 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
Copied CD's sound inferior to originals.Or this is what I was told by a respectable audio shop owner, who has very good ears and
also designs loudspeakers.
So, Why not ?I powered up the computer, copied a music CD to hard-disk using EAC, burned the resulting
wav-files on a CD-R with my crappy 4X IDE HP CDburner. At 4X, of course. Then, I
extracted the audio I just wrote on the disk, again with EAC. Then I compared the "original"
and the "copy"630 Megabytes. 5.04 10^9 bits. Not one difference.
I extracted audio with my CD-Burner instead of doing it with my CD-Player. They both agree
on what's on the disc.Therefore we can conclude that the bit error probability of the process is less than 2e-10.
Probably much less, as Reed-Solomon codes are used.All this with no green paint on the CD, no blue LEDs, no snake oil.
Therefore, IMHO, hearing differences between a digital copy and it's original means that
- EAC was not used for audio extraction (duh ! I heard some even use Easy CD creator !!)
- CD Transport should be ditched
- people hear thingsAs a reminder, EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is the only software that can extract audio data
from a CD with NO errors or scratches. You can find EAC at http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/Is it too much to ask a $1000 transport to do the job of a $60 CD-Rom reader ?
I'd like to hear from your experiences with copied CDs.
Thank you.--
_________________________Pierre-Frédéric Caillaud
peufeu@free.fr
32 Passage Gonin
69001 Lyon
France06 61 52 75 96
04 78 43 15 94
Follow Ups:
I can hear a slight difference- a tiny bit of degradation of "involvement and transparency." The duplcated CDs were burned at 8x. I agree with other inmats that at 2x or 4x, they sound very good.I did the AB test with my first few CD-r. Since the difference is small, I did not do any critical listening to detect any difference now. After break in, I guess I cannot hear any difference if I duplicate cds at 2x.
I use Easy CD Creater. I have tried coping at 1X speed but have not tried coping to my hardisk first. In any case I haven't heard any ticks or pops but what I do hear isn't as "good" as the original. As you can tell by my name I am a vinyl guy. My copied CD's sound even brighter and grainier than the original.Mr. Vinyl
Mon ami,I have experienced great success with my mere 8x HP 9110 and (gasp!) the Adaptec CD creator software that came with it. After burning perhaps two dozen music CDs, here are my observations using a Dell XPS-R400 with 128 MB RAM.
1. Burn at slowest rate. Although my unit is an 8x unit, it sounds better at 2x.
2. Do not run any program at all during the burn as it will skip.
3. If using Adaptec, choose the "Music CD" setting as the "Copy CD" setting will work horribly.
4. My copy of Nero generated errors on both attempts I used it. I tried both a copy-on-the-fly burn and a copy-to-disc-first burn. How can it screw up writing to my hard drive?
5. $.60 US Memorex CDRs work just fine.
6. I cannot detect any sonic differences when I burn it slowly.Bon chance
> Copied CD's sound inferior to originals.
Tubes sound better than SS. Granny Smith apples taste better than Golden Delicious.
It all depends on implementation and taste.
> All this with no green paint on the CD, no blue LEDs, no snake oil.
No blue leds? Shame on you!!! :D
> Is it too much to ask a $1000 transport to do the job of a $60
> CD-Rom reader ?No, not on the original disc, *but* the $1000 transport reads a whole other disc, the copy...
> I'd like to hear from your experiences with copied CDs.
> Thank you.AFAIKS, you left out two details:
1) the (perfectly extracted) data must now also be *written* perfectly. From an inside scoop I heard that many standard grade burners have a high BER (bit error rate). Most errors can be fixed at reading, but the quality of that depends on your transport and chipset.
A guy at Philips told me that for the stand alone audio recorders, a whole new transport was developed with a 10x lower BER than the transport in the data recorders. That would explain my positive experiences with them (then again, *bias* would also explain it :)
2) the (perfectly extracted, maybe not perfectly written) data are now on a 70% reflecting disc (CDR) instead of 95% (silver). Some transports make more errors on those. Then again, some make less errors. At least a recorded disc has perfectly centered data, since it was written instead of pressed. This saves a lot of work for the tracking servos. A german magazine reported that some copied CDs sounded *better* than the originals. They explained it by some jitter phenomenon: the recorder retrieves the data clock using a PLL and when the original disc had *bad* timing, the PLL clock might do a little better.
My experiences are that some CD copies definitely sound worse (e.g. Eric Clapton - Unplugged) some sound better (e.g. Cranberries - Bury the hatchet), many sound bad from the start and don't get any better or worse, but all are cheaper :)))
Regards,
Remco
I read an article in a UK magazine hinting a that a copied CD can sound better. This is due to the timing of the pits on the original having a certain accuracy, and a CD-burner theoretically being able to burn the data onto a CDR with greater accuracy with respect to this timing.
