Do CD-Rs sound better than the original CD?

[Unregistered]

Pretty amazing that a 680nm laser could be affected in any way by blackening the edges of a cd. You should try other colors as well - perhaps a light pastel color would really make the sound come alive.

 

[miklorsmith]

Actual experimentation

Many opinions on this subject, some very strong. I have a decent home system and am assembling a CD copying system comprising a laptop, external hard drive, and external Plextor burner. The latter two will be vibration-isolated and powered by EAC. My feeling was that there is too much press gushing over the possibilities not to give it a try, especially considering the meager cash outlay - $50 for NOS 2003 model Plextor drive, $75 for new external drive, $100 for adequate laptop. I will be using generic black-on-black CDR's to start but will try other media to compare.

I believe this will create the optimal conditions to be able to assess (subjectively) the merits of the idea. To the naysayers: Have you taken this idea far enough? Have you tried it at all? Are your system and ears capable of discerning subtle differences? I am not judging, but mockery over others' observations contributes nothing to the dialog. As a neophyte audiophile, I have found cables to make an audible difference, speaker, power, and interconnect. I have found Walker's SST cable treatment to be an unqualified success. My wife can't tell, but that does not obviate the obvious.

I wholly agree with the subjectivity of any analysis. Sand vs. tubes? Vinyl vs. aluminum? High power vs. high sensitivity? We all have our preferences. Some people may shun expensive gear by the 20% cost/80% benefit rule too.

I personally feel that relying on instruments to tell us whether our ears can hear differences is unwise. Instruments do not measure musicality, only frequency responses which are barely related to our enjoyment of music. True, presence of the full musical spectrum benefits our experience, but it is only one criterion.

I will be reporting on my preliminary assessments soon.

 

[Francious70]

I didn't take the time to read all of the post because there are to many. But my personal opinion this this issue is:

CD-R's do not sound as good. Every time data/audio/video is transfered from one medium to another, some dedregation is going to occur. Think about it, nothing is 100% accurate in this less than ideal world we live in. So when you are making the image for the CD you are about to burn, the lens may read a 1 as a 0. Same goes for whn you burn the CD. Innaccuracies are going to take place.

Even though I believe this way, I still burn all the CD's I buy then stick the origional back in the case, and on my tower. It's cheaper to replace a scratched burned CD than an origional.

Just my $.02

Paul

 

[miklorsmith]

Copies better?? If you follow the recipe, described here:

http://www.genesisloudspeakers.com/whitepaper/Black_CDsII.pdf

then yes. I wrote Gary Leonard Koh, owner of Genesis loudspeakers, telling him I had all the parts but the Power Plant. He said the Power Plant (and not other conditioners) was a vital part of the equation. Shopping Audiogon, I picked up a Power Plant and now have (with a few modifications), a system to these specifications.

With a friend, I did some sighted A/B comparisons. The copies are better, most obviously in the treble regions. I now understand the term "digital sound", because it's on the originals and not the copies. Treble on the originals is hollow and brittle compared to the copies. With the copies, discerning between the different cymbals is effortless. Incidentally, I played Eric Clapton's latest on original, which is very well recorded, but I found the treble grainy. Immediately afterward, I put on a copied, mixed CD by Mark Farina, which sports samples from a computer. The highs on the techno album sounded more organic on copy than the real drums on the original Clapton disc.

I have never heard SACD or DVD-A, but the difference is exactly in-line with how I have imagined hi-rez audio.

I might do some blind testing, or not. Disbelievers will not believe regardless. However, for the rest of you, the promise is real. For those in the "source first" camp, you can't get any more "source" than this.

 

[Mr.T]

What do you guys think? Has anyone here tried to put it to a rigorous test? Can a CD-R sound better than the source CD?
_________________________________________________________________

Q: Can a bootleg copy of a VHS movie look as good as the original or better?
A: No way!
Q: Can a generic drug be better or equal than the original drug?
A: No Way
Q: Can a computer copy of a music CD be equal or better than the original?
A: Not Better, but equal

Unless the original copy is a stinco.

Mr.T

 

[miklorsmith]

Apples and oranges. The science behind these comparisons represent completely different phenomena. Here's a basic introduction:

http://6moons.com/industryfeatures/eac/eac.html

There is a lot of information on the web describing various aspects of CD production on the web, much of it seeming to support the idea that copies can be better than the originals. One of the key ideas is that the physical cutting of a factory CD creates non-vertical slopes between the pits and lands. EAC allows multiple checks of these tough-to-read sectors and acquires a match (correct, intended data) before moving on. Your CDP does not do this. While the CD does contain all the DATA ultimately recorded to the hard drive, the TIMING of that data is often slightly off. Therefore, the copy can fix these timing errors, placing the data correctly, where before it was not.

