burning better music

[jayleaf]

i haven't burned CD' in quite some time now and i'm wondering over the years if there are better options for quality sound than the standard blank CD. i've read about putting music on DVD for example, but from what i understand it only holds more music, but doesn't improve quality. i'm interested in downloading some of the new hi resolution music available online but wondering if i would lose the better sound quality burning to a CD. i realize there are other options for playing the music through my receiver and i'm looking into that as well. but just wondering are there better discs to burn music these days. i'm just starting to dip my toe in this particular musical pool. i'd appreciate any knowledge you can send my way. thanks in advance.

 

[Grador]

You would in fact lose the extra quality if you burned to CD. An audio CD by definition is 16/44.1 and nothing else. You could figure out how to burn a DVD-A disk, but the better choice would probably be to pick up some form of digital music player. It would allow you to keep your entire library at your fingertips and remove the step of putting everything on disk.

 

[jayleaf]

thanks for the response Grador...i suppose i was hoping that blank blue ray discs might be available one day that would offer the possibility of audiophile disc burning. i will be looking at the other alternatives.

 

[Grador]

You can burn the files you download. They would be playable in many bluray players, but most of these players will also let you plug a usb stick in.

To clarify what i posted yesterday a little. By "audio CD" i mean one that is playable in a CD player. You can put the files themselves on a CDrom DVD or bluray and they would be readable in computers and many [maybe most?] bluray players. File playback is a feature that is becoming far more common, but you would need to research the equipment to figure out what files it will play. Most hi res music downloads will be in FLAC or WAV format.

 

[Pyrrho]

Downconverting to CD quality will not audibly degrade them:

AES E-Library » Audibility of a CD-Standard A/DA/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution Audio Playback

BAS Experiment Explanation page - Oct 2007

That people frequently claim to have superhuman hearing does nothing to change the facts.

With a multichannel recording on SACD or DVD-Audio, that can be audibly different from a 2 channel CD recording, because the difference between 2 channel and surround sound is clearly audible.

 

[Grador]

Downconverting to CD quality will not audibly degrade them:

AES E-Library » Audibility of a CD-Standard A/DA/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution Audio Playback

BAS Experiment Explanation page - Oct 2007

That people frequently claim to have superhuman hearing does nothing to change the facts.

With a multichannel recording on SACD or DVD-Audio, that can be audibly different from a 2 channel CD recording, because the difference between 2 channel and surround sound is clearly audible.

I mostly agree with this sentiment. Personally I do not believe the higher res files to be of much utility. On the other hand I have usually been able to tell when a file has been resampled [downconverted to CD]. In other words I doubt that you'd be able to tell the difference between the high-def files and a CD of the same recording, but a high-def file turned into an audio CD may sound worse than the CD you bought.

 

[Pyrrho]

I mostly agree with this sentiment. Personally I do not believe the higher res files to be of much utility. On the other hand I have usually been able to tell when a file has been resampled [downconverted to CD]. In other words I doubt that you'd be able to tell the difference between the high-def files and a CD of the same recording, but a high-def file turned into an audio CD may sound worse than the CD you bought.

If you hear a difference in that case, the program you are using for downconverting must be crap or it is not set properly. Take a look at how the testing was done; they took the analog out of the high resolution player, they converted that analog to CD quality digital and then back to analog again. People could not hear the difference between that and bypassing the extra conversions, except when they elevated the volume for quiet portions so that the difference in the noise floor was audible. Or in other words, there was no audible difference in normal listening at all.

So if you are doing a direct conversion from one digital format to another, it should be even better than that (which obviously would not be audibly better for normal listening, since that was, from an audible standpoint, perfect for that). So if it isn't, either one has not set the program right, or the program is garbage.

 

[Grador]

I have never tried at all, I don't bother with higher res content. My experience is from windows resampling for audio output. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that if you set the output sample rate higher than CD it will sound fairly wrong. Never downsampled though.

 

[jayleaf]

sorry i was away for a couple of days. what i seem to be getting from your comments is hi res music is not worth it. if i'm understanding correctly you're both saying that it's pretty much wishful thinking that hi res sounds better because even if it did the human ear really isn't capable of hearing the difference. i'd like to hear back from both of you on whether my assumption is accurate. have a good one. Rob.

