Burning CDs Degrade Quality?

I'm with you but I'm bending over backwards to allow for those whose hearing is more accurate than mine.

I think if there is any difference in sound between original CD and a CD-R it's because the CD-R's are harder to read in some CD players.

I don't think the copy process loses anything. An easy test is take a CD-R and make a copy with the exact same brand of CD-R and compare the two. I would expect them to be identical in sound [they both might be worse than the original because of borderline read problems but should be identical to each other.].

It is even possible to copy a CD-R on one brand of medium to another brand of medium and get an improvment [if the CD player has less problems with the second brand].

By the way : Yamaha was making a CD recorder a few years ago that let you write CD's with slightly larger pits which they claimed made them easier to read [and hence better sounding because the CD-player needed to perform less error-correction] but at the cost of a reduced recording time.

James H.

There are some interesting questions raised here. My recent experience would definitely underline the theory that different CD-R's affect the result.

For convenience I recently copied a double CD whose total play time was less than 75 minutes onto a single CD-R by copying onto the hard disc then copying onto the CD-R. Since it was such a "special" CD I made a second copy at the same time. However, one was onto a Freecom CD-R, the other was onto a PCLine CD-R disc.

On playback through the CDS2 the Freecom copy was substantially better. Seems fairly reasonable proof to me.

Regards,
CB

Hi Clive and All,

Hmm, knowing what I do about digital storage and communications I find this thread fascinating yet a little disturbing. Thanks for your description of the specifics of your experience.

If it sounds different to you then perhaps it is different. But please tell me, did you listen back to back, so you were in the same mood, same level of tiredness/hunger/distraction by kids,work,spouse etc and did you have any strong preconceptions that the disc would make any difference or no difference??

I might have a go at recreating your experience - I have some PCLine CDs on a spindle so might try to get hold of a Freecom disc or even some make that is renowned as a 'kwality' brand and let my ears be the judge.

Of course I might have to upgrade the CDX2 (sans XPS) to a CDS3 in order to hear the difference, what a bugger...

Best regards,

Richard

Are these percieved differences blinded or not? I guess the question I am asking is if there are any bias involved?

As far as I'm aware no proper tests or comparisons have ever been done. A while back on a similar thread there was talk of particular bits being lost during the copying process based as I remember on some nonsense spouted on, I think, a Linn related site. Having compared originals and copies using EAC I'm quite satisfied this is just not true. And I'm sure anybody who works in the IT business will not be surprised to hear this.

Hi TomK,

I work in the IT business - I'm not surprised to hear this...!

Regards,

R.

I recently tried to play my copy of John Martin's "Solid Air" on my CDS2 and noticed that it had gone a nice shade of bronze. It wouldn't play on the Naim, so I thought I'd try to copy it to CDR, using Nero and burning at 40x, it took 20 mins to make the copy! The copy plays perfectly on the Naim but the original still won't!

What's the record companies policy on these "rotted" CD's in general, I thought it was "perfect sound forever"!

Anyone else had the bronze efect happen?

Chris

Hi Chris & all,

Have not had any CDs go bronze... Maybe I'm too young

However, a colleague of mine recently bought some CD-Rs that are 'Audio' only, made by Verbatim. He tells me that his CD recorder will spit out some (blank) CD-Rs saying that they are not suitable for audio. Seems the darkest ones got rejected and these new 'for audio' ones use very clear plastic, so they look just like regular audio CDs.

Seems that at least one manufacturer has cottoned on to the idea that some players have difficulty reading some disks. The question is -if they're meant to be clearer & easier to read, do the 'for Audio' discs sound any better???

Regards,

Richard

Audio versus Data CD's

".....
However, a colleague of mine recently bought some CD-Rs that are 'Audio' only, made by Verbatim. He tells me that his CD recorder will spit out some (blank) CD-Rs saying that they are not suitable for audio.
......"


