[Davesrose]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Some geek /img/forum/go_quote.gif heh- You might not. I went there once researching this exact topic and I read some guys claiming that blue CDRs had a different sound then silver ones and that read errors where so great on consumer drives they could hear the missing bits.

That right there just shows how futile it can be to try to debate some of these finer things. I mean if we are going to say there's an audible difference between blue discs vs silver.....what about those turquos ones?? And would a blue HP be as good as a blue Verbatum? Since the differences, if they exist, are so minutely small.....who really cares???? I have tried the defoaming hype, the expensive interconnect hype, and power cord hype.....some of it has slight difference. But it gets so overhyped that there's an end all be all to making music sound pure or geniune (whatever that is...since this is all perceptions). Most of it is snake oil. I'd rather just listen to music vs trying to find the best CD-R!!!

 

[Audiofiler]

Kind of sad is this thread....as elephas has already eluded to a very good point..There is some truth to the general process that the OP speaks to, and even recently, a well respected member markl on the boards here has perhaps a clearer conception of the basic proponents that help to drive this theory within his thread. Also, there is also some really great information on the steve hoffman site as well.

Although unclear may have been the attempts of the OP to communicate this process, there still bears just as much relevance to this forum and to those interested to warrant proper replies or clarification; however, the dialogue and posts in this thread, unfortunately, are as useless as its initial confusion and seem drafted rather poorly and lacking couth

 

[Scorpio(DDMF)]

Let's take it from the top

I think I understood what the OP meant:

1. He implies that you should resample the original rip to 96Khz

2. Secondly, you should burn an audio CD on the CD-R using 1x burning speed using quality gear and CD-R.

My opinion is that you will definitely hear a difference. Why?

You have resampled the original 44.1Khz file to 96Khz than back to 44.1Khz (so it can be burned to a audio CD).
Resampling is known to alter the sound signature towards the warmer side. Technically, you have mutilated the original file with all the resampling, by losing a significant part of data. I don’t think you've gain anything by this, but if you like the end results, that's fine.

I do believe that you can make more precise CD-R copy's of the original CD by using properly setup software (for inst. EAC with right read+write offsets), since pressed CD-s often have more C1 and C2 errors than their properly ripped & burned CD-R counterparts (proven in practice using various DVD/CD/RW to scan both).

But, while this will give less "headaches" to your CD player's error correction algorithm, I don't think it will be able to tell the difference in sound quality.

As for burning at 1x, it really is an overkill today. You'll be better off using the optimal burning speed for your drive & media (one that will result in lower error rate).

So, to conclude, I think that the perceivable difference in SQ that the OP mentions is due to all the resampling, which loses a good part of original data (more so when it's used 2 times)

My humble advice to the OP would be to use an good EQ instead, or to change some of his gear to get the desired sound signature…

Cheers!

 

[Davesrose]

Somebody end this thread (wish there was an emoticon for slapping one's forehead)!!!!

Who knows what the OP was after since there was so many falsehoods. First it was that you should downgrade CDs to mp3....then it was upgrade to 24bit. Some of us thought this whole thread was absurd, so we started acting absurd. Some of the others called us immature for not being serious in an absurd thread. There was some talk on the validity of digital sources, but there's no way to be intellectual in this thread. This is all absurd.


Look, I'll apologize for being on of the original "joksters". If you guys want a real intellectual debate, start a new thread. No point reading into any statements on this thread! Not much practical info, and only some of the jokes are funny

 

[westies]

There are so many things wrong with the original post, I was almost convinced it was a joke. A lossy track is not going to sound better than the lossless source and burning at 1x speed is actually worse than burning at a fast speed.

 

[Jokieman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot /img/forum/go_quote.gif Slower speeds do not necessarily mean lower error rates. Different CD burners are optimized for different burn speeds. Usually, it's the top rated speed. If you are getting errors at that rate, odds are your hard drive is the bottleneck, not the burner. See ya Steve

You're kidding right? A hard drive moves at a much faster RPM than any consumer grade CD burner on the market.

 

[bigshot]

A fragmented hard drive can have problems keeping up with a fast burn speed, especially with older computers.

See ya
Steve

 

[shigzeo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dmented7 /img/forum/go_quote.gif You are saying that an mp3 @ 192kbps will sound better than the full resolution track on the CD? No way.... a lossy track will not sound better, no matter what speed it is burned at...

you haven't heard the news then i guess..