Having a good, quality burner with an excellent power supply ensures that the corrected file is properly recorded onto the blank CD. Why a black disc would sound better could be better ink reflection, better reaction with the burning laser, absorbtion of stray light, or some other factor. Dunno.

I do know that the difference is obvious. I have heard the results. The easy thing is to write it off having never checked it out for yourself. Taking the pains to satisfy your curiosity is more difficult, but I promise it to be rewarding.

 

[Mr.T]

Data, video, sound on an original CD could only be improved if the original material is not transfered properly from the source onto a CD.

What I mean is, if the company that produces that original CD did not use the best equipment and technics there is available to us today, to transfer that information onto a CD as good as it should have been, than obviously there will be room for improvement. That's the only way that I can see that a better copy could be made from the original CD.

That's the way I see it.
Mr.T

 

[miklorsmith]

I believe this assessment to be largely true. The manufacturing process is designed to make many copies quickly, they are selling these things after all. Pressing equipment is very expensive. Therefore, producing copies as quickly as possible is important to keep production costs down. Glass masters which are used to cut the aluminum disk ultimately read by your CDP get dull with use. These also are expensive to produce and can be replaced less often than would be ideal. Their production run is based on making profit whereas the critical listener will take pains to increase enjoyment, even if that means burning a copy at 1x.

To me, it is obvious that the manufacturing process leaves much to be desired as to the ultimate product. So, I agree with your assessment Mr. T.

 

[Resident Loser]

OK...I'm a digital dummy...

...strictly into vinyl until very recently, when I got(or rather my wife got) a DVD/CD player for opening a bank account...

That doesn't mean, however, that I'm a complete baboon...I'm fairly conversant with the process and jargon, etc. and was regularly visiting audio stores when the first Hitachi CDPs hit the shelves at Bill Colbert's Audio Exchange back in 19whatever, soooo...

My question is, how can ANY copy sound better than the source material? I know from my semi-serious amateur analog recording sessions, that IT doesn't get better with succeding generations, but was always under the impression that the best one could do with digital was an exact copy...even with access to the bitstream, the analog signal has been sampled and coded, etc. so the signal is "fixed" in some manner, is it not?

I'm even sort of confused with the concept of "oversampling"...It seems to me that there might be the potential for more exacting error correction but, isn't there still some base-line limits as set by the original analog/digital transfer process...

jimHJJ(...jus' wunnerin'...)

 

[miklorsmith]

It's complicated and I'm no pro. I have done quite a bit of reading and have absorbed maybe 20%. It is not an intuitive concept, as with any analog comparison you KNOW copies are worse.

Oversampling is a different issue and a very complicated one. It can be done badly, making the music sound worse. It can also be done well and have some interesting effects. This is probably an appropriate discussion for its own thread.

There are two separate processes for making a copy better than the original. Both are very important. The first is extraction, that is getting data off the original. In the burn, all the data is present on the CD. We are not inventing or filling gaps like oversampling would provide. The problem is that the master does not cut a square boundary between the "pit" and "land". Instead, a slope is created. Depending on where the laser of your CDP lands on the slope, it may INTERPRET the data incorrectly. This is because timing data is not on the CD - the clock which is a separate device, generates the timing cues. The advantage of a burn, using EAC, is that the computer will read a sector multiple times to ensure a correct interpretation. I listed it earlier, but a link describing, much better than this, how this works is here:

http://6moons.com/industryfeatures/eac/eac.html

Check out the Genesis article too.

http://www.genesisloudspeakers.com/whitepaper/Black_CDsII.pdf

There's more too.

The second, equally important part is the burn. Generally, the slowest speed available (1x) is best, although Yamaha's Audio Master burners work best at 4x. The goal is to, as accurately as possible, get the "perfect" file off your hard drive and onto blank media. Mr. Koh told me that clean power, via PS Audio Power Plant, is a crucial element to an effective system. I haven't compared copies I made before getting one to those I have made afterward.

Mr. Koh has listed about 30 different types of media, which vary significantly in copy quality. These CDR's are made in different plants using different dyes. He is unequivocal that black CD's sound better although he likes Mitsui Gold from the Colorado plant quite a bit as well.

