Redbook:Yet another new magic bullet arrives?

[gaboo]

Modern expesive CD players ARE computers. They use CD-ROM drives nowadays, and other fancy stuff like multiple laser beams. Meridian G08 has 3 beams I think. There used to be a Kenwood CD-ROM that had 7 beams, but it was mostly for speed.

 

[taymat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scrith My usual response to this stuff is: The $39 Sony CD-ROM drive in my computer typically reads CDs (even ones with a few minor scratches) error-free at 10-15x normal CD playback speed. I am guessing that a $1000+ CD player can read the same CDs error-free for music playback. If this isn't a placebo effect, then everybody needs to throw out their CD players and start using computers as sources, because they are guaranteed to be bit perfect without any snake oil.

Yeah I mean the best source really is a pc, as you can rip with EAC use the hd as a source. Meaning no errors and no jitter (in theory?) and no scratches.

Only problem is pcs are electrically and mechanically noisy, but both of these problems are being ironed out and soon I think we'll see more and more people using hds as a source. I remember there's one thread on here with the owner of grace audio, saying he uses an iriver ihp-120 as a high-end transport.
Still don't get how this box is doing anything different to any other computer though.

 

[eyeteeth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Megaptera Rip it and recopy it to a CDR and your CDP can get at the information. I guess my question is: if the CDP can't get that information off, why can the CD-ROM?

I like The Mac's reply to this. Or at least I like to think he is correct.

All I know is that I have CDRs that sound inferior to the originals which indicates that there is wiggle room for variable quality amongst different burns. All I'd really like to know is, what is the ceiling on the possible improved fidelity?

 

[pbirkett]

I've always felt that stuff ripped to my hard drive sounded better through the computer than if I played it straight from the CD, even if the ripped stuff is compressed with something like Musepack. One of my friends also believes this too. There must be something to it.

 

[Glassman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Mac A typical pressed commercial disc is cheaply produced, and it's really not an ideal reading medium. I remember a conversation with the CEO of wadia at the recent detroit meet with a bunch of the other attendees about how wadia was striving to get all the information OFF the CD. Increasing the percentage of the disc that was actually read by the player, in order to increase sound quality, and they were working on it HARD.

striving? every el cheapo CDROM drive will read it much faster then playback speed and even without re-reading it will output error free results in most cases, if you re-read a few times then there's really no difficulty in extracting exactly what's on the disk.. even more so if the drive reports C1 and C2 errors.. if they're striving to get bit perfect results even with their fancy Pioneer transport.. I simply can't believe it's the case..

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Mac It's all about how much of the data you can read, and with a typical pressed disc in a typical CD plater, it's just not as much as with a good disc.

gimme a proof on this, anytime I heard of someone receiving player's digital output, it was bit perfect compared to computer rip, prove me wrong..

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Mac In theory, 16bits and 44.1 khz is enough to reproduce EVERY CONCIEVABLE WAVEFORM up to 20khz and with a dynamic range of about 96dB. If you are concerned with music that has less than a 96dB dynamic range (which is most music) and has no information over 20khz, then redbook records all the possible information, and there's no possible theoretical gain from going to any other medium, vinyl, SACD, DVD-A. They're all unnecessary if you don't need over 20khz or 96dB. But you still need to read all that information, which is key.

in theory yes, but in reality it's not that simple.. you have to deal with a byproducts of steep low pass filters.. only in case you have input with no frequency content above 22.05kHz and multibit A/D converters, you get perfect results like theory says, but both of these assumptions are not the case in reality..

 

[Scrith]

I think computers have helped to rip down some of the magic, mystical thoughts that people seem to apply to CD players.

The simple fact is, it is EASY for even the least expensive CD-ROM drive to read data off of a CD (that isn't heavily damaged) error-free at a much higher speed than is required for music playback. If this were not the case, nobody would bother using CD-ROMs with computers. For those of us who use computers as a source, this information is hardly a surprise, because we have ripped countless CDs to our hard drives at a very high speed without errors (unless, as I said, the CD has some serious damage).

Unless the hardware is extremely cheap or poorly designed, I can't imagine why there would be any advantage to applying some type of snake oil to a CD, other than if the snake oil somehow managed to introduce errors that sounded good.

 

[Sentral Dogma]

I liked The_Mac's post as well. What most of the other posters are forgetting is that a cd player is real time(sorta) and for a rip the drive can scan the CD over and over again(kinda like Prince of Persia for Playstation.. sorta). Creek seems to have a solution with their new CD50 mkII.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glassman in theory yes, but in reality it's not that simple.. you have to deal with a byproducts of steep low pass filters.. only in case you have input with no frequency content above 22.05kHz and multibit A/D converters, you get perfect results like theory says, but both of these assumptions are not the case in reality..

