I have looked around, and cannot find a Source at all for any of the Pacific Microsonics HDCD chips such as the PMD-100 Decoder. After reading through a few other threads I noticed a couple of other people were asking the same questions. Has anyone ever come across a source for these components? There has to be some way to get them other than directly from pacific microsonics.
Their HDCD chip is intended for volume manufacturers only. You have to agree to buy an outrageous number per year, have them bless your circuit, and, oh yeah, the best part.........the playback level for HDCD has to be higher so that idiots who buy one of their HDCD encoded CDs will automatically think that it sounds better.
And to think that they actually offered me a job at one time.........(what where they thinking???!)
Jocko
And to think that they actually offered me a job at one time.........(what where they thinking???!)
Jocko
The playback level has to be higher..Haha....That's pretty funny that they are so uncertain of their technology that they make it louder so that people think it sounds better. Leave it to Microsoft in their continued efforts to rule the wolrd, to keep the little guy out and not let us have some fun. But isnt there some sort of a way to get these chips. If the PMD100 is old, and the PMD200 is the new one, dont they have a surplus of these chips somewhere, or perhaps a HDCD player manufacturer has an extra supply of the old ones around. I know I have seen a few people on here mention that they had PMD100 and PMD200 chips available to them...Where did those come from? I wonder if there is any way I could call Pacific Microsonics and tell them that I'm doing a project for school and I wanted to use their parts...Any decent company would help somebody out a little there. There has to be a light at the end of the tunnel here.
PMD200 is impossible (100-pin TQFP)
Impossible-schmossible! didn't you read my wiki SMD article, er... book?
Actually, I tried some ChipQuick the other day. Works nice, except it leaves a big mess to clean up afterward, especially on the IC pins. Oh well.
Anyway, good luck getting anything out of PMI/MS. Licensing is the name of the game. That's where the money is. They don't have time to bother with hobbyists, or for that matter, even little OEMs who won't be providing them enough royalties and licensing fees to cover some salesman's telephone time with you. Surplus equipment is the only source I know...
Jocko, I think you're going overboard in knocking HDCD. Yes, HDCD recording are +6dB compared to non-HDCD recording, but this is how they go about getting more dynamic range out of CD... OK, so it's fake dynamic range, because they have to soft-clip the waveforms and then do their little "peak extend" thingie to auto-magically restore them during playback. But, it is nonetheless an interesting technique. And, of course, a -6dB analog attenuation is an option for OEMs who want to make sure that non-HDCD material is level matched with HDCD material. The only thing I find objectionable about the HDCD technology (not counting that they belong to MicroShaft now) is that it doesn't work when the data isn't preserved bit for bit.
Impossible-schmossible! didn't you read my wiki SMD article, er... book?
Actually, I tried some ChipQuick the other day. Works nice, except it leaves a big mess to clean up afterward, especially on the IC pins. Oh well.
Anyway, good luck getting anything out of PMI/MS. Licensing is the name of the game. That's where the money is. They don't have time to bother with hobbyists, or for that matter, even little OEMs who won't be providing them enough royalties and licensing fees to cover some salesman's telephone time with you. Surplus equipment is the only source I know...
Jocko, I think you're going overboard in knocking HDCD. Yes, HDCD recording are +6dB compared to non-HDCD recording, but this is how they go about getting more dynamic range out of CD... OK, so it's fake dynamic range, because they have to soft-clip the waveforms and then do their little "peak extend" thingie to auto-magically restore them during playback. But, it is nonetheless an interesting technique. And, of course, a -6dB analog attenuation is an option for OEMs who want to make sure that non-HDCD material is level matched with HDCD material. The only thing I find objectionable about the HDCD technology (not counting that they belong to MicroShaft now) is that it doesn't work when the data isn't preserved bit for bit.
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