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I'm curious as to how many people are finding sonic differences among ripping and burning software? If you do, what do you like and in what respects do you think the CD-Rs sound different?
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...some better than others. If you search past posting you will see the subject has been beaten to death.I find EAC to be very good for ripping. I don't burn CDR anymore since the new ones are all desiged for very fast writing and they don't last for too long. I preffer hard disk(PC) storage and playback.
As Todd says, it is a black art and sonic differences are audible despite the same data content. It is all dependent on optical media properties and transport, how they interact together, vibrate etc.
Add to this differences in how software controls the drive and the whole dynamic of the mechanical system changes again. The mechanical vibrations affect digital circuitry during reading and writing and that also includes the dac chip on your cd player.Eliminating the burning process eliminates half of the problems.
I can come up with a hypothesis of why CD-R media and at least some burners might produce audibly different results but the software is a more difficult case. I haven't done the work and I have no firm convictions in the case of the software. Some listeners, however, are reporting differences and I'm curious as to how widespread this perception is which is why I posted.
For what it is worth I use Taiyo Yuden and MAM-A Gold CD-Rs but I haven't tried the other CD-Rs frequently mentioned as sounding good.
The files generated are identical from a "data" standpoint, but they can sound so different. From clean and dynamic to hazy, vague, and compressed. And everything in between.The best thing one can do is try as many rippers, burners, and media as possible, and settle on something that produces the best sonic result.
It's a black art. There's probably a scientific explanation. I think it's more than just jitter. And it's a phenomenon that I think has been greatly under-investigated over the years.
It's an element of the major frustrations audiophiles have been having over the years in dealing with digital audio playback.
I think Nero has been producing one of the poorer sounding burn products. I tried the lated version of 7 and thought it was awful. I think EAC is overrated. I personally like EKOS Free CD Ripper 1.5.3 for ripping, Sony CD Architect 5.2 for burning. DART is another good burner, and CDex is another good ripper. Alcohol 120% is my choice if I were to do rip and burn with image files.
Dear Mr Krieger,may I ask you if you have found the EKOS Ripper superior to EAC in some ways ?
I usually use EAC, rip in burst mode and look for same CRC between copy and test.
Is this a reliable way of ripping ?Thank you very much and kind regards,
I find EAC only average as a ripper from a sonic standpoint. I thought CDex was better, and EKOS even better yet.But now the surprise....
On the burn side of things, I liked DART, with Sony CD Architect having a different "flavor" (not necessarily better). The burn engine on the Magix packages does well too. But with the DAO upgrade, I now say the champ of burning is.... EAC!!!
This looks like the combo I will settle with. Freeware in both cases. I might eventually find something I like even better, but this is for now the slam-dunk. Enjoying a copy of the Who's "Endless Wire".... This music is incredible.
Dear Mr Krieger,thank you very much indeed for your extremely kind and valuable advice.
I will try the software you mention soon.
Kind regards,
If you are hearing differences between CDs that can be ripped to files that contain exactly the same data, there is a problem with your CD player (e.g. it is having trouble reading some CDs in real-time more than others, and giving you erroneous data to the internal/external DAC as a result). The "black art" is in the extraction of data off of the CD in real time (which is why using CD players for playback is a compromise...they often cannot read the data from the CD in real time without errors...software rippers can slow down to a rate much slower than that needed for real time playback to overcome this problem).
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