He has done much more exhaustive research than I have - I'm mostly following the path he cut. I've only had the complete system assembled for a week. However, there is utterly no doubt this works. I'll be making copies of all my discs and stashing the originals away.

 

[Rip Van Woofer]

I'm incapable of addressing the issues here on a point-by-point technical level; but 6moons in particular has never struck me as a good source of technical information. There's simply too much tweaky nonsense, unsupported speculation, and outright scientific howlers on the site that even a minimally technically astute layperson can recognize.

Yes, of course "improvements" (or at least audible and measurable differences) can be made in the analog domain with CD's as the 6moons article states in the beginning -- because you're mucking about with analog phenomena completely disconnected from the digital information! Like the kids say: well, duh!. That was the first of several things that got my BS detectors quivering before giving up on the article.

Genesis and Mr. Nudell are considered by some to mainly be masters of the overpriced speaker racket, in spite of Mr. Nudell's PhD in physics; credentials are no insurance against charlatanry. The paper seemed to be shaky to my admittedly untrained mind on the science. Again, fairly or not, the source alone raised my skeptical defenses. Has this paper or the ideas it advocates been submitted for peer review? Or is it merely a marketing excercise disguised as science?

Sorry, but I am still convinced that "bits is bits" in the purely digital domain. And stuff like jitter, even when it is present (most genuine authorites on digital that I am aware of consider it a nonissue in competently designed equipment), will manifest itself in the good old analog measurements in things like THD. If the analog output from your CDP's DAC stage has flat frequency response along with negligable noise and distortion, then that's that. If ink on the edges, black CD's, or small animal sacrifices do not result in any changes to the signal at the analog outputs then there just ain't nuthin' there!

 

[miklorsmith]

You would easily be able to hear the difference, if you could park your skepticism long enough to give it a try.

 

[Rip Van Woofer]

I have made a number of backup copies of CDs on various brands of CDR media using my Mac and Toast CD burning software; I have never heard any improvement or degradation except once when an apparent software glitch caused gross distortion on one particular copy. I burned another copy and it was fine. (The distorted copy makes a good addition to my AOL coaster collection.)

I have a black CD sent by a friend too. It's a fine recording but I have no way of judging whether its quality is due to the black CD or merely good recording technique. I am content for now that my possibly imperfect understanding of the current science strongly suggests the latter.

 

[miklorsmith]

That's a fair response.

On a subjective level, I'd put the improvement on the scale of a significant component upgrade.

 

[dlorde]

On a subjective level, I'd put the improvement on the scale of a significant component upgrade.

I feel a bit lost here - are you saying that a good CD copier can write a CD that sounds so much better than the original that it's on the scale of a significant component upgrade?

If so, what is this copier, because if my CD player can't do this correction/improvement, and a PC CD writer can, I've wasted a lot of cash...

Is it a once-time only improvement (can we copy the copied CD for further improvement)?

Is there a theory as to why is it that the copy sounds better?

As I understand it, my PC CD copier makes an exact disk copy of all the bits on the CD. If it didn't, other PCs couldn't use the copied software. Is there something extra that is written to the CD that only high-end CD players can pick up? If so, why - surely if a bitwise copy has no errors, and is within the capacity of a PC CD reader to handle, why would a CD writer write to a higher spec?

I feel like I'm completely missing some simple but important point... can someone put me right?

 

[Rob Babcock]

Certainly with analog each copy will sound worse, the farther you get from the master. As far as a theory for why CD-Rs can sound better, John Atkinson put one forth in Stereophile. I think I understood it while I was reading it, but certainly not well enough to try to explain it. Now generally Stereophile is not a good source for solid science, but I think JA is a pretty sharp cookie, and I trust in his expertise & objectivity. He's convinced that a CD-R copy does sound better, if I've read him correctly.

I'm not sure if copies sound better, or really why they would. I will say however that not making sense and not being true are two very different things. What I really really wish is that there was a solid & comprehensive double blind test to ascertain if there really is a diff, and if so which sounds better. To me that would be better than relying on speculation. But for now, please, speculate on! That's all we have right now, as far as I know.

 

[rectifier]

What do you mean by "better"? Surely it's a subjective term - did I miss the definition?

 

[Rob Babcock]

Try Dictionary.com.

 

[Resident Loser]

Not trying to be difficult here...but...

