference on connections and you should see HDCD displayed in the LCD display line. I did this a few times for myself.

As best I can tell, you don't seem to be missing any steps here. You have to turn off every DSP and go to straight surround off, as you have indicated. I can't imagine if there's a setting on the player that would matter.

Question: Does the Pioneer 578 ALSO decode HDCD? Perhaps that would be a conflict if both player and receiver are trying to do it.

The Pioneer doesn't decode HDCD. Shouldn't be any conflicts there.

So you were able to get the HDCD logo to display permanently in the bottom display line while playing an HDCD?

I tested a CD last night and it flashed HDCD very breifly, but then went back to "Surround Off".

You mentioned something about turning off the DSPs. I have a question here. I have it set to "Surround Off" mode but I still have a DSP indicator displyed on the front panel. I think it has to do with the sub. Currently when running 2 channel music, the receiver mixes in the sub. Is there a way to have it run 2 channel music only from the mains, not mixing in the sub?


Thanks very much for your time here.


Tony

You'd have to go into the OSD menu and fiddle with some of those settings. It really shouldn't be necessary. You shouldn't have to kill your sub or anything like that.

You should be able to simply hit surround off and go!

Try it again and watch it. See what happens when the HDCD logo flashes and then disappears, as you say. This may not be a problem at all. See what the rest of the display is saying.

[email protected]

Hopefully, my buddy will be on the other end of this. Fire them off a quick email and ask them about this.

Your buddy wouldn't be Charlie would he? I have been in contact with a guy named Charlie on their website via a tech support chat utility.



Tony

Mine is Scott. If you call the toll free number and hit 1,3,4 I think that gets you to this crew of people anyways. Excellent customer service regardless of whom you speak to.

I just checked page 33 of the manual. That's where the brief blurb about HDCD is.

It's as simple as turing surround off and being off to the races. You should see an HDCD confirmation logo on the display at all times. See how you read that.

You may want to email or call them real quick just to be sure.

It definitely sounded to me like the HDCD logo should be displayed at all times. I'll try giving them a call.


Thanks for all of your suggestions.

Much appreciated!

Tony

Good luck! Let us know what happens! It's probably nothing big. Just some tweak somewhere...

I contacted customer service for H/K. They said that the issue is possibly realted to the recent software upgrade that I installed on the receiver. Apparently they had noticed issues with other people calling in with similar problems.

They said that the HDCD processing is still working though.

Unfortunately for me, I never tested HDCD before I installed the upgrade on my receiver. So I have no frame of reference as to how it should have been working.

Anyway, hopefully they will release another update to fix this issue. Doubtful, but it would be nice...


Tony

Huh.

Do they think it DISABLED HDCD decoding, or simply changed things where the display doesn't show it off the whole time?

You know your music well. If you see it flash an HDCD logo for even a few moments and it keeps playing, sounds the same, etc. etc.... I'm going to venture to guess that you probably are getting HDCD decoding, even though the display no longer says so. Maybe some A/B'ing will help you discern that further.


That's certainly a dumb little glitch. People have waited a LONG time for that firmware.

I agree that it is a dumb glitch. They should have found that in testing the firmware. I bet HDCD is working properly. I will A/B test it tomorrow to find out for sure.


Tony

Unfortunately the reset only sets the recevier back to the factory setting for the latest firmware installed. Reseting the receiver is actually part of the firmware upgrade process.

I did some A/B testing with 2 different recordings of the same song. One in HDCD and the other not. There was noticible difference in the HDCD recording. It sounded better. I believe the HDCD functionality is actually working, it's just that the display doesn't seem to want to show HDCD like the original firmware did.

All in all, it looks as though everything is working as far as the audio I hear.


Thanks for all of your input here. Very much appreciated!

Tony

Glad to hear this! Enjoy!

Sounds like you're off an running, but one more tip would be ensure that any sort of re-sampling feature that your DVD player might have is turned off.

Johnny,

Thanks for the reply! I had the same thought. I went into my DVD players settings and checked over everything. It all seems to be in order.

I'm just really picky about this stuff. I would expect a receiver in this class to not have issues like this one. Everything seems to be working properly, but it just doesn't display the way I would like it.


Thanks again!

Tony