So change your reality. If you don't want byproducts of steep low pass filters, don't use steep low pass filters. Do it like Audio Note, 47 Labs, Zanden, Scott Nixon, Ack! Industries.. so on and so forth.

But of course, we'll all believe what we want.

 

[Glassman]

if I were to change anything I'd have to act in the recording studio, because there's the place these filters are applied, your home playback equipment cannot do anything with it.. and I wasn't talking about analog filters either..

 

[aeriyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by glassman in theory yes, but in reality it's not that simple.. you have to deal with a byproducts of steep low pass filters.. only in case you have input with no frequency content above 22.05kHz and multibit A/D converters, you get perfect results like theory says, but both of these assumptions are not the case in reality..

Not to mention the fact that most mastered CD audio today has the holy hell bit-pushed out of it to get the maximum amount of gain on the recording...

It's crazy. People want way more volume. They want to lose their hearing at 30. *laugh* It's like those guys that I work with... it's a contest to see how many subwoofers they can cram into their cars.

The general public doesn't care about sound quality. Seems like they want scooped EQs, teeth-rattling bass and earth-shattering volume. Which usually works out, to LPs sounding much better than CD (in a proper system) and sometimes, even cassette recordings sounding better than some CDs. (I have some CD that sounds worse than a Dolby S cassette recording of an LP.)

People will learn, one day... this trend will change, like all trends do.

 

[Dreamslacker]

Quote:

Originally Posted by redshifter so what makes these so good?

They use the Pathlocyanine dye invented and licensed from Mitsui in their CD's and the gold (real, btw) reflective layer. Kodak has long stopped production but Mitsui still produces them but they're under the MAM-A name now. Mitsui actually says that the silver reflective layer with Pathlocyanine dye is actually more readable but doesn't last as long as the gold ones.

I've never come across an optical drive (PC or overwise) that couldn't read a burnt (without major data errors) Mitsui Gold CDR as yet.
Even the old 2x CDROM drives that can't read some of the CDR's of other brands like Verbatim or Sony etc..

In any case at all, I recommend using a decent CD-RW drive such as Lite-on, Yamaha, TDK or 48x and slower Teac burners (the 52x and DVD-R drives are no longer manufactured by Teac). Burn between 4x to 8x inclusive. Do not burn the disc at lower than 4x as the dyes for the newer high speed media do not respond too well to that.

This is what I feel is the optimum range for CD-R's for audio. Ricoh and Taiyo Yuden Gold are also very good media that are reasonably priced.

I also recommend using Alcohol 120% or CloneCD 3.xx to do bit for bit cloning of the audio CD's. Whereas CloneCD 4.xx is better for ripping protected CD's, I find that it doesn't clone audio CDs well.

 

[HiWire]

Does the type of reading laser used in the player also have an effect on the sound? I assume there are only 2 or 3 basic laser mechanisms being used by the top-tier CD player/transport manufacturers.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glassman in theory yes, but in reality it's not that simple.. you have to deal with a byproducts of steep low pass filters.. only in case you have input with no frequency content above 22.05kHz and multibit A/D converters, you get perfect results like theory says, but both of these assumptions are not the case in reality..

Exactly! I think the steep low-pass filter is the main responsible factor for «digital sound».

 

[kunwar]

Personally,I have in my experience found the IHP-140 to be an excellent source for line out as well as optical out to either my receiver or the DAC1

As for CD's I believe the gold formula utilised by Mitsui is also used by Verbatim which are pretty good in terms of burn quality.
I have checked burns of the same material at similar speeds on the Verbatim and Kodak Gold media of which I have precious few left. The readings using the KProbe tool from liteon were very close to same.

The funny or shall I say interesting part follows:

The scans on the original of the Jascha Heifetz Beethoven/Brahms violin concerto showed a higher degree of Pi/Po errors then the copy i burnt on either the verbatim or the kodak. Now the original was mastered by Naxos who are known for making excellent masters of classical material.
Still it is surprising what one might find out with a little experimentation

 

[GokieKS]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gaboo There used to be a Kenwood CD-ROM that had 7 beams, but it was mostly for speed.

Ah, the Kenwood TrueX 72x, back when the fastest normal CD-ROM drives were around 24x. I paid dearly for one back then, and if the discs trying to be read were in flawless condition, the drive indeed was blazing fast. Unfortunately, even minute disc imperfections caused reading errors.

And it broke on me after about a year.

And it's been pretty widely known that re-burnt CD-Rs generally are of better quality (not referring to sound) than original CDs - if you rip a CD, burn it, then rip the burnt copy, you usually get better extraction speeds (more obvious when not applying error correction like EAC's secure mode).

~KS

 

[null]

Well, I ripped a few of my favourite tracks with EAC in secure mode, then burned them onto a black cd-r and did a comparison btw the burnt and the regular cd. No difference as far as I could tell.