Consequently jitter is reduced, blah blah blah, and those with ultra pricey kit and unnatural ears might be able to hear the difference; very sceptical myself.. I'm still interested in A/B testing 2 transports through the same DAC to see if I can hear a difference, let alone 2 different CDs or digital interconnects etc!
I have made a number of copies of my CD's with my computer at 2x with no detectable audible difference. At a greater copping rate than this I get problems, static etc. I have used 80 cent discs and have been happy with the results. I copied the "Famous Blue Raincoat" because I know it so well and to my ears everything was there.John
I have tried Easy CD creator, Nero, and Feurio.None have satisfied.
I get static (sometimes two minutes worth!), clips, pops, etc. hidden throughout the CD. Very annoying.
Even at $10 for 10 blanks (Memorex) it ranks my rear to toss another silvery disc in the trash. I figure if it's shiny it must be worth a lot of money. Not to mention my time and effort.
I will try EAC. I think I might have looked at it a while ago, but didn't use it for some reason.
I have undone all the "speed" options in the creation process. No "on the fly", copy to disk first, etc.Still have pops and clicks.
I'll also scope out CloneCD.
About to toss my towel in though.
I get pops and clicks etc using CeQuadrat WinOnCD, more pops at the end of long CDs (I assume this is because CD is passing under the writing laser faster here at the outer edge... ? ).Anyway the way to fix it is to set your burning software to make an image on hard disk first (as opposed to trying a back-to-back, "on the fly" copy), then set it to extract the tracks from the CD being copied at 1x speed (if your CD-Rom supports it - your burner should).
This way there are no pops or skips on the copy.
You should try CloneCD. I have used CloneCD many times and I have not had anything but excellent results. It copies in raw mode, so it makes 1:1 copies from the original. It also has a real easy-to-use interface that makes it even more impressive. When I'm making a mixed cd, I use Nero. Don't bother with Adaptec's Easy CD-Creator, Nero is MUCH better (thought I'd share that with everyone who is using the stock program that came with their burner). Try these programs, and if you still get pops and static, take a serious look at your hardware and the software you are burning onto (by the way Memorex isn't all that great, try TDK, Imation, Sony, etc.). Also don't have any programs running while you are extracting and burning, and remember to burn at 2X (for consistent results). Hope this helps
Steve
Do you have a web site for "CloneCD" or "Nero"?
Thanks in advance
Mr. Vinyl
You can download CloneCD from www.elby.de. I believe it is one of the best burning software out there. If you have any questions just email me.
Steve
Hi Steve,Thanks for your responses. I did download CloneCD and tried it on a badly scratch CD that my copy program wouldn't copy. CloneCD copied it perfectly. It was rather slow though. In any case I will try it on an audio cd tomorrow.
Thanks again.
Mr. Vinyl
Nero : http://www.ahead.de/
CloneCD : try looking for in Googlebut you don't neet it, EAC (exactaudiocopy.de) is way better
Hi,I don't know why but the copy of EAC I downloaded wouldn't unzip. I will give it a try again tomorrow.
Thanks for you responses.
Mr. Vinyl
try http://peufeu.free.fr/peufeu/eac.exe
I've used just about all of them and, to my ears, the copy sounds identical or perhaps a bit better -- the latter is aural speculation really, no real tests have been done. (If it is true I'm suspecting it has something to do with the blue tinting they use on the Verbatim disks.)Also, though I've heard a lot about some players not reading a CD-R disc, and also about using computer-grade copying media vs. audio-grade, I've made copies with both types and had these results:
* All copies on the cheaper (about 80 cents/each) Verbatim disks sounded as good or better than the ones made on the "audio" CD-R disks that were about $2.50/each.
* All copies sounded as good or better than the original, with the exception being a bit of a different sound on the expensive "audio" CD-Rs. I can't quite put my finger on what's different, but it's there.
* All copied CD's have worked just fine at home (Sony DVD-7000), at my brother's (Harman Kardon 8450 CDP), in car systems (cheap CDP in brother's Chevrolet Cavalier), at friend's houses, and everywhere else I've tried them. To date I've not found a CDP that wouldn't play the disks.
Your mileage my vary, of course. Just my own experience. By the way, I do all of my copying at 4x with "on-the-fly". I cannot hear a difference between copying at 2x and 4x.
Memorex professional ($1.00 each) gives very good results. Kodak gold is close behind. I use a Revox B126 digital out thru the CardDeluxe and onto the hard disk using Easy CD deluxe. Burner is Yamaha 8/8/24. I would not go higher than 6x.
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
