Why does the copy sound better than the original

Al, what's your readily explainable explanation? Just curious.

Hi Geoff,

There's lots of discussion of that in the threads I linked to above, but I think that a good summary is contained in the following post I made in one of them, in which I quoted some of our particularly knowlegeable members:

10-24-11: Almarg
It does seem to me to be technically plausible that many of these reports could be true (and I would certainly expect Learsfool's perceptions to be accurate), although I would expect the magnitude and character of the differences to be highly dependent on the design of the particular player that is being used (and probably also on the particular media, burner, and burn speed that are used).

From this paper by Steve Nugent of Empirical Audio:

3. Jitter from the pits on a CD:
These are the pits in the CD media that represent the recorded data. Variation in the spacing of these pits result in jitter when reading the data. Commercial CD's created from a glass-master generally have more variation in the locations of the pits than a CD-R written at 1X speed on a good CD-R writer. Even though most modern CD players have buffering of the data to create some tolerance to this jitter, there is usually a PLL (Phase-locked-loop) involved, which is still somewhat susceptible to jitter. To determine if your player is susceptible, it is a simple experiment to re-write or "clone" a CD and then listen for playback differences from the commercial version. For newer players that completely buffer the data at high-speed from a CDROM reader to a memory buffer, this jitter is not an issue.

And some excerpts from this thread:

07-19-11: Shadorne
If a disc wobbles while it spins then this may cause cyclical adjustments to the pick up laser servo and these repetitive draws on power may induce variations in the clock through the power supply.

07-20-11: Kirkus
CD players, transports, and DACs are a menagerie of true mixed-signal design problems, and there are a lot of different noises sources living in close proximity with suceptible circuit nodes. One oft-overlooked source is crosstalk from the disc servomechanism into other parts of the machine . . . analog circuitry, S/PDIF transmitters, PLL clock, etc., which can be dependent on the condition of the disc.... One would be suprised at some of the nasty things that sometimes come up out of the noise floor when the focus and tracking servos suddenly have to work really hard to read the disc.

Also, while I would expect it to generally be a less significant factor than the noise and jitter issues described above, in the case of discs that may have significant scratches or other imperfections, real-time playback in a conventional (non-memory type) CD player may result at times in error interpolation that is not bit perfect. While if that same disc is read by a computer for copying purposes the computer will be able to make multiple attempts to read any data in which errors are detected.

Regards,
-- Al

the problem with the question is what does "better" mean ?

i have heard copies i prefer to the original and i have originals i prefer to the copy.

if prefer connotes "better", than the question has no answer, because of the subjective nature of the judgment.

Al, thanks for providing the explanations. However, I think it's worth considering that even for very low jitter players and CDs that are brand new without scratches this phenomenon of the copy being better than the original seems to apply. Obviously read until correct players are in a separate category. I suspect the explanations provided - e.g., black CD-Rs, jitter, noise, wobbly CD, Etc. - are simply Strawman arguments and that noone has actually investigated this phenomenon beyond mere speculation.

Al, I didn't take the time to read the threads you mentioned, but (my understanding is) this was settled a long time ago; and the overwhelming conclusion (at that time anyway ;~) had to do with the fact that a burned CD has (physically) real 'pits' -- which are actually 'burned' into the media with a laser, producing a more easy-to-read surface -- i.e., less digital 'jitter' in the resulting datastream.

Commercial CD's are stamped (ironically, just like an LP!) so their so-called 'pits' are really just depressions (or was it bumps?) that scatter the reflected laser light enough to make it look ("read") like a pit to the playback sensor. Whereas a recorded CD (with 'real' pits, literally burned into the surface,) produces a much cleaner (jitter-free) signal on playback.

Probably ripping software is doing a good job there. :)