[OT] Audiophiles: Can the audio reproduction oftheCDbeequalled or bettered?

[Dan Foxley]

I read some years ago in alt.sekd that even a CD>CDR copy will produce a
better sound because Jitter introduced by mass production is removed/reduced
during a copy. Can that be possible? Or am I just passing on BS...I've
heard?

Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com] On Behalf Of Graham Ridgway
at home
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2004 5:44 AM
To: Slim Devices Discussion
Subject: [slim] [OT] Audiophiles: Can the audio reproduction of
theCDbeequalled or bettered?

Mark, you are absolutely right about the CD reader thing. The idea of using
the CD12 was late-night silliness!

The thing I couldn't convince myself of was whether EAC could guarantee to
get the bits of the CD exactly right or not. And if it couldn't get it
right then tell me about it. But in the cold light of day, it must be able
to do this!

So back to the plot...in my half-complete AV setup the next stage is the new
Naim DVD player plus the Naim decoder. This has a DAC that should be able
to be fed by the Squeezebox. So in theory, provided the Naim DAC is as good
(whatever that means, but let's not go there) as the one in the CD12 (or I
get a seperate one that is), then my CD12 will be redundant, although I will
have to rip any new CD to flac or wav before playing it! But could I bear
to give it up?

Any advance on #10?

Graham
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Bennett" <mark (AT) markandliz (DOT) co.uk>
To: "Slim Devices Discussion" <discuss (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2004 9:34 AM
Subject: [slim] [OT] Audiophiles: Can the audio reproduction of the
CDbeequalled or bettered?


> Hi Graham,
>
> you're missing an important point - the CD reader in the PC doesn't
> have to be as good as the one in your Linn.
>
> When you're playing a CD in a normal CD player there are real-time
> limitations. It can't keep re-reading the disc until it gets zero
> error rates, because it needs to keep the data streaming so that
> the sound is uninterrupted. In the case of a poor CD it just has
> to give up and interpolate the erroneous samples. A good CD transport
> will minimise the number of occasions where this happens.
>
> If you have a fantastically accurate CD Drive, as is probably in your
> Linn then this won't happen very often, but it will happen.
>
> With EAC and a PC drive there is no real time constraint. It can keep
> re-reading indefinitely until it either get's it right, or gives up
> because the disc is too badly damaged, at which point it'll tell you
> and you can decide to buy a new CD or ignore the problem. A better
> PC drive will rip more quickly (less retries) and will probably rip
> a more damaged disc that a poor drive, but otherwise they should
> be pretty much the same.
>
> I'm actually using a DVD-RW drive to do my ripping, and it has never
> got a CD wrong. (Sod's law - it's just done it as I've been writing
> this, so OK, almost never - second try got it right though....) A
> DVD-RW drive is designed to be able to read pits on the CD almost
> an order of magnitude smaller than those on a regular pressed CD,
> and since it's RW with a very small difference between a '1' and
> a '0'. As a result the pits on a regular CD are childs play in
> comparison.
>
> Once the CD has been ripped to hard disk it's subject to so much
> error correction that it will never have a read failure until the
> disk is well and truly worn out.
>
> This gives it a theoretical advantage over your Linn. Of course,
> if your Linn always reads the CD perfectly then there is no difference
> in the bit stream accuracy, and the only *theoretical* difference
> is the integrity of the data trasnfer to the DACS, which is almost
> certainly 100% in both cases, and the jitter of the clock into the DAC.
>
> Using your Linn as the source for the ripping is a bad idea:
>
> 1) You will have no idea when it has read a disc badly and made up
> some of the samples, and so there's no way of correcting them
>
> 2) even if it never reads incorrectly you'll have to type in all
> of the CD/Track information yourself rather than look it up from
> CDDB
>
> Just my analysis...
>
> Graham Ridgway at home wrote:
> > Good point, but how do you know that the reading mechanism (hardware and
> > software) in a PC is better than in a CD player.
> >
> > I would have to refuse (out of sheer audiophile principles!) to accept
> > that the cheap CD drive in my PC plus EAC (no matter how good it is -
> > and it is) is better at reading a digital stream from a CD than my Linn
> > CD12!!
> >
> > Mind you, I quite fancy the idea of using my CD12 as the disk drive to
> > produce the digital source to create the flac/wav/whatever files to run
> > a squeezbox off! So, take the CD12 off the Naim system, plug it in to
> > the PC and then plug the squeezebox into the Naim system via an
> > audiophile DAC! How rebellious!
> >
> > So how would I take a digital output from the CD12 and 'record' it on
> > the PC?
> >
> > Graham
>
>
>

