That's a lot of GOOD information
@Johnny2Bad and rings true. I always wondered why reel-to-reel tapes sounded so much better than cassettes and assumed it was just the wider tape had more magnetic surface area. I never considered tape speed also matters, and didn't realize the losses caused by speed.
It makes perfect sense that commercial production cannot record the tracks in real time the way we would at home with our LP playing and the cassette recording at the one speed they have. Now I'm just as curious how CD's are made when I know how long it took me to burn one on my PC.
Do the commercial CD makers effectively "press" it in a similar way to how LP's are made?
This thread made me long for the NAD 6340 tape deck I once owned, so I went looking to see if any of the NAD 6300 were available. Those were their top-of-the-line model and I did find one. I almost clicked on 'buy it" then realized why I shouldn't. I just don't need to record LP's. Every one I own I can find on-line and stream a far better version than I could record.
Broadly similar, although the CD process is even simpler than LP. Both involve the production of a stamper from a Master. The phase will alter based on how many production disks are made .... A properly mastered CD sent for duplication is 180 degrees out of phase, so that the discs made from it are in phase (because they are stamped; what is a bump on the master is a divot on the disk made from it. Proper terms are Pits and Lands, but you get the idea).
Sometimes the master is not in correct phase (maybe the CD was created by an inexperienced hobby band who didn't pony up for Mastering Software, or used it improperly) or the duplicator failed to control his production process correctly, and the commercial, packaged CD is out of phase. That is why some disk players have a phase switch.
There is a polycarbonate layer (plastic), a layer of metal pretty much like tinfoil, where the actual digital data (pits and lands) are stamped, and then liquid polycarbonate is added to seal it up. LPs require liquid vinyl which is harder to deal with than liquid polycarbonate.
Like all storage media, the LP, the cassette, Hard Drives, the CD and even the Blu-Ray disk are analog media that store digital data. (There is nothing stopping you from storing 16/44 PCM - so-called "CD Quality" ... on an LP record. In fact early digital data was encoded on vinyl. Don't confuse the data with the media).
CD-R's and DVD-R's etc are created differently, via dye layers which are altered by laser light. There is no metal layer with stamped pits and lands.
That is why some players have issues with them and why it takes a much longer time to burn one versus what it would take to stamp a CD in a factory. If you are trying to create a Hi Fidelity CD-R (or similar) you should burn at the lowest speed you can tolerate, so the transitions from digital 1's to 0's and back again are as distinct as possible.
