Extended Resolution Compact Disc (XRCD) is a mastering and

manufacture Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a r ...

process patented by JVC (Victor Company of Japan, Ltd) for producing Red Book

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

s. It was first introduced in 1995. An XRCD is priced about twice as high as a regular full-priced CD. JVC attributes this to the higher cost of quality mastering and manufacturing.

Technical overview

The XRCD definition refers to the mastering and manufacture process; the resulting CD and the contained data conform to the redbook standard and are encoded at 16 bits, 44.1 kHz. Hence, XRCDs are playable on any compact disc player. JVC uses advanced

dither Dither is an intentionally applied form of noise used to randomize quantization error, preventing large-scale patterns such as color banding in images. Dither is routinely used in processing of both digital audio and video data, and is ofte ...

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

s (though without

noise shaping Noise shaping is a technique typically used in digital audio, Image processing, image, and video processing, usually in combination with dithering, as part of the process of Quantization (signal processing), quantization or Audio bit depth, bit-dep ...

) in their K2 technology to transfer the analog or digital source to physical disc. The company claims to have studied how inferior CD-remastering techniques degrade the

master tape Master recordings, or simply masters, are the original recordings—including Mastering (audio), post-recording mixes and Record production, production edits—of audio performances, from which all analog and digital copies of the audio are derived ...

sound and strives to minimize this loss. Unlike HDCD, the extra four bits cannot be recovered, as this method of mastering only aims to improve dithering to 16-bit, rather than to store extra data.

Mastering process

If analog, the source material is first converted to digital via JVC's K2 20-bit or 24-bit

analog-to-digital converter In electronics, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC, A/D, or A-to-D) is a system that converts an analog signal, such as a sound picked up by a microphone or light entering a digital camera, into a Digital signal (signal processing), digi ...

. The musical information is next encoded on a

magneto-optical A magneto-optical drive is a kind of optical disc drive capable of writing and rewriting data upon a magneto-optical disc. 130 mm (5.25 in) and 90 mm (3.5 in) discs are the most common sizes. In 1983, just a year after t ...

disk for transport to JVC's

Yokohama is the List of cities in Japan, second-largest city in Japan by population as well as by area, and the country's most populous Municipalities of Japan, municipality. It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a popu ...

manufacturing plant, where

jitter In electronics and telecommunications, jitter is the deviation from true periodicity of a presumably periodic signal, often in relation to a reference clock signal. In clock recovery applications it is called timing jitter. Jitter is a signifi ...

reduction is applied. The musical signal on the disk is down-converted to 16-bit through a K2 "super-coding" process. This 16-bit signal is eight-to-fourteen modulation-encoded (EFM-encoded) before going through a proprietary "Extended Pit Cut" DVD K2 laser technology to produce a glass master. JVC claims this optimizes the linear velocity of the glass master, giving precise pit lengths to eliminate time jitters, controlled by an extremely precise

rubidium Rubidium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Rb and atomic number 37. It is a very soft, whitish-grey solid in the alkali metal group, similar to potassium and caesium. Rubidium is the first alkali metal in the group to have ...

clock. All CDs are finally stamped directly from this glass master. XRCD2 and XRCD24 are improved versions of the original XRCD process. XRCD2 is the first to record to a magneto-optical disk via the digital K2 regenerator, while XRCD24 upgrades the original music signal's bit depth signal from 20 to 24 bits.

References

External links

XRCD.com

XRCD by JVC

Elusive Disc's Explanation of K2 Encoding Process
{{Audio format Compact disc Digital audio storage

Technical overview

Mastering process

See also

References

External links