[Don Quichotte]

I just bought a Plextor Premium a week ago, attracted both by its Q Check functions and by the reputation of the brand. I had noticed before that different writers produce different sounding copies, even when using an identical image. A friend's Teac writes with more detail, faster transients, tighter bass, truer tonal balance, better treble extension and overall gives a more relaxed sound than a Philips I had at home. The difference is not huge, but audible. I found other drives (Yamaha, Ricoh) to write better than the Philips too.
Imagine my surprise and dissapointment when I heard how the Plextor writes! Compared to the Philips, the sound is slightly less extended both in treble and bass, the bass is tighter but somehow less natural, and the sound is overall slightly harsher and more congested, with less detail and separation of the instruments. The sound is less colorful than that of the Philips, and somehow seem to lack nerve and naturaless. The difference in quality is 2-3 times smaller than between the Teac and the Philips, but my wife could hear it from the first attempt (blind test). I tried different media (including the Plextor CD-R supplied with the drive), different writting speeds and even slightly trimming the power of its laser (its Plextools include a function called VariRec that allows this). No change.
I went to a friend and listened on his system (Technics CD player ~ $300-350 when new, Sennheiser HD600). The difference was there, but I felt it was smaller - to the point that I was not so sure anymore one is clearly better than the other, but it was a noisy environment and his system sounds extremely different from mine). On the other hand, he thought the Plextor was slightly better (more "correct", less harshness on mids) (blind test).
Anyone of you has a possible explanation? Similar (or dis-similar) experiences?
Thanks!

 

[khollister]

Boy am I glad you posted this, as I was about to order this same drive!

Did you mount the Plextor internally or externally? I believe it makes a difference.

I have been experimenting with this very issue lately myself. For what it is worth, here's my results so far:

* I am primarily using the Memorex black CDR media. A quick comparison with Mitsui Gold media (the darling of the pro audio crowd) showed it to be noticeably worse sounding than the black media. This actually appears to validate the Stoplight pen idea (green magic marker to color the edges of the disc) - reduce scatter or internal reflections.

* I use Exact Audio Copy in secure mode on my XP machine to rip the tracks. Using anything else (with the possible exception of CD Paranoia on Linux) will result in worse sound for sure.

* I am using Nero on XP or Toast on Mac OS X to burn with.

* I am shutting down all other programs when burning.

* I have 3 different CDRW drives - an NEC in the PC, and a Pioneer DVD-R and Toshiba CDRW in the Power Mac. All are internal.

* All 3 drives produce a slightly different sounding copy, with my preference being the Pioneer A05 in the Mac.

* At first listen, I thought the Pioneer copies were duller, but after more listening, I'm not so sure. On at least 2 albums I tried this with (George Jones - The Bradley Barn Sessions & Dwight Yoakam - Tomorrow's Sounds Today), the Pioneer copy is more natural with with a slightly reduced sense of glare. The George Jones copy was actually quite distintive in terms of the increased natural (more analog?) aspect to high register voices & instruments. Other copies were inconclusive.

* I suspect (as have others on the net) that an external writer (USB or Firewire) would be better due to cleaner power and more control over mechanical environment (vibration).

* I really want to try the Yamaha F1, but Yamaha has discontinued all CDRW products, apparantly.

Not sure where to go now.

 

[lini]

khollister: At least over here, there are still a few dealers that carry the external SCSI or Firewire versions of the F1. So maybe you can still find one of these, too...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[MagusG]

FWIW, I think you're crazy to think that different media and drives create different sounding CDs. A bit is a bit is a bit. As long as the information is there, there is ABSOLUTELY no reason why it should sound differently. If someone can give a logical explanation as to why there would be a difference, I will be glad to accept it.
-Mag

 

[lan]

Office Depot was clearing away the F1s for $47. I got the last one in my area

MagnusG, a CD recorder makes pits which are variable size and distance away from each other. It's jitter recorded onto the disc.

 

[khollister]

Jitter and error correction. It's the same reason why transports and SPIDF cables effect the sound with the same DAC. Try this reference:

http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/jitter.htm

The media used has an even more dramtic effect than the writer.

 

[peso]

Using the Premium and PlexTools you can measure the amount of jitter on your CDs. Why not compare copies made (off the same image) by different drives with this feature?

I have yet to find audible differences between cd-burners, given that the ripping process was done with EAC in secure mode.

Peter.

 

[tanfenton]

Quote:

Originally posted by lan Office Depot was clearing away the F1s for $47.

May I beat you now or later ? (I paid $100 two weeks ago.)

Once a functioning power supply arrives, I'll be burning like an arsonist with my F1. [Its] LED [will tease me in the meantime].