 

[ShadowVlican]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Some geek /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yes. Jitter is actually a measurable phenomena. We can get measurable less jitter on a CDR than a pressing. But is it audible?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scorpio(DDMF) /img/forum/go_quote.gif I do believe that you can make more precise CD-R copy's of the original CD by using properly setup software (for inst. EAC with right read+write offsets), since pressed CD-s often have more C1 and C2 errors than their properly ripped & burned CD-R counterparts (proven in practice using various DVD/CD/RW to scan both). But, while this will give less "headaches" to your CD player's error correction algorithm, I don't think it will be able to tell the difference in sound quality.

i totally didn't know that

so it IS possible to end up with a better copy of the original eh?

 

[m_memmory]

What scorpio(DDMF) said in post #78 is what the OP was trying to say (in my opinion) but there is one thing with it that I wonder about. Now I've not got great golden ears for hearing all these differences with the CDs and haven't got the gear that would be able to show it even if I did so it's pointless arguing one way or the other for me.

However if your taking a WAV file from a CD and upsampling it and then resampling back to a CD would that be similar to taking a 192 MP3, converting it to a 320 MP3 and then back again? Because converting a MP3 like that would not give you any better quality of audio file.

 

[Zenja]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShadowVlican /img/forum/go_quote.gif i totally didn't know that so it IS possible to end up with a better copy of the original eh?

It's kind of like ironing your clothes. The clothes are still the same but nicer

You're not coming up with things out of thin air.

There's no need to discuss doing things like re-encoding the music to mp3 to make it better or decompressing mp3s to wav. The only point mentioned that could possibly be true is re-burning a CD. And just because a lot of things in the audio world aren't intuitive to everyone doesn't mean all those things are BS.

 

[Kees]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zenja /img/forum/go_quote.gif It's kind of like ironing your clothes. The clothes are still the same but nicer You're not coming up with things out of thin air. There's no need to discuss doing things like re-encoding the music to mp3 to make it better or decompressing mp3s to wav. The only point mentioned that could possibly be true is re-burning a CD. And just because a lot of things in the audio world aren't intuitive to everyone doesn't mean all those things are BS.

That is a very good analogy!

 

[nelamvr6]

It also good to remember that there is a lot of BS in audio.

Just because a lot of things in the audio world aren't intuitive to everyone doesn't mean all those things are NOT BS.

 

[bigshot]

Just because information is more neatly arranged on the CD-R, it doesn't mean that it sounds any better to your ears... and just because your clothes are ironed, it doesn't make your shirt any warmer on a cold January night.

See ya
Steve

 

[wlai]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kees /img/forum/go_quote.gif That is a very good analogy!

No, that's a terrible terrible analogy. One, he assumes that bits are pants. You may get by comparing pants to analog vinyl, but they are not the same as digtal bits. Bits are either on and off. and there are no wrinkles to them. On top of that, the error correction code does two things: 1) Tells you when there is an error, and 2) In *some* instances when error occurs, it can recover from the error. The instances where it can detect error is much greater than instances where it can fixes it.

And when the ECC tells you the error is not correctable, then you've lost all hopes of recovering the original audio signal from that CD. Your CD player either gives up, or its DAC translates the bad bits into bad analog waveform. You may hear the problem, or you may not.

But the same problem exists when copying that disc onto CDROM. When copying the disc with the bad section, there are only three things that the PC can do:

* Tell you there is an error and gives up, stop copying
* Realizes the error, but faithfully copies everything, error and all, exactly onto your new CDROM
* Realizes the error, and makes up the answer, as in: "Is it a 1 or 0 at this position? Hmm, since the original can't tell me, I'll just always assume it's a 0 and continue on"

The whole premise of this thread is that #3 above somehow magically corrects the error. There is no magic. If it's broken, and that's all you've got access to, then half the time guessing the bits will be right, and half the time it'll be wrong. Average over all the errors on a disc, you are no better off. No fairy godmother will come out of your PC to tell you what the correct bit is at that location. The only way to "fixes" that error is to get a new original disc and copy from that disc, but then what's the point of copying the bad disc in the first place?

The only way to get out of the jam, is to compare it to other people's original disc. If most discs have no errors, then you can say most people have this bit to be a 1, while I have a 0 (and the ECC alarms went off), so I'll assume it's a 1 because most people has it as a 1. And if you use CDEx to extract a CD into lossless format, that's exactly what it does.