Cheap tweaks...What would YOU reccomend?

Actually, CDC, the BLER rate of properly burned CD's is much, much lower than that the mass produced high BLER disc that you purchased at the store. The burned copies sound much better.

Some audiophiles have been for years, buying the store bought disc and making a better, higher resolution/lower Block Error Rate copy. The guys I know have been using the better pro burners to do this, like the Alesis Masterlink, for example.

If you haven't heard the difference, you may want to.

Happy Holidays!

Jes45, I burned the black CDR on a Marantz pro CDR500 at 1x. Like I said, what one person says is "better" is highly subjective. IMHO "Muddy, fuzzy, low fidelity sound" is worse not better. But I have seen more than one audiophile trade in his high resolution setup for one with higher distortion because it sounds "better". That's okay, just not my definition of better. Unless maybe it covers up some problem somewhere else in the system.
None of my burned CDR's sound better unless the recording is very bright and they need a little softening up. But Yamaha makes a hard disc burner which can increase the length of the burned tracks. A CDR can only hold 63 minutes, not 79 because of the longer track length. THAT's a burned disc I'd like to heard.

From what I know about the subject and have been told by those who actually produce CD's and SACD's is that Block Error Rate is a key factor in resolution. CD Burners such as the Alesis Masterlink will produce CDR's with very little BLER, much, much lower than the mass produced CD's you'll buy in the stores. This is not subjective.

FYI, "subjective" listening tests have been done on my friends system comprised of TRL GT-400 amplifiers ($80K retail), TRL GTP-4 Linestage ($15K retail), Esoteric UX-1 (?) ($13K retail), Magico Speakers ($84K retail) and probably around $16K worth of cables from Nordost, Purest and FIM. Distortion? I don't think so.

The Yamaha has been out for a few years. I think that they are really onto something, I only wish that they had the software and A to D section that matched. IME, the Masterlink is hard to beat if you are looking for a high resolution/low BLER CDR. The Masterlink does not "soften" or tame brightness as your Marantz CDR 500 does.

This said, I stick with my same statement, "If you haven't heard the difference, you may want to".

Happy Holidays!

Jes,
The Alesis model you mention sells for $800 but has many features meant for professional sound engineer and seems geared for doing sound studio work.

I wonder if the Reality Check CDR duplication deck mentioned in current Positive Feedback article designed specifically for audiophiles to copy/improve CDs can do even better job for less money? Have you or friends tried this unit?

Jes45,

I would caution any over-reliance on one parameter to evaluate CD quality - in your case, Block Error Rate.

This counts error frames, so it counts 1 if an error frame contains only one bad bit; and similarly it counts 1 if the entire contents of the frame is erroneous.

BLER testing, according to ISO-10149, requires an average over a 10 second interval. This may give a less than accurate indication of quality should there be severely localized degeneration.

There are many CD parameters that are measured to estimate the quality of a CD. If all of these measure well, and the BLER is good, then you have a good disc.

Regards,