NGF

 

[Don Quichotte]

Jitter is difficult to assess, given the fact that the scale of measurment in Plextools is not abssolute, but all these drives seem to behave quite OK. Beta, "a representation of the transitions between the pits and land", looks best on Plextor copies. I am burning at 4X with Plextools or Nero and ripping with EAC or Plextools with adio error corrections set very high. These ripping and respectively burning programs sound identical to my ears.
I'l be out of town for a week. Please keep posting, I'll come back on you.

 

[dustinyo]

i'm not familiar with this drive, but you may want to check if there is new firmware available, either from plextor's website, or this is a great resourse for CD/DVD-R related things.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/

 

[scrypt]

I haven't found an F1 available at a decent price anywhere on the web, and I've been looking for quite a while. Links, anyone? (BTW: I'm quite fond of my firewire Plexwriter.)

 

[Don Quichotte]

So, I'm back and I did some more testing. Here are my findings:
- my previous conclusions regarding the better sound of Philips made recordings hold true even when using better CD players than mine (and in the same ways I've written before);
- EAC ripping produces slightly better sounding copies than Plextools ripping (using the Plextor in both cases and with both programs set for best accuracy). EAC copies are warmer and more alive, I mean they lose less of the warmth and liveliness of the original sound, but the difference EAC-Plextools is small;
- Plextools ripping is much faster than EAC ripping, which allows for making resonably good images of some very deteriorated CDs sometimes 10-20 times faster than EAC;
- EAC ripping is slightly faster and apparently slightly safer (better correction of errors) with Philips than with Plextor, but the last part of this assertion is based on very few tests; mind you that, while the Philips can read at up to 48x, the plextor is limited at max. 24x on my computer, because I couldn't enable DMA I guess (the system would crash - I have an AMD K6/400 MHz processor and an old motherboard);
- however, when ripping CDs in good or perfect condition with EAC, Plextor seems to produce ever so slightly better sounding images than Philips. I'm not sure about this, but Plextor copies seem to have slightly tighter bass. The difference is very very small, though - if it exists at all;
- finally, I compared two CD-Rs written from the same image with Philips with Nero, one at 4x and the other at 24x. The two CD-Rs were the same brand and bought at the same time. To my surprise, the 24x copy sounds slightly better (more dynamic and detailed) than the 4x one. This is even more surprising to me as I tested both discs with the Plextools and found the 24x written one to have obviously worse beta (see my previous post) and seemingly worse (much more irregular pattern of the graphic) jitter than the 4x one. So beta doesn't seem to affect directly the sound quality (better sounding Philips copies also have slightly worse beta than Plextor ones), probably it affects the durability of the recording and the compatibility with various players. Jitter, on the other hand, SHOULD affect the sound quality, so it probably shows more the difficulties the Plextor has with reading the disc than the actual jitter of the recording. Maybe the 24x written disc was better built form the beginning than the 4x written one??! Yes, I know, 40x discs or so could theoretically be more suitable for writting at high speed, but I've always found 1x written copies (on high speed CD-Rs) to sound better than higher speed recordings like 4x or 8x, and Plextools measurements, if they really have any meaning, seem to confirm that 4x > 8x >or= 16x > 24x.

 

[lini]

Interesting post, Don - I'm still trying to think up possible explanations for all your findings, though...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[jwsisme]

General thoughts:

Likely there is a "best" speed for each burner, but I would not burn CD's at speeds above 32x for music, regardless of brand.

The issue might be a CD media/CD player/CDRW compatibility issue. I'm thinking you used the same CD' media and same CD player. If so, then it's possible the 2 CDRW's you used might have reacted differently to the same CD media. CDRW's are sensitive to the media they burn. If you are using Plextor approved media, then I would say you are on to something.

 

[Don Quichotte]

I used the following media: TDK Reflex Ultra 24x, which seems to be the best media I could find in Romania, and TDK Metallic 48x, both made by Ritek; Verbatim Datalife 48x made by Mitsubishi Chemicals; some no names (made by Gigastore Corporation, I think); the Plextor CD-R that came with the drive (Taydeo Yuden, if I remember correctly) - by the way, according to the Plextools measurements, this behaved the worst. A lot of different TDK and Verbatim CD-Rs are approved and even recommended for the Premium, according to the Plextor site, but I don't know if these ones are included as well (they use some codes I couldn't identify). The difference in sound quality was exactly the same on all of them, so I'm sure it's not a matter of media/drive compatibility. I also auditioned on 2 very different CD players.
Maybe it's the black color of my "special edition" Plextor??! -

I expected something better from Plextor. I'm selling the damn drive.