[lini]

Don: Just btw, do you have access to the German c't magazine somehow? Because there's an interesting article about the Plextor in the most recent issue, in which they also compare the drive's quality measurements with the measurements of a professional quality control system...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[Don Quichotte]

No lini, I don't have access to that magazine and, in adition, I don't speak German. Which were their conclusions?
Thanks for your interest in my frustration!

 

[lini]

Don: Ok, I try to sum up the key points. 1. The measurements of the Plextors (they actually had two untis and also additionally compared these...) and the professional analysis were quite a bit different, but they considered the Plextor results fairly good for private evualuation, nevertheless. 2. The drives with firmware version 1.01 have unnecessray high jitter, because they burn 3T pits too short. 3. Varirec also had only negative effects on jitter, so they recommend to deactivate this "feature". I guess, that would be the most interesting parts for you...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[KJ869]

Lets see, we have hear a guy who can hear diffrences with 300$ source, what probaly dosnt have the best headphonejack, unmped hd600, and probaly whitout cardass.

Hell, this guy dosnt need headphone system apparently, just burner and HD600.

a) either this guy uses always cd-writer tools ripping, and dosnt know lot about burning or b) he has pretty bad psycological problems.

 

[pedxing]

If you want to try to rule out the problems with inconsistent or bad rips, try finding a tool that can compare the files. I forgot what that tool was, but there was one ripper written long time ago that showed the differences and tried to average the differences across multiple files.

I don't understand how jitter algorithms actually work with rippers, but my experience with them has been disappointing. I usually find mistakes in their ability to find overlapping sections of the music and tack on the non-overlapping parts of the music. Certain music with certain repititive sounds can really confuse certain jitter algorithms.

If the digital-to-digital copying was perfect and you still hear differences, then the media or cd player might be at fault. Excessive errors can cause the cd-player interpolate a lot of the missing data.

 

[Don Quichotte]

Well KJ869, skepticism in moderate doses is usually a good thing, but you sound anything but moderate. It's not only me who heard the differences, it's also my friend with HD600 and my not-exactly-audiophile wife (she loves music, but she doesn't care that much for the sound quality, if this makes any sense to you). Blind tests, of course. Some gear is better that the other, but some ears could be better than the others too...
I'll try to find a program to compare the original and copied files, but it's only for the sake of the skeptics, I have absolutely no doubt about what I'm hearing (except where I explicitely mentioned that).
Lini, I upgraded to firmware version 1.02 before doing all these tests, I'll check if I can downgrade back to 1.00.

 

[Don Quichotte]

One more thing. I upgraded yesterday to the last firmware version (which claims improved writting quality on various CD-Rs), I burned a CD and checked it out. I would have tried the original firmware of the drive too, but I don't know where to get it from - on the Plextor site they offer only the upgrades. For my ear, this copy sounds extremely similar or identical to the previous firmware burnings; I did not have the patience to listen hard enough to make sure they are different, but if they are, the new one is deffinitely not better than the old one. The plextools' beta and jitter test shows a similar (good) beta and a more irregular jitter pattern, with sharp and really deep pits (of the graph, not the "pits" on the disc of course) which seem to arise at rather equal distances on the recording (10 - 12 minutes or so).
Conclusion: it's not impossible that a future firmware upgrade would improve the writting quality and my respect for this brand, but the current one did not succeed in these regards.

 

[scrypt]

I'd say your conclusions are probably most useful for people who, like you, own older computers. It's possible that the Plextor's performance is optimized for newer computers. Much as I'd like to own and compare to my Plextor the last Yamaha burner, which lini recommends, I must say I haven't had any of the problems you've written about here. The only coasters I've managed to burn occurred when I did ridiculous multi-tasking tests. And I, too, wouldn't burn an audio CD at a speed above 24X.

I'd also question whether factors like "tighter bass" necessarily translate to other systems. People have been saying that the 963SA lacks bass on another thread; I'd suggest that people assess their other equipment before making that generalization. I've heard the 963 with various systems (most recently, J&R's Parasound pre and amp, and floor-standing Polk speakers -- I wasn't gonig to buy them, so I didn't note which models) and truthfully, I wouldn't want more bass in many cases. Have you noticed the bass issue with every system you use, portable and home?

 

[joop nijenhuis]

Don't know what systems you use, but if you want to know whats going on you have to connect a cd player/writer digitally to a soundcard. If this is from RME later models you could do some interesting measurements, otherwise its impossible because the sound is going through some da and ad converters. Why use Plextor? Because this drive uses cooling which helps to bring down block error rates with burning. You can test yourself. A just burned cd from Plextor is cold, with other burners without cooling you burn your fingers on the cd because its so hot. There are only two, to my knowledge, complete cd burners/players both from Marantz which uses cooling too. Those machines are made for the pro market and equiped for such demand. For the rest of it, its said before. A bit is a bit is a bit, but the cd has to be burned correctly and heat can deform the material so the bit is a bit, but truncated. At that point its read and corrected by some electronics which does do some repairs. After that it goes to the da converter and some filters. Its here where the differences are made, not on the digital level before correction.

 

[grinch]

i use a yammy crw-f1 and have for about a year now. it's a great burner, and recently i bought a pretty expensive source and figured i'd do a little testing as to if i could hear a difference between copies and their originals.

my vote is: no difference, if any. admitted, i didn't spend a lot of time a/bing, but i couldn't hear any difference at all.. and this is with a cary 306/200 and hp-1's. i should try it again sometime with my stax and see if that helps, but at this point and i'm really not thinking the difference is there.

one thought though, i do use exactaudiocopy to rip and burn these cds, WITH correct read and write offsets. perhaps this is your problem. i also gave it a try using the combined read/write offset function, then burned the image in nero using my burner's special "audio quality" mode. didn't seem to make much of a difference then either.

oh well, what a boring subject.

 

[Don Quichotte]

Yes scrypt, the difference is there no matter on which CD player / headphones I am doing the tests.
Regarding the digitally connecting to a sound card, let's assume that I would find the Plextor copies to be better. What's the use? They will still sound worse on the "normal" audio system. Also, I think I would need a very good soundcard for this. On the other hand, I don't think it's because of my old computer, except for the power source I cannot imagine how the age of my computer could affect anything else but the ripping/burning speed. And the Philips I compared with was running on the same computer.
The cooling feature is "cool" though, I didn't know about this.
Grinch, if your Yamaha does perfect sounding copies, I envy you. I didn't think this would be possible. Maybe there is a difference, but small enough that you simply don't care for it??! Anyway, I've heard that Yammaha F1 is simply the best burner for audio...