What is DAD and HDAD?

I'll try to guide you the maze of these formats with both the geek explanations and my own simple-minded vocab. Hey....scrabble was never one of my strong board games...we Ukrainians learned crib dagnabit....

What is DAD and HDAD?

The Classic 24/96 Digital Audio Disc DAD™ is designed to be an audiophile musical reference. The process starts with the encoding of an analog signal from a live microphone feed or more commonly from an analog master tape. The highly sophisticated Analog to Digital converter (A to D) samples the analog signal 96,000 times per second (96kHz) and assigns a numerical value to each sample point. The 96kHz sampling rate is more than twice the 44,100 (44.1kHz) sampling rate used on standard CD's......wow, if you're still reading this I'm impressed...

In a nutshell, DAD offers the listener an expanded dynamic range over traditional analog recordings. The low frequencies will be deeper and the highs will shimmer. DAD releases are sourced directly from the original analog master tapes. Oftentimes; new recordings are recorded in digital in the first place...and are thus transferred into DAD seamlessly. DAD releases are stereo (2 channel) and can be played on any DVD player. They will not play in a regular cd player.

A recent innovation is a double sided HDAD offering. One side can be played in your regular DVD player. Flip it over, and you can then take advantage of better sounding audio in a DVD-A compatible player. You will find only a limited number of artists, including John Lee Hooker, Alan Parsons and Pete Townshend on DAD and or HDAD.

Comments

[Mark Waldrep]

I've just discovered your blog and actually started reading at the DAD/HDAD definitions page. I just wanted to pass along that DAD/HDAD is not a format of high-resolutio audio but rather a marketing or branding attempt. The format of the discs used is DVD-Video. Discs of this type can accomodate 96 kHz/24-bits of PCM audio in two channels.

Also, your statement that DAD "offers the listener an expended dynamic range over traditional analog recordings" is not accurate. It does improve fidelity over traditional consumer formats [such as LPs or cassettes even CDS] but it cannot add sonic information that was not there on the original master analog tape. DAD/HDADs provide the opportunity to hear the quality of the master tape [or usually the safety copy] at home through a DVD-Video player but do not offer "expanded dynamic range over" tape.

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify.