I'm not dreaming - these are great CD copies


I have an out of town friend who's given me some CD-Rs that he's made by simply copying music off of red book CDs. The music quality is extremely good - better than I'm used to hearing from my red book CDs. He's not an audiophile and has no idea what format is being utilized e.g. Lossless, etc.
Question - Can you really improve the quality of music from a red book CD by simply copying to some other format? If so, I'm boxing up all 300 of my CDs and asking my friend to copy make copies for me.
rockyboy
michaelgreenaudio


OK Michael, forget about the tonal differences, with playback/burn equipment.

From a retail stamped CD, burnt to a blank once or from each burn consecutively say 10 times, which has the least errors on it? The original, first gen burn, or 10th gen burn.

Cheers George
I have a secret from Mr. Record.  Pressed commercial CDs can sound significantly different from one another, even if made at the same pressing plant.  We have found multiple copies that include hotter and less dynamic sound, warmer or cooler sound, thinner and richer sound.  Why, we can speculate that the manufacturing process does not create exact copies of the digital information on pressed discs perfectly. 

Sort of like vinyl pressing differences.  One can hear differences on the same stamper (so many analogophiles think that the hot stamper number is the end all of their search for the best stamper).depending on whether it is an early or late pressing from the same stamper (fresh versus nearly worn out stamper).  There are other variables as well.  

So, within the realm of pressed CDs, there exists differences from the same pressing plant.  The only way one can tell what is the hot or preferred CD is by listening to it.
XRCDs..... 

on my REGA ISIS Valve cdp, the audio performance step-up with their 20 - 24 bit remastering is not subtle.



Pressed commercial CDs can sound significantly different from one another,
Ans any burnt copies of these will have more error corrections that have to be done. Because of what you see and the laser has to see in the link below

Left moulded/stamped retail CD pits
Middle and right burnt CD-R pits one gold one normal silver
https://www.iasa-web.org/sites/default/files/tc05-fig20.jpg 


Cheers George
Not to mention gold is a worse reflector than silver of the wavelength of interest. Why are things never so simple as they seem?

I agree w/ GK. I have never burned a copy that sounded worse than the original CD. Not sure which codec iTunes uses, again, never a poor copy.  I only use made in Japan Fuji CD-r blanks.

Happy Listening!

I am in the process of copying my favorite CD's using my PS Direct Stream memory player and dac and the results are outstanding!

ozzy
A little more information may be needed to my last post.
I am copying to a Tascam DA 3000 then I am adding them to my hardrive.
But, the copies do sound better than the originals. Which is hard to believe...

ozzy