A lot of metadata and basically a lot of music @aangen. Much deeper in, for example, the Alternative section than I have, with five albums for an artist where I have three. I can console myself that my collection is wider maybe. But not if there are separate such lists for Jazz and Classical too! The picture of the bookshelves full of CDs reminds me of my cases before I relocated everything to the basement in plastic bins raised off the floor by plastic pallets. We had some mega-rain here in Germany last Summer and even though we are on top of a hill, I learned to get things off the floor. We went two weeks with no hard internet too as both towns below us on either side were swamped. We were the only folks in the neighbourhood with plenty of music and movies on a home server.
dBpoweramp for me alsoā¦
For those who use Exact Audio Copy (EAC), and possibly FLAC compression within it, I thought you may find the following interesting or even helpful! 
The latest version of EAC is version 1.6 (23 October 2022) and may be downloaded from the website.
If you also use the FLAC compression option, the latest version of the (open source) flac.exe (and metaflac.exe) program, which EAC uses, is version 1.4.2 (22 October 2022) and is available from the Xiph.org website at FLAC - What is FLAC?.
On a personal note, Iāve decided to slightly adjust the flac.exe options that EAC uses. Iām now using the compression option ā-0ā for āno compressionā. Why, you may ask? No earth-shattering reasons. Itās just that storage is not an issue these days so why not go with the minimum decompression processing effort while keeping my preferred āOgg Vorbis commentā metadata format. 
BTW, if youāre interested, you can read about the Ogg Vorbis format specification also from Xiph.org at Ogg Vorbis Documentation.
I know this is an old thread, but still relevantā¦
I have a bunch of HDCDs (mostly Grateful Dead, but also Neil Young, David Grisman, even seeing that my copies of Van Halen I and II are HDCD).
Always wondered how to extract all the bits out of the HDCD when my CD player doesnāt recognize it as anything but a regular CD.
Yāall may know this, but Iām just finding out that dBPowerampās DSP menu has a option for HDCDs, and you can set it to extract the 24-bit goodness from the disc.
Iāve re-ripped a few, and I now have both the 16- and 24-bit albums. At some point Iāll compare to see if I have the patience/ears/gear to discern a difference.
If itās worth it, rather than re-rip a bunch of discs, it seems I can use the Batch File Converter feature and just convert all these existing HDCD 16-bit files to 24-bit. The data is in there, just needs to be decoded. Or encoded. Ahdunno.
Not gonna worry about my many Daveās/Dickās picks HDCDās tho. Doubt those live albums will benefit at all!
Is 8 bits worth the trouble? Inquiring minds want to know
I really have to believe the answer to that is a big fat PROBABLY NOT (at least for me).
Others might be able to hear a difference.
HDCD was probably just a marketing ploy that failed. Really, how many CD players out there can read those last 8 bits?
The problem is HDCD recordings just sound weird (at least to me) if not properly decoded. Not too many of these out there, though.
Iād love to know if those extra bits are rippable as well.
FWIW here are a couple of lists of HDCD titles:
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=List_of_HDCD-encoded_Compact_Discs
Another approach is to take the original rip (which, if done bit-perfect will still contain all the data) and pass it through a program to extract the 24 bittiness.
I did my few HDCDs a few months ago, Iāll dig out the notes I (probably) made for the exact procedure.
It works, they then are recognised as 24 bit (and tend to be 6 dB quieter).
Edit - here we go (and no need for re-ripping):
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https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=High_Definition_Compatible_Digital#FFmpeg
check if ripped file has HDCD flags:
ffmpeg -hide_banner -nostats -y -v verbose -i 2\ Fallen\ Angel.flac -vn -af hdcd -f s24le /dev/null 2>&1 | grep āhdcdā
above allows checking for the HDCD flags in an already ripped file (flac or aiff or wav)
Next outputs a 24 bit file of āexpandedā HDCD stuff.
(and keeps the metadata unlike the one in the web page above)
for f16 in *.flac; do trk=basename "$f16" .flac; w24=ā$trkā_24.flac; ffmpeg -i ā$f16ā -af hdcd ā$w24ā; done
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yep, thatās what I was talking about with dBPowerampās Batch File Converter. It can extract the bits. It also has a setting where you can bump up the output by that exact 6dB amount. (I didnāt bother with that, but itās there.)
Again, not sure Iām gonna really care about all this.
It was a cool discovery (mainly because I know I have a ton of HDCD Grateful Dead), but I canāt reliably discern hi-res over CD, given the same mastering. So Iām probably not gonna sweat the missing 8 bits of whatever it is.
Yeah I read up on it at the time and didnāt seem worth it, but I did it to play 