Home General Asylum

General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories.

Stand alone audio only dedicated can be worse

Cos they do not always read the source CD properly
On a computer or data based burner you can re -read the data if you "RIP" it , ie extract it properly from the source , a stand alone (or if you burn a CD on the fly with a data recorder) cannot always read the info and if the error correction is not 100% you can get a corrupt burn , not to say this wont play , but it might lose info.
I have been burning since the first audio only CD recorders came out and have been thru all the hoops etc
Apart from this , I have owned both , and my CDRs burnt on a top of the range Pioneer PDR-05 DONT play on my meridian transport - whereas 24x burnt CDr's/cdrw's DO.
I used to be anal about both audio and data burns , burning at 1 or 2x speed only , using expensive media , devoting a puter to Audio only as well as using a Meridian 518 mastering processor tween my source and the PDR-05 - nowdays my 24x LG burner takes 3 mins to burn an audio cd that plays in EVERYTHING.
I did a whole lot of blind , double blind and sighted tests with originals and CDr's burnt via various means and came to the conclusion that sometimes burnt CDrs sounded better and with stand alones , cables and scource CD transport mattered.
Now this is all academic , modern burners and media do a fantastic job and all the "care" taken those days is not an issue these days.
What matters now is that you have a decent burning program , reasonable media (Do a search on BLER or BLERS to find out what matters with media) and the correct firmware for your burner and a puter capable of running it all. I have blind tested originals vs 24x burnt and cannot tell the difference.Funnily enough , when I was doing sighted tests , I always said the original was best , when doing the same tests blind , mostly the recorded cdr came up as "the best"
There is NO reason , apart from wishing to record analog(where stand alones are more convenient) in using a much more expensive stand alone type burners that use audio only CDR media (no diff to normal media , in fact worse as it does not have to comply with media that spin at 40x which has to be balanced and far better in terms of BLER rates etc)
Data and computer based burners are more than up to the task of recording audio. The added benefits of a puter based system are legion , cost , low cost media , no copy protection , data and audio , speed , the ability to edit , mixed mode recording etc.
If the burner is capable of writing red book standard there is no issue with "deep cuts" etc , the puter burners dont burn "deeper" at any rate and anything that burns with some proprietory mode is to be avoided.
There is one issue with data burners and cd copiers in general , the audio data on a CD has no real "start" address and you get what is called an offset error , IE the first block of data is not read from it real "beginning" , but this is not something to agonise over at all.
The other issue is to use a decent "ripping" program, EAC is free and considered the best as well as a source that can rip digital audio (using the burner to do this works perfectly)
Rodney Gold


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Western Glow Tube Service  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
  • Stand alone audio only dedicated can be worse - Rodney Gold 20:17:54 01/02/03 (0)


You can not post to an archived thread.