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CD Copies...why do they sound worse?

I had a theory that I haven't discarded yet that not all CD blanks are equal in terms of composition. Yes, they all are made of aluminum and polycarbonate, and when you burn a CD you are creating small holes, or dents in the blank. There is the red book standard that must be adhered to, but as in anything else, I'm sure there are better grades of aluminum and poly available, you get what you pay for. Since the laser reads the digital stream by optically scanning the surface of the CD and interpreting either a one or zero, you'd think it's a go/no-go operation. The original and copies do not sound the same, even to the uncritical ear. I thought for a while it may have had something to do with the relative quality of the CD blanks I was using to copy, in other words, the pressing plants simply use a better grade of master CD's. My friend has a contact and we were able to acquire bulk CD blanks from Saturn Disc that makes CD's. No difference, copies still aren't right. I guess we can eliminate the CD blanks for now. Here's where things get a little outside normal thinking in my twisted logic: we know there are error detection and correction schemes used in intrepreting the data on the CD, employed when the bit being read isn't immediately recognizable to the player. Is it possible the home-made copy that was burned using a cheap consumer grade burner, contains more errors? Are the pits burnt in the CD either irregular in shape or depth? Does the laser in these consumer grade CD burner introduce errors? If so, the EDAC is pretty busy, and doesn't always get it right, which would explain a general lack of quality due to latency delays in the data stream while the EDAC does it's work, and in the process is bound to mis-interpret zeros and ones, there is no 100% accurate EDAC. To me, this is a good place to start in terms of understanding the obvious differences in sound quality.
jeffloistarca
ejlif's avatar
ejlif
1,373 posts
 
Probably because your doing it through a computer. I have had the experience that the CDR always sounds better than the original. It's probably not the kind of diffrence that a pro audio engineer who is standing to the side of a pair of Yamaha NS10s perched atop his 250,000.00 recording console would notice, but I bet if I had a guy like Carl over to hear the diffrence, he would be recording all of his favorite CDs on CDR it's that good. The argument that it can never be better than the original reminds me of the cable is cable argument. My setup is an outboard (not hooked up to a computer) CD recorder using a Illuminations D60 SPDIF cable from a Meridian transport and I get CDR copies that are in every respect better than the original. CDRs in my opinion are more of a pro audio thing than an audiophile thing. The CD recorder I own is something that I found out about through pro audio, not hifi. I discovered for myself that is sounds better. I have never read that CDRs sound better than the original in a pro audio magazine. That is the problem with pro audio, they totally dismiss the hifi thing. It's these kind of opinions that are producing the majority of recorded music that is out there too. To just simply say that is can't sound better because that just doesn't make sense is pretty lame to me, you must be a proffesional recording engineer.
brianmgrarcom
1,317 posts
 
Ejlif, your comments confuse me. First let me say I am definately not in the "a cable is a cable camp"! Without changing the orginal, how are you making it better? I could understand you liking the sound your CDR puts out better than your CD player. Maybe that's where I miss it, CDR's naturally have a better sound, like vinyl sounding better than CD's.
ejlif's avatar
ejlif
1,373 posts
 
How can this possibly confuse you. The sound of the recorded CDR played back on the same CD player sounds better than the sound of the original CD that the CDR was recorded on played on the same CD player. I know digital is just 1s and 0s how can it sound diffrent, it does and not by a small margin either. I don't know the scientific reasons behind this, but I do know what my ears tell me. This is definately the kind of diffrence you would be able to hear on a player as fantastic as the Meridian 508.24 (good choice)
brianmgrarcom
1,317 posts
 
Ejlif, I only have a second, but I want to clarify something real quick. It appears I may of come off as one of those that think highend is a joke; that couldn't be farther from the truth!!!! ...this is why I own a 508.24. I was one that wasted my time arguing with the yahoo's on audioreview.com about cables, I have heard the difference, heck my wife hears the difference and she could care less!
carl_eber
1,425 posts
 
Vinyl is a totally different medium, and sounds better because there is both more dynamic and more tonal resolution stored in, and passed through the fromat. Not because of the material it's stored on, for example. Let's just keep this on CD-R's, if we could. Ejlif says he doesn't know why a CD-R would afford better performance, that "it just does". If we wanted to know why that were true (if it is) we'd have to ask several of the best designers in the field, and not just speculate about the "why". There are complex issues that would need to be dealt with, about how CD's get read in the first place. You should all read what Harly has to say about CD playback, in the back of TCGTHA.
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