suggest me the best recordable cd-r media for audio ..

[markl]

It's deep blue/green, a little bluer and darker than a Taiyo Yuden if that helps.

 

[Factor]

They say darkening or "greening" the edges of a CD is supposed to stop the occurrence of laser light bouncing around inside the plastic walls of a CD and making its way back into the laser unit, interrupting the steady bitstream with an extra, erroneous reflection that isn't part of the normal reflection pattern of the laser moving across pits. The problem with the idea is that light moves so fast that if this could ever happen, it would be happening on every single bit and the medium wouldn't work at all.

The speed of light is roughly 300 million meters per second, which means that light can cross the distance of a CD about 2.498 billion times a second. The rate of the PCM bitstream that the laser reads is 44.1 KHz, 16 bit, or 44,100 packages of 16 1's and 0's per second. This means that while the laser is busy reading one bit of audio information, the laser technically could bounce across a 12 cm surface over 3,500 times. Running your finger across the edge of a disc will reveal that CD's are not even close to geometrically perfect. If a laser were to bounce around randomly in there a few dozen times it would be bound to hit one of the innumerable distorted areas of the prismatic CD plastic and be refracted in multiple directions. If that laser can traverse 12 cm (the width of a CD) over 3,500 times per bit (and it would actually bounce many, many more times considering CD's have a hole in the middle), that would mean there's a more than excellent chance that within less than one sample's time, the laser of a CD player would turn the CD into a solid glowing disc of feverishly complex laser reflections and refractions, negating the laser's ability to determine whether it's seeing pits or not, and destroying the bitstream before even one full second was heard.

Alright, forget all that. Let's pretend that physics don't apply and we have to test this in other ways.
A random flash of laser light back into the pickup would not be of the exact same quality of light as the laser bouncing back from a mirrored (reflected) or pitted (diffused) area of the aluminum, plus it wouldn't fall in time with the 44.1 KHz clock system, which means it would be seen by the player's DAC as an error and corrected before being turned into an analog signal. But according to this article (which also covers the point I made above, but without the math), marking the edge of a CD produces no difference in the number of errors when the DAC is hooked up to a digital error counter.

The first six paragraphs of this are basically hearsay, but then it gets good: http://www.snopes.com/music/info/greening.htm

Of course, the guy who performed the tests chose to use a flat black marker instead of a green one because opaque black is *gasp* far more absorptive at all wavelengths than the semi-transparent green paint marker that is usually used, and I'm sure some audiophiles will discount his tests because of that.

Anyway, if this doesn't convince you, nothing will. The only elements of a CD that can be better than any other CD are how flat the surface is (for reduced detectable errors), how well the dye in a CD-R responds to the "burning" process, and the resistance of the metal to oxidation. It's true that gold is more oxygen-resistant than aluminum, so those gold discs are much less likely to experience the "laser rot" effect of oxidized metal. And it's also true that extremely high quality control, like the controls used by the factories that make JVC's XRCD's and those fancy gold discs, could result in a surface with less imperfections to allow for better laser tracking, and therefore less error correction. So if you're burning a master to send off to a duping plant, or if you have some piece of data that needs to last as long as possible and you can't store it any other way than on a CD for some reason, get a gold disc. Otherwise, hell, save a boatload of money and buy some discs made by Taiyo Yuden or one of the other companies with a good rep. The good reputation comes from their assembly lines making discs with highly readable surfaces and good structural integrity, meaning you're getting most if not all of the benefit of one of those gold discs at a fraction of the price, and you won't even have to explain yourself to your non-audiophile friends.

You could chance it and assume the dye in black CD-R's responds to burning in an inherently better way than the standard green-looking CD-R dye does, but I have never seen any evidence that actually supports this other than the advertising copy on the outside of CD wrappers. And if there was a difference, it would be something far, faaaaar less detectable than giving a "warmer" sound to a PCM bitstream.

Anyway, if you hear better sound after greening or an altered tonal balance from black CD's, that's perfectly legit. Just know that the stage at which the difference is happening is the most important, influential component of all: the transducer in your mind.

 

[philodox]

Quote:

Originally Posted by markl It's deep blue/green, a little bluer and darker than a Taiyo Yuden if that helps.

Sounds like this is what they are using on the Verbatim disc's that I bought. Also, this link seems to confirm. According to the article I linked, the Gold ones should be the best with the Blue closely following.

Oh well, I guess I will see when I use them. If I don't get any coasters and my Eastsound can read them all that is all I need.

 

[philodox]

I checked on the CDR's themselves and it says "ZD0940-CDR-A80A-AZO" on the back of them... oh, and they stink!

I am about to rip a CD on my new DVD-R drive... just as soon as I get EAC setup on my new computer.

 

[gshan]

Interesting note on the black CDRs...

but I'd like to go to Jpn and buy some of these in bulk:

Sure beats the crap we buy here

 

[Nightfall]

Where can one easily find Taiyo Yuden cdr's, at a good price, in the US?



