[Don Quichotte]

Hi! I would like to know your opinion on the accuracy of CD-R recordings. Can you burn an identical (for a good human ear) copy of a CD? I'm asking this because I've recently had an unpleasant experience with the sound quality of some CD-R a friend of mine recorded for me. It was (?x) speed reading / 4x speed writing on some cheap 650Mb TDK CD-Rs; I don't know the brand of the burner. I compared the sound to the originals and it is audibly harsher, brighter and less detailed; it's more difficult to follow the individual lines of the different instruments playing together... I was listening in my K501 headphones directly out of the RCA outputs of a cheap CD player.

 

[septikus]

There are a lot of factors invovled in Cd copying. Since your friend would be hard pressed to have to change his cd burner, i think at the moment the best recommendation is to try out EAC (exact audio copy). It's a great program that once setup will create exact copies. It even has advanced features like read and write offsets to get that last few bits of accuracy at the beginning of the disc. I haven't configured the read/write offset, but just use it's secure reading mode and then burn the image with nero. It sounds great to me and i never have to worry about artifacts and whatnot.

 

[gpalmer]

It also might be your deck, especially since you mention you are using a cheapie. A CD-R is burned with a lower power laser than a commercial copy. This makes the pits burned into the surface smaller, shallower and harder to read than commercial pits. It could be that the CD-R you have already is a perfect bit for bit copy, but your CD player can't handle reading the format well, resulting in errors that degrade the sound.

 

[Cyberius]

I have a plextor 24x drive. If I burn faster than 16x, it switches between CAV/CLV modes, and on my sony player I hear some digital noise staticy-bursts during playback after it gets farther into the CD. I don't notice the effect if I play the burned disc on other players. I suspect you can get the staticy effect on CDRs to where it's present, but subliminal, and makes the music sound harsh.

The hard part is getting the bits off the original CD accurately, which as mentioned, you want to use www.exactaudiocopy.de for. Burning the bits to CD is easy. It's reading the bits back off the disc that's tricky, and that's where things like CDR Brand, Burner, Burn Speed, and especially your playback source factor in.

The good news is that if the bits were ripped and burned to your copy accurately, you will most likely be able to re-rip the CDR with EAC, and burn it out to a fresh disc and get a copy that will play better than the CDR you are having issues with. If the quality loss is due to bad ripping, then go back to the CD original.

Counterintuitive, but it's not that the data is bad, just that your player may be having a harder time reading the bits off the disc.

I've even had a commercially pressed cd (VNV Nation - Empires) that had playback problems, so I EAC-ed and burned a copy, and the CDR plays better than the original on my sony player and my factory-installed player in my truck.

I use a Plexwriter 24x, FujiFilm Media (Made in Japan by Taiyo Yuden), and only burn at 16x.

 

[Don Quichotte]

Thanks a lot for the detailed response, Cyberius. I intend to burn no faster than 4x. I've got a Philips PCRW4816 as a present, but I've had a little problem with installing it, so I couldn't test it so far. I care A LOT about the ultimate quality of my CD-R copies, so I'm thinking about buying a Plextor W4824TA. I know that burning a CD is easier than reading it, but I'm sure there is a difference between Plextor-written and Philips-written CD-Rs, and I am not sure if this (tiny, I guess) difference is worth it. I intend to burn many hundreds of audio CDs on the long term, and I use mainly TDKs (quite cheap), possible Verbatim CD-Rs.
Anyone having had experience with Philips CD-writters?

 

[dd3mon]

I have several scratched CDs that definitely benefitted from a EAC rip + burn. These tracks skipped in all my normal CD players, but with alot of time and effort ripped flawlessly with EAC - and the burn came out great.

Also I've compared the EAC rips from a couple of my older burned CD-R's, and they always come out identical to the originals (down to the bit) - leading me to believe that they would play exactly the same (I can here no difference either). I have a Plextor burner as well.

-dd3mon

 

[chillysalsa]

Lots of people are saying the CDR copy on a black-dye disc will actually sound BETTER than the original:

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/dig...ges/63723.html

(there's a link to a pdf file with details about it)

 

[Guardian]

Oh my god.

http://www.genesisloudspeakers.com/w...Black_CDs1.pdf

Everyone should see this. Does it warrant a new thread?

We need to start a revolution and get original cds to be made with better quality standards. I didn't realize that pressed discs are inferior to burnt ones. And this whole black cd thing is rather startling. It all makes sense, though. It seems very extreme, but it makes sense. What does everyone here think?

 

[dd3mon]

Very interesting.. even more so considering the only burned CDs I have are burned on Black Memorex CDR's, heh. I haven't had the chance to compare them to the originals extensively, and even then I don't have a CDP worthy of the comparison I would think.

-dd3mon

 

[diablo9]

my old HP9900 stopped working last night. all of my Optimum CDRs are ruined by creating the "pure noise" on the last track...
I have to go to bestbuy to get Plextor 4824TA and 2 spindles of Fuji CDRs. the rebate is going on there.

For more information about this, refer to www.cdrinfo.com and go to the forum.

 

[lini]

This would be the right point to throw in some jitter discussion and some debate about special audio burning modes for sophisticated Head-Fiers. Linux fans might want to throw in some comments about CD Paranoia and its algorithm, too. And I could add, that my friend Mike has also integrated this algorithm in CloneCD.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[Cyberius]

Anyone use the Yamaha F1 drives? They have a mode where you can sacrifice time on the disc, for longer pits/lands on the CDR. By elongating the length of the burn-marks, playback equipment can more easily read the data during playback.
http://www.yamahamultimedia.com/yec/...cdrw/crwf1.asp

They also have the Disc T@2 (tatto) technology, which while cute, also shows off the incredible precision positioning they can achieve with the laser in this unit.


I've read that with media designed for high-speed burning, you want to keep the speed somewhat high. The theory is that the newer high speed dyes burn-up/react at a faster rate than the older slower dyes that take longer for the laser to bake. With fast burning dyes, burning at too slow of a speed may be bad thing because the laser can "overcook" the dye. This theory could also be total b.s.

I go with 16x to control the effect of my burner switcing between constant-liner/constant-angular modes. It doesn't switch modes if I stay under 16. This would be burner specific and the details are probably in the burners documentation.

I don't know if buring a 48x rated cdr at 4x would be either bad or good. I'm just mentioning it may be a consideration.

 

[Audio Redneck]

Here is a review of the different modes of that drive:

http://www.reviewmakers.com/showdoc.php?review=50&pg=11

As to the original question, my feeling has always been that, yes, you can make a perfect bit-for-bit copy. The problem with the sound quality difference between an original and CDR is an issue of how well the player can read the CDR. A Data drive on a PC uses error correction in the form of re-reading a misread. A player does the same thing, BUT it makes an estimation if it can get a correct reading.

So the issue becomes: how easily can the player read the CDR? I have an old Sony CDP-32 from the late 80's. Alot of folks say that the old players can't read CDR's, and mine can't read ones made at higher speeds(10x+), but, so far, can read anything I've made at 4x & 1x.