TAS Recommended CD Tweak….

I suggest you read up on error correcting encoding.

Yes it is based on Reed-Solomon Interleave.

However, contrary to what Eldartford mentions, if the error correction fails (a really badly damaged CD) then most players will "interpolate" between data points. On a bad CD with "CD Rot" it can actually sound exactly like Vinyl surface noise (pops and clicks).

If error correction did not work to way more than 99.9999% accuracy then your PC that you are using to view this thread would crash constantly (perhaps it does and you need a new hard drive...).

Despite the fears propagated by analog users about CD accuracy, all the science suggests that CD discs and readers are generally orders of magnitude (10's and 100's of times) more accurate than any analog reproduction. Digital is the only way to preserve data such that it can be copied thousands and thousands of times without error - this is because errors do not accumulate as they do in any analog chain.

All this makes computing, satellites and other amazing things possible, stuff that purely Analog systems are incapable of.

Of course A to D and D to A conversion is a crucial step and it is fair for analog users to criticise the quality of this process, however, this step occurs after the data has been read, decoded and error corrected from the disc.

Shadorne...Yes. If the error correction can't hack it data is interpolated. Not the greatest, but preferable to aborting the disc if it happens once or twice. I didn't mention that because it clouds the issue, and it ain't supposed to happen unless the CD disc is badly damaged. The RS code is configured to reliably correct errors to the extent they are expected from the hardware, and to handle most kinds of disc damage.

So why do people bother with EAC and CD Paranoia and whatnot? Is there any reason to use those products over ripping via iTunes, for example?

Shadorne, there are many audiophiles, even some with credibility, who claim that copies of CDs actually sound better than the originals. How can this be?

Shadorne, there are many audiophiles, even some with credibility, who claim that copies of CDs actually sound better than the originals. How can this be?

If I trust in science then I can only assume it is mostly the placebo effect. In some rare cases, no doubt there may be an explantion. (For example, a wobbly CD might cause the laser tracking to draw power in an oscillatory manner and cause jitter in the DAC via a feedback mechanism from the shared power supply.) As a generality, burned copies of CD's should be the same and indistinguishable from the original. The error correction that Eldartford mentions practically ensures the bit stream read from the disc will be perfect and identical. As I mentioned above, if this were not true then PC's would not work and our whole computing industry and internet would be on its knees.