 

[Grador]

You a are essentially correct. The two parameters of PCM audio are sample rate (in kilohertz) and number of bits. Cds have a sample rate of 44.1 khz (44,100 samples per second) each of which can have 16 bits of information. The more bits you have the more difference you can have between the quietest and loudest thing, as you literally have more numbers to worth with. The more samples you have the higher the frequency sound you can record, up to 1/2 the sample rate. A cd at 16/44.1 has around 90 db of dynamic range and can record things up to 20khz (the extra space to the technical limit of 22.5 is used for something i'll explain in a second). Given that the background noise in the average room is 30 db, to need more than the 90 db of dynamic range a CD has, you would have to want peaks to reach over 120 db which your system likely isn't even capable of. Additionally most people can't hear anything approaching 20 khz let alone above it.

The way PCM is decoded is slightly complicated. It uses some fancy maths to fit a curve to the samples it has. As long as there is no information above 1/2 of the sample rate and nothing louder (requiring a higher number than) 16 bits, the output will be EXACTLY that of the input. Having more bits and samples will not improve the accuracy of the output if less can handle it. This brings me back to the extra 2.5 khz on the top of CDs that is unused. This space is used for a very very steep low-pass filter to be used in recording so that there is NO audio above 22.5 khz that makes it into the analog-digital converter when making CDs. Today this is more effectively done digitally, but it's always fun to give a history lesson.

I tried to keep this simple but I it is a complicated topic, feel free to ask for a little more explanation.

 

[Grador]

On a side note: there is a reason why some of the higher res recordings will sound better: mastering. Producers will sometimes master the "audiophile" releases different than the mainstream CDs.

 

[Pyrrho]

sorry i was away for a couple of days. what i seem to be getting from your comments is hi res music is not worth it. if i'm understanding correctly you're both saying that it's pretty much wishful thinking that hi res sounds better because even if it did the human ear really isn't capable of hearing the difference. i'd like to hear back from both of you on whether my assumption is accurate. have a good one. Rob.

Yes. Grador gives a good explanation above. And he is right that mastering can be different. With a hybrid SACD, for example, the CD layer and the SACD layer are completely separate from each other, and so what is on each could be completely different. If they wanted, they could put not only a different mastering, but even a different recording on the different layer. Some CDs have been released that don't sound good, but that is because they did not put a good, well-mastered recording on it. If one puts low fidelity on the CD, the CD will not magically make it better. But for practical purposes, the CD format is capable of perfect 2 channel sound.

As for why some people want something else, many people imagine they have superhuman abilities, and so reality is of no concern; they want something that is technically better, hence the interest in hi-resolution formats. Or, as mentioned above, some want multichannel sound, and so one may have a good reason for a different format than a CD, which is limited to two channels.


Some people want what they subjectively prefer, as with LPs; see:

Vinyl vs. CD - A Running Commentary - Parts 1 - 5 - Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity

Notice the discussion later on in the article (keep clicking to new pages; the article is fairly long, but well worth reading if you have even a slight interest in understanding the differences between CD and LP) about the levels and types of distortion inherent in LPs. It is a generally pleasing distortion, and so many people like it. And liking it more, some people imagine that it must be more accurate, which, of course, is fallacious reasoning. Being subjectively pleasing is not the same as being more accurate at all.

And:

Boston Audio Society - ABX Testing article

Just like with the high resolution audio, inserting a conversion of the analog off of an LP to CD quality digital and then back to analog does not degrade the sound audibly.


Now, in some cases, an old LP actually will sound better than a new CD of the same recording. However, it is not because of the formats involved; it is because some old master tapes have not been stored well and have deteriorated over the years, and so when a new release is made from that, one is starting with an inferior source than when it was freshly recorded and put on LP. Also, of course, whenever someone decides to do a new mastering, it can be better, worse, or just different. And so that can also make one sound better than the other, which, again, has absolutely nothing to do with the format on which the music is available to the consumer; it has to do with the things done to it before it was put on whatever medium it is on for the consumer.