Can Winamp burn in 24 bit audio?

[Sandman192]

I have seen CDs with 24 bit audio which also called HDCD. Will it burn 24 bit? And if not can somebody create a plugin or will you Winamp make it on the next update? I want to burn FLAC files into 24 bit audio files.

[DrO]

with HDCD being a proprietary specification would probably require some sort of licensing (i.e. someone's got to pay something) for the means to be able to create the HDCD output.

also you'd not be doing a straight FLAC 24-bit -> HDCD as it works out as a 20-bit data stream and not a direct 24-bit one (as i think you're assuming is the case). so you'd still be loosing data as part of the conversion process.

i don't know what the case would be for decoding support, though i suspect that might need to be licensed as well (for Winamp to not be stung with lawsuits, etc). though with HDCD and variants off being quite rare, i doubt there's going to be any attempt to implement such support (even with free time, it's not something i'd be personally inclined to look into doing).

there's nothing stopping someone making a replacement CD plug-in which could at least read HDCD audio correctly, but burning is better done with a more dedicated tool or if the FLAC can be just played back as-is, then that would be the better option.

[kzuse]

HDCD is not really "20-bit audio in 16 bit CD-DA", it rather is some strange filtering / compression / variable gain / soft-clipping thing wich "simulates a SNR of about 20 bit".

It's crap and placebo.

There is a tool out there (hdcd.exe, google for it) which can input 16-bit CD-DA WAV files which have HDCD encoded in their LSB and outputs a 24-bit WAV file (padded to 20 bit).

I tried this some years ago with some HDCDs I own and in almost every case this resulted in odd gain changes in the beginning of the songs, sudden "compression" effects on loud passages etc.

I cannot exclude that the tool has a bug. But actually a wealthy "common sense" tells you that it is mathematically impossible to "encode" 24-bit or even just 20-bit SNR in a 16-bit stream without applying some sort of
a) non-linearity (comparable to A-law or u-law audio used in telephony, that uses an 8-bit non-linear quantization)
b) noise filtering (to simulate a better SNR)
c) adaptive compression or amplification. (as used e.g. in the NICAM audio standard seen in UK's analog TV broadcasting)

So, just forget it.
Better burn your 24 bit FLAC files to DVD-VIDEO or DVD-AUDIO. Both support it natively, as long your player does.

Best regards,
kzuse