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Here's how a CD copy of a copy can sound better

Just wanting to check my logic here. People keep saying how burning CD copies at 1x speed allow them to sound better (than 32x speed, say) when being played back through Audiophile systems. I have burned copies of several CD's at 8x, and do not have the original. I should be able to take these copies and make re-copies at 1x speed, and these 1x copy-of-a-copy copies should sound better than their counterparts, right?

There is no data lost when a CD is copied, only placed on the disc differently. This is evidenced by the fact that you can copy a CD-ROM, which is a bit-perfect copy.
matt8268
matt8268 OP
92 posts
 
Great discussion! Please can someone respond to my original question though, which is if I have some copies I made at high speed (for which I no longer have the original), will I get better sound if I copy these 8x copies again to a 1x copy?
sogood51
2,157 posts
 
No you will not get better sound than what is already on the cdrs you have.
mrowlands
54 posts
 
Matt8268, if you get a low jitter bitstream identical to the original CD, in theory you could achieve a better sound quality by re-recording at X1 speed for the reasons mentioned above. Do you have a way to do a bit-compare on audio CDs? Just try it and let us know. Be advised that small differences in jitter may only be audible on higher-fidelity systems.
stne418
91 posts
 
Matt...try it and then go have a liten with volume levels as closely matched as possible....then tell us what you think?
unsound
7,329 posts
 
Ake, I was surprised by this as well. I have a CD copy done by a Thomas W. Shea, E-mail; http://www.sunset.net/musicman that is absolute proof that a copy can be better than the original. I'm not sure if it's due to sucessive upsampling,oversampling and/or error correction but there is no doubt that it's better than the original. This copy was done before my eyes at a Sterophile show in NY many years ago in conjunction with the folks from Audio Alchemy. I also have copies of CD's given to me by friends done on their PC's and they are not as good as the over the counter examples. Whether it's due to added jitter or to some kind of electronic distortions added by the inner working of the computer I don't know, but I do know that it's audible.
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