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Burned CDs can sound better than the original?

I recently heard a rumor that some CD burners can actually produce a CD copy that sounds slighlty better than the original. As an Electrical Enginner, I was very skeptical about this claim, so I called some of my reviewer friends, along with some other "well informed" audiophiles, to verify this crazy claim. Guess what, they all said : "With some particilar burners, the copies do sound slightly better!" I did some investigation to why, after all, how can the copy sound better than the original? So far I've heard everything from "burned CD's are easier to read", to "the jitter is reduced during the buring process". Has anyone else experienced this unbeleivable situation? I'm also interested in other possible explanations to how this slight sonic improvement could be happening.
ehider
blues_man
133 posts
 
Mr Ttathomp you may be absolutely correct. I wanted to try this out first before I said the same thing. I have noticed that many so called "remasterings" are just reducing the dynamics and rolling off the highs. This makes them sound better on systems that can't handle the dynamics or the highs. I was really angered at Blue Note a few years ago put out these RVG remastrings simply trying to cash in on the RVG name with CDs that were already currently available, and to boot at a premium price. These CDs had 90 - 95% of the dynamics removed (measured by one of my technicians using a software analyzer) and severely rolled off highs. To take it one step further, StereoShill praised these recordings, yet in the next issue blatsed all the remastering of rock records with greatly reduced dynamics. When I have time, I'll make some CD-R copies and have them analyzed by one of my techs.
rzado
175 posts
 
Greg Davis's answer pretty well sums up the potential reasons why a given CD original may sound worse than a CD-R copy: (1) inherent time based error in the data stream, (2) angle deviation causing the reflected laser beam to deviate from its return path through the objective lens, (3) disc eccentricity, in terms of both deviation from circularity of the pit track and and positioning of the center hole, and (4) variation in pit depth, form, or volume.
blues_man
133 posts
 
Everything you mentioned could happen in a burned CD also. I'm open to the possibility, but I want to do tests both on audibilty and measured differences in the data stream. Then I'll be willing to agree that the burned CDs may be better.
tekunda
127 posts
 
I know how to get an image of a CD on a hard drive and then burn from that image, but what exactly do you mean by reclocking and and what software do you use for reclocking? Could I use Nero for reclocking?
gregm
3,409 posts
 
Blues man, your experiments are extremely interesting, thanks for sharing! Any way to (artificially) enhance dynamics ?
Indeed, Gregdavis, how do you do the reclocking?

I've played around with imaging, then analysing, "cleaning" and trying to enhance dynamics. The process is painstaking to say the least; as to artificially enhancing dynamics -- forget it. But then, I'm just a user with no (re)mastering knowledge...
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