JC

 

[boodi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Factor ..

thanks for the long head-fp , factor

Quote:

Anyway, if you hear better sound after greening or an altered tonal balance from black CD's, that's perfectly legit. Just know that the stage at which the difference is happening is the most important, influential component of all: the transducer in your mind.

I assure you , my friend , that my Jeef Buckley cd sounds different on the two different media I've burn it on ... I assure you means I'm sure

 

[boodi]

About the black sounding different .. : I was very skeptic before trying ,thought it wasn't possible and did the copy test more to confirm to myself it wasn't true .

 

[Factor]

I'm reluctant to accept the idea that black CD-R's defy the basic principles of CD technology until someone administers a legitimate double-blind test which suggests they do. Burning and comparing them yourself means very little outside of your own personal experience. That's why doctors don't tell test patients if they're in the placebo group or not when they're researching new drugs.

 

[philodox]

Well, after ripping a new CD and burning it to the Verbatim disc with Nero I did a quick listen and it at least seems to be as good as the original... I will do some more listening at some point to see if there are any sonic improvements.

 

[chesebert]

ah....old thread deserve a bump. Just caught on this black cdr thing, bought some Memorex and they are made by Prodisc. Yeah they do sound different than the original....what the? Black cdr give me a more defined soundstage, the width and deapth of the soundstage increases, more focus on the individual instrument, and an overall warmer sound. Its IMPROVED!..from the original. The improvement is very audiable, I just can't believe the difference, much more so than an amp/IC upgrade. How can it be? a bit is a bit is a bit.....man...I am stumped at the thought of a bit is not a bit...LOL.....oh..how will I ever design the next best flip flop..LOL....

Another black CDR advocate. highly recommanded for people with Grado headphone, gives a nice and tuby sound. Astonishing!

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oliver Recently, I was under the impression that my burned CDs sounded somewhat bad, so I just took this thread as a motivation for a small test, 24x vs. 1x

Differences in sound quality are highly unlikely, but differences in error rates may exist between speeds. But chances are, it's the exact opposite of what you think. Most burners are optimized to burn at their higher speeds, not their lower ones. There may acutally be more errors in a disk burned at 1X than there are in one burned at 24 or even higher. The proper way to do this is to run an error check, not a listening test.

I always verify my burns, and I have had the best results with Ritek Ridata and Japanese Fuji. The absolute WORST disks I've used are Memorex. I have some black CDs from when those first came out that are now unplayable.

Someone was asking where to get Taiyo Yudin...
http://www.supermediastore.com/index.html

Here is a place with good prices on Ritek Ridata...
http://www.meritline.com

See ya
Steve

 

[RedLeader]

did factor not explain this whole thing? a 1 is a 1 is a 1, no matter what color it goes through. Damn audiophiles....

 

[chesebert]

damnit! don't tell me a 1 is a 1 is a 1.....I have worked with every freakying digital circuit you lay your hands on...actually...400 of them! I use to optimise certain huge company's next generation (its big..its blue...LOL) VHDL library....I know that the laser probably generate a voltage variance based on the deapth of the pit, and it gets converted through one of those sense amplifier, most likely differential, and probably fed through a inverter buffer to the D/A. Its been a while since I have done these digital circuit work but damn it...I know digital copy retain the complete information, and CD has built in parity bits to protect data.

But I can't lie and say the black cdr produce the same sound as the other cdr because it doesn't! oh..man..I am gonna go mad thinking about this. actually I don't want to think about it..

 

[boodi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chesebert ah....old thread deserve a bump. Just caught on this black cdr thing, bought some Memorex and they are made by Prodisc. Yeah they do sound different than the original....what the? Black cdr give me a more defined soundstage, the width and deapth of the soundstage increases, more focus on the individual instrument, and an overall warmer sound. Its IMPROVED!..from the original. The improvement is very audiable, I just can't believe the difference, much more so than an amp/IC upgrade. How can it be? a bit is a bit is a bit.....man...I am stumped at the thought of a bit is not a bit...LOL.....oh..how will I ever design the next best flip flop..LOL.... Another black CDR advocate. highly recommanded for people with Grado headphone, gives a nice and tuby sound. Astonishing!

exactly .. i sense exactly what you sense , the best thing with grado is that the top is less harsh with black cds .. I'm still searching a big quantity of them but I'm pretty sure I'll get a quantity when i find them , after trying black cds for a while now .
Tried for a while , main concern was I wanted to be sure I wouldn't loose details to gain some warmness and stage/bass definition . Now I'm pretty sure I'm not loosing , I'm gaining all with black .

in fact "improvement" ( I'd better call them "signature change" ) with hp-2 even over the original , as you wrote, are not subtle .. an ex. I cannot stand more my Metallica black album and I prefer to use my copied version because it sounds quite more then a bit less harsh and sibilant , and with the character you yet exposed well ( more defined and bigger soundstage , a more warm sound )

btw i did double blind test just to convince myself it was placebo . did it once a day for 15 days now with the Metallica album ; tried and I guess is black when is black cd , 100% .