Why does the copy sound better than the original

Al,

Thanks for taking the time to do the CD copy to original CD listening test experiment.
Jim

Al, i hate judge before all the facts are in but it looks to me like "the copy sounds better than the original" will be joining the illustrious ranks of the Mpingo disc, Shakti Stone, Intelligent Chip, Schumann frequency generator, CD demagnetization, PWB Silver Rainbow Foil, Cream Electret, WA Quantum Chips, wire/fuse directionality, tube dampers, crystals, Green pen, destat guns and ionizers for CDs and cables, contact enhancers, ERS paper, you know, insofar as it's apparently impossible to get unanimous agreement not only for how they work but whether the damn things even work at all!

One more thing I should add to the description I provided yesterday of the experiment I performed:

While for several reasons I had high confidence that the copies I created contained bit-perfect replicas of the digital data on the original CD's, to be completely certain of that I put one of the tracks I used in the experiment through some software which computed what are known as MD5 checksums of that data.

As expected, the MD5 checksums of the original and the copy matched perfectly, which confirms that all of the approximately 300,000,000 bits of that track were identical on the original and the copy.

Regards,
-- Al

Al wrote,

"While for several reasons I had high confidence that the copies I created were bit-perfect replicas of the digital data on the original CD's, to be completely certain of that I put one of the tracks I used in the experiment through some software which computed what are known as MD5 checksums of that data.

As expected, the MD5 checksums of the original and the copy matched perfectly, which confirms that all of the approximately 300,000,000 bits of that track were identical on the original and the copy."

Al, I kind of hate to bring this up, and certainly appreciate your due diligence, but doesn't the perfect bit to bit matching of the original and the copy bring into question why you heard differences between the original and the copy? Perhaps you can think of a scientific reason(s) why you heard differences when there were no differences between the data.....

Perhaps you can think of a scientific reason(s) why you heard differences when there were no differences between the data.....

Geoff, I (and also Neil, Nsgarch) already presented exactly those reasons. All of the effects that are discussed in my post in this thread dated 12-2-12, with the exception of the last paragraph, and in the post by Neil dated 12-3-12, have nothing to do with bit errors.

Basically, differences in the physical characteristics of the pits on the disc, and in their spacing, ultimately result in differences in jitter and electrical noise issues. To a greater or lesser extent depending on the design of the particular player, as well as on the particular discs and how they were created.

Regards,
-- Al