EXPLAIN HD SACDs to me.

HDCD may or may not be manipulating 16th bit, but it sounds just fine on a non-HDCD decoding player. From what I heard it's using special noise shaping algorithm to extract close to 20 bits in certain audio spectrum. Probably similar to what Meridian 518 does as described here.

Meridian 518

It's quite amazing how the noise can be "shaped" out and away from the critical midrange in order to provide higher resolution.

Someone aske which player. I have gone from a Meridian 506(non 24) to a NOS McIntosh MVP 861. There are SACDs and there are HD CDs.

Mceljo couldn't have stated it better and that is an excellent overview of the SACD format. The sampling rate is very well explained. If I could add to it: SACDs come in both multi-channel and stereo 2 channel. IMHO, those that are mastered in multi-channel sound a great deal better than in stereo. I have both (mostly multi-channel) and the comparison is like night and day. SACD technology shines when taking an older recording and remastering it from the original tapes. Some turn out great while others not so good. Many variables.

Bear in mind that not all players that purportedly play both SACD and RBCD do a "proper" job with SACD. Many will convert the SACD datastream into PCM, and then process it through a standard 44.1kHz DAC. You will lose the advantage of SACD and maybe even get sound which is worse than RBCD. To play SACD properly, check if your player has a DSD DAC.

if i glean correctly, your central question is whether hdcd/sacd are superior than redbook cd. hdcd does contain a little more musical information and has more dynamic range; all things being equal an hdcd should sound richer and better than a redbook cd, though not night-and-day better--hdcd is still just an enhanced redbook cd at core. presumably because the difference between hdcd/redbook is comparatively small, the hdcd format doesn't get a great deal of attention. sacd, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast--it utilizes much higher sampling frequency and provides much greater resolution and dynamic range, as well as much greater disk capacity, multi-channel capability, etc. all things being equal, sacd ought to sound vastly better than hdcd or redbook. however (and there's always a however) there have been a number of blind listening tests in which subjects (including recording engineers) could not discern an audible difference between sacd and regular cds, conceivably because most people can't distinguish audio over a certain frequency threshold. interesting stuff.