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Bronze Member Username: BcollinsRockport, MA United States Post Number: 27 Registered: Nov-05 | Hi, Can anyone tell me if there is a difference in sound quality between different brands of blank CD's? If so, which brands are best? Is there a difference in CD's labeled "Music" vs. "All purpose"? Also, I copy my CD's on an Apple PowerBook. Does this provide equivalent sound quality as the original CD? Thank you for any light you can shed on this. Bill |
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Silver Member Username: NuckParkhill, Ontario Canada Post Number: 864 Registered: Dec-04 | Bill, I have never had a problem with Memorex blanks, they all playback/open for music and cd. Let's see if others are better for both of us. |
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Bronze Member Username: Hieu_phanPost Number: 15 Registered: Dec-03 | I have used CDR's branded TDK and Mitsubishi and find their quality very good. For music you should choose Audio version. You can easily find the label "Audio" on the CDR itself. Copying from an original music CD, especially by using a laptop CD writer rather than a professional recorder, you should expect a degradation in sound quality. You can find more analytical explanation from http://www.whathifi.co.uk/newsMainTemplate.asp?storyID=29&newssectionID=3 |
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Anonymous | The "Audio" version does not produce better sound. It costs more because it includes a blanket fee to copyright holders. It is coded for use in hifi CD recorders. Regular CDs will not work with them. Using them in a computer is a waste of money. |
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Bronze Member Username: BcollinsRockport, MA United States Post Number: 40 Registered: Nov-05 | Thanks everyone for all of your comments, bill |
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Anonymous | If you have problems with a brand of blank CDRs, try updating your CD burner's firmware. |
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Bronze Member Username: Patriots_fanPost Number: 19 Registered: Jan-05 | I have never had a problem with any brand name blank cds either. I think the most important factor in terms of sound quality when burning a cd is the quality of the file itself. I assume you're burning mp3 files Bill? You should make sure you get files that have the highest possible bitrates to ensure better sound quality. Then burn the discs as audio and not as mp3s because the data gets compressed when you burn them as mp3s and they don't sound as good. |
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Bronze Member Username: BcollinsRockport, MA United States Post Number: 41 Registered: Nov-05 | I actually copy the CD's from an AIFF file, so there should be no music data lost in the process. No compression used. My question is regarding the capability of the burner in my Apple Powerbook to produce an exact copy (with no degredation of sound quality), or do you need a professional CD recorder as indicated by Hieu Phan above? Thanks, Bill |
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Anonymous | We finally get to the point. The essential question is, if I understand it, whether making an exact digital copy will sound different using differnt computer CD burners. (Obviously, using a music CD burner with an analog input will produce varying quality, depending on brand, because of varying quality of analog to digital conversion.) What this would boil down to, presuming the burner is not producing errors during the burn, is the issue of jitter. Yamaha made a CD burner that attempted to address this issue by making the spaces of the burned bits and spaces between them longer, using only the 4x speed. This gave you less time on the CD for music. I never was able to do much with it because it did not burn on my blanks reliably at 4x. The next alternative to consider burn speed. It seems to me that you are likely to get less jitter if you don't burn at the maximum speed. So I burn at 16x or 20x, usually. Most burners don't seem to like to burn slower than that. I also usually create an image file on the hard drive and burn from that to reduce the risk of the burner starting and stopping. There's not much difference in the time to create the CDR. Another issue is whether a DVD burner could possibly make better CDRs, perhaps because the wavelength of the laser is more precise at turning on and off. I don't know. What you would need to do next is create two CDRs, one using one method, say the high speed, and one using the slow speed. Get two identical CD players and do an AB comparison. Also do an AB comparison with the original CD and the copy. To the extent that I have been able to do this, I have never heard any difference in the sound between the various copies, except in terms of errors -- missing bits of data. But I have not examined this rigorously. The issue of jitter is of course controversial. And it assumes that whatever you are playing the CDRs back on does not have built in time correction. If someone wants to examine this systematically, and report back, I would be interested in their observations. I don't think using a laptop burner would make any difference from a digital file, if it is a competent burner. Also, about 5-6 years ago, the quality of computer CD burners was pretty pathetic for making music CDRs - there tended to be lots of errors. But I think the real issue is getting a good CD burner and CDR blank combination that doesn't create skip errors. And there is some question to what extent those data errors produce sub-audible degradation of the sound. Some are quite obvious, but are some not so obvious? I use the slower CD burner speeds mainly to reduce the risk of errors, but also with the possibility that there could be some jitter issue. When it comes to making master mother CDs for pressing, there has been some legitimate concern with eliminating jitter and aiming for the maximum possible quality. Perhaps it makes a difference, at least on some equipment. But that is another matter. |
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Bronze Member Username: BcollinsRockport, MA United States Post Number: 42 Registered: Nov-05 | Thank you for the detailed explanation. My further question is: Will my copy be of lesser quality than the original store-purchased CD from which I copied it? The procedure I use is to import the CD onto the hard drive in AIFF and then burn it to a blank CD. Also, does it affect quality of sound to leave the error correction on while importing, even if there are no problems with the source CD? Thank you , Bill |
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forgotten username Unregistered guest | Use a program like EAC (exact audio copy), it slows down the reading speed when it hits read error and rereads until it gets a good copy. A huge difference to copying and burning at full speed with NERO etc. Can also improve disks too! A copy can be better than the original if the the disk can't be read properly at normal speed, but is good enough for a program like EAC or furio to slowly make a copy. |