hyper cd what makes it special?

[SeenThatMovie2]

I'm a bit new to all this sacd- sacd hybrid, dvd audio dts etc etc......now I've stumbled across Hyper cd and enhanced cd.

Can someone explain if this is a special recording format to truly enhance sound or just something a particular company uses on their labels as a marketing device?

 

[MDS]

Hyper and Enhanced CD are multi-session CDs that contain regular audio tracks and data. The audio tracks are the same as a regular redbook audio cd, so it is not about increased sound quality.

Enhanced CDs (bluebook) contain video in addition to the audio. They usually have autorun.exe and autorun.inf files that Windows will read when the disc is inserted. The developer can code anything they want in autorun.exe. Most often they load a player like QuickTime or WMP, read the video from the data portion of the disc, and start it playing in the player.

I absolutely hate them - they rarely work properly. The audio will start playing immediately, while the autorun.exe will run simultaneously. Because the cd is random access, it will constantly seek between the audio and video portions until the video has been loaded - resulting in stuttering of the audio until the video completes loading. One ecd I have, Splender Halfway Down The Sky fails with an error that says 'this program requires 1MB of virtual memory to run'. That is on a PC with 1 GB of physical memory. Poor programming and error handling. I see no value in them and only buy them if there is no choice of a regular redbook audio cd for the same title.

Hyper CDs contain hyperlinks to websites. When inserted, they cause a browser to open and load that site.

 

[furrycute]

I hate those juiced up CDs as well. When I buy a music CD, I just want music, nothing else.

If I want to watch music video, I would rather purchase a DVD. If I want to visit websites, I would rather open up IE and do it myself.

 

[SeenThatMovie2]

thanks guys you saved me some aggravation in my quest for good sounding music! I woulda felt ripped off buying music with useless (to me) features. I'm strictly after great sound here.

thanks again!

 

[supervij]

But I can understand why the record companies are doing these enhanced and hyper CDs. With all the downloading that's been going on, the record execs are trying to find reasons for people to purchase the actual CD. So if they can put stuff on the CD that is less likely to be downloaded, there's extra incentive for the fans to buy the CD. The choices are:

1. download the songs in mp3 format and get those, and nothing else, or

2. buy the CD, get the songs in a better sounding format, plus get music videos, interviews, and get exclusive access to a website that has multimedia content unavailable anywhere else.

Personally, I have never had a problem with an enhanced CD. And I kinda like choice 2, but I guess I'm in the minority there.

cheers,
supervij