"...The problem is that the master does not cut a square boundary between the "pit" and "land". Instead, a slope is created. Depending on where the laser of your CDP lands on the slope, it may INTERPRET the data incorrectly..."

Isn't that what CIRC is all about...error correction through redundancy? Once the circuitry "sees" an "error", it interpolates an appropriate "fix"...from that point on it's pretty much 1s and 0s, on/off, yes/no...no gray areas, ergo, no room for improvement, particularly with a copy as it most certainly has it's own foibles to deal with...IMHO, perhaps equal to, but little or no "improvement" room and certainly not of the magnitude suggested...This is where the "night and day" scenario begins to rear it's ugly head, sounding somewhat familiar and therefore suspect.

I forget(if I ever knew)where in a block diagram error correction occurs(I'd guess early-on in the process), but even if one had access to the "raw" data bitstream prior to correction, all you would be able to do is copy the "error" as seen by the laser... if the master or mother or whatever then causes errors in the source disc, the copying device and media are only capable of reproducing what it is given...garbage in/garbage out ad infinitum...I don't believe that to be the case however; as far as I know, bypassing the internal DAC still gives you "corrected" data and so any latitude for further "improvement" seems highly unlikely.

jimHJJ(...and folks wonder why I'm partial to vinyl!...)

 

[miklorsmith]

Believe!

Better as in more true to the source. It would be incorrect to state that any copy is better than any original though. I've been playing around with it pretty actively for about 6 weeks and I think it needs to be done right to achieve ideal (and obvious) results. If you go halfway and get copies that are no better, it's because you didn't finish the process.

I took Mark Knopfler's 2004 release "Shangri-La", which is very well recorded. I thought "how to better this fine recording?" The answer is simple - increased coherency. It is present across the spectrum but most obvious in the treble. It has never jumped out at me which cymbal was being struck while listening to my home system. When listening to the copy, multiple cymbal strikes were immediately differentiated and I could visualize their relative sizes. I'm not kidding or exagerating.

As to explanation, the 6moons article is very good for this. The missing link, I think, is that there are two components to the sound that ultimately comes from your CDP. Only one part is actually on the CD - amplitude. This is the DATA part that causes so much confusion. "If it isn't on the original, how is it on the copy?"

The key is that the CDP creates the other component - the timing of WHEN the data is delivered. This is why clock upgrades are highly recommended when tweaking a CDP. In order for the timing information to be read correctly (and sent out for amplification), perfectly square pits and lands are needed. If they are not, a pit is read as a land. It isn't wrong on the CD, it just isn't as clear as it could be because of the physical processes which cut the aluminum layer, creating slopes instead of squares.

This is where EAC/Plextools comes in. These will read a sector on the CD as many times as necessary to convince itself that it knows whether that pesky slope is a pit or land. Then it moves on. Theoretically, you now have a perfect .WAV file on the hard drive, which is more consistent to the source than the CD was, by virtue of the many reads to achieve NOT a file with more or different information than was on the CD, but a file which is more easily interpreted correctly on playback than the CD. This is all in the 6moons article.

This part all makes sense to me. The burning part is more mysterious but equally important. Mr. Koh lists a couple of ideal burners, of which I have one, but I don't know how much difference they make. Media definitely makes a difference and there are hypotheses on that but no definitive information I'm aware of. I imagine the burning software has an effect but I'm just using Feurio.

The part that'll be the killer for a lot of people is the PS Audio Power Plant. When I started building the system, I got an external burner, external hard drive, and used laptop. Dedicated system is best. This all ran me about $300. Thought I was done. I e-mailed Mr. Koh and thanked him for doing all the research and writing the article. Also told him that my power is pretty clean and wasn't planning on getting a Power Plant.

He responded that the Power Plant is a critical piece of the puzzle, as the power supplies for external CD burners are poor. I got one on Audiogon for about $600 - double the cost of everything else combined. I think this part is the one that will make your copies Obviously better, but it's also the part most likely to be omitted.

I've thrown a few tweaks in the system as well that I won't go into here and aren't crucial to getting things going.

As an aside, Creek has designed their new CD-50 mkII with a ROM drive instead of a conventional transport/clock. This is said to reduce jitter tremendously. Don't fret your expensive CDP. A computer drive will never sound as good.

I will do some tests and submit the results here, although I don't know when. I'm also not sure as to the value of DBT since there are entrenched camps on both sides. A positive result would be tremendous, but I'm just not sure a null result means anything. On the upside, this will be about the easiest blind test ever, jus' gotta switch the CD's.