This is just a tax on recording .. domestic CD recorders look for a flag on the CD that says 'audio' or 'data'. If NOT audio it refuses to use it [There were lots of advice columns a few years ago when the price of audio versus data was a big factor -- say twice. People worked out that inserting an audio CD in their recorder and then opening the drawer physically -- pulling it out -- and replacing the audio CD with a data CD would let them record on the data CD. You also had to match the data CD to the audio CD in dye-formulation i.e. colour. A PAIN !!].

Computers were treated as professional equipment and did not have / ignored the flag. [This was when computers were very expensive].

A few years ago I used to buy audio CD's in Richer Sounds [which were very cheap .... i.e. supsidised to get you to visit the shop] and use them for data.

James H.

Hi James,

Thanks, that explains a lot!! I guess I should have guessed it was for something other than quality purposes - but my explanation was kind of good, wasn't it, maybe? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?



Cheers!

R.

quote:

Originally posted by ChrisG:
Anyone else had the bronze efect happen?

Yep - I have had 10 discs rot on me, and 9 of them have been replaced by the manufacturer. ALL were made by Philips Du Pont Optical:

(the green colour is due to my scanner not picking up the bronzing quite right.

quote:

Originally posted by ChrisG:
What's the record companies policy on these "rotted" CD's in general, I thought it was "perfect sound forever"!

I got all mine (barring one CD single) replaced for free. This webpage gives info on PDO's address:
Brainwashed's disc rot page

quote:

Originally posted by ChrisG:
I recently tried to play my copy of John Martin's "Solid Air" on my CDS2 and noticed that it had gone a nice shade of bronze. It wouldn't play on the Naim, so I thought I'd try to copy it to CDR, using Nero and burning at 40x, it took 20 mins to make the copy! The copy plays perfectly on the Naim but the original still won't!

What's the record companies policy on these "rotted" CD's in general, I thought it was "perfect sound forever"!

Anyone else had the bronze efect happen?

Chris

I had a similar problem. I used Nero to make a copy and it would not play on my Naim CDP. I then made another copy of the copy using another cdr brand and this copy plays perfectly on the Naim cdp? Go figure! Might have something to do with the colour of the disc?

i have a friend who, when cd's first came out, played one to death. Yep he killed it. When you looked at the playing side of the cd the player(s) has acutally started to 'burn' through it. Cant think of a better word.
I have also had pre recorded cd's deteriorate over time.

Regards
Jason

Several contributors to this thread still assume that because it is a digital copying process it must be error free. As I pointed out in earlier threads, these are not data cds and the error-correction and data redundancy are inferior. This is why EAC takes several passes of the original CD to generate the WAV files on the Hard Disk.

The Accurate Rip database provides checksum data for many cds and could be used to carry out Adam's suggested multiple copying experiment, checking the final result against the known values:
http://www.accuraterip.com/

Nick

I've compared several originals and copies and found in every case that the copy was identical to the original except for the occasional microsecond sample at the start of a track. Minor ticks, pops etc on the original showed up in the comparison because they were almost invariably corrected in the copy. The sort of differences in sound quality claimed on here (dullness, lack of detail, airiness, etc) would require gross differences between the original and copy throughout the entire CD and this is just not happening. Whatever causes the apparent differences in sound quality it's not the copy process.

quote:

Originally posted by NaimThatTune:

But please tell me, did you listen back to back, so you were in the same mood, same level of tiredness/hunger/distraction by kids,work,spouse etc and did you have any strong preconceptions that the disc would make any difference or no difference??

I might have a go at recreating your experience - I have some PCLine CDs on a spindle so might try to get hold of a Freecom disc or even some make that is renowned as a 'kwality' brand and let my ears be the judge.

Of course I might have to upgrade the CDX2 (sans XPS) to a CDS3 in order to hear the difference, what a bugger...

I've only just got back to this thread, but it is interesting. I can confirm that although not a truly blind test (I knew which disc since I was loading the CD player) the discs were played sequentially. However, I did not do A-B-A testing. I accept that my findings could well be biased since the Freecomn discs were more expensive that the PCLine brand.

Have you tried to repeat this test yourself, Richard? If so, I'd be interested to learn of your experiences.

I'm now going to have a look for some bronzed CD's...

Regards,
CB