[Mark Bennett]

Hi Dan,

on a physical basis I think this is probably BS. From a time (i.e.
jitter) perspective I'd wager that the difference between a regular
CD and a CD-R is pretty negligible. If there's any difference I'd
expect the mass produced CD to be better, just because of the
precision of the manufacturing.

In my opinion (and I'm no expert on this so I might be talking BS)
there's likely to be a much bigger difference due to the difficulties
a conventional CD player has in reading the low contrast ratio of a
CD-R.

Most "audiophiles" I know believe that a CD-R is audibly worse than
a normal CD. At this point I declare that my hearing is not sensitive
enough to tell the difference :-), but I can believe that the
uncorrected error rate is probably higher with a CD-R than with a
regular CD on a normal CD audio player.

Dan Foxley wrote:
> I read some years ago in alt.sekd that even a CD>CDR copy will produce a
> better sound because Jitter introduced by mass production is removed/reduced
> during a copy. Can that be possible? Or am I just passing on BS...I've
> heard?
>
> Dan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: discuss-bounces (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com
> [mailto:discuss-bounces (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com] On Behalf Of Graham Ridgway
> at home
> Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2004 5:44 AM
> To: Slim Devices Discussion
> Subject: [slim] [OT] Audiophiles: Can the audio reproduction of
> theCDbeequalled or bettered?
>
> Mark, you are absolutely right about the CD reader thing. The idea of using
> the CD12 was late-night silliness!
>
> The thing I couldn't convince myself of was whether EAC could guarantee to
> get the bits of the CD exactly right or not. And if it couldn't get it
> right then tell me about it. But in the cold light of day, it must be able
> to do this!
>
> So back to the plot...in my half-complete AV setup the next stage is the new
> Naim DVD player plus the Naim decoder. This has a DAC that should be able
> to be fed by the Squeezebox. So in theory, provided the Naim DAC is as good
> (whatever that means, but let's not go there) as the one in the CD12 (or I
> get a seperate one that is), then my CD12 will be redundant, although I will
> have to rip any new CD to flac or wav before playing it! But could I bear
> to give it up?
>
> Any advance on #10?
>
> Graham
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Bennett" <mark (AT) markandliz (DOT) co.uk>
> To: "Slim Devices Discussion" <discuss (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com>
> Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2004 9:34 AM
> Subject: [slim] [OT] Audiophiles: Can the audio reproduction of the
> CDbeequalled or bettered?
>
>
>
>>Hi Graham,
>>
>>you're missing an important point - the CD reader in the PC doesn't
>>have to be as good as the one in your Linn.
>>
>>When you're playing a CD in a normal CD player there are real-time
>>limitations. It can't keep re-reading the disc until it gets zero
>>error rates, because it needs to keep the data streaming so that
>>the sound is uninterrupted. In the case of a poor CD it just has
>>to give up and interpolate the erroneous samples. A good CD transport
>>will minimise the number of occasions where this happens.
>>
>>If you have a fantastically accurate CD Drive, as is probably in your
>>Linn then this won't happen very often, but it will happen.
>>
>>With EAC and a PC drive there is no real time constraint. It can keep
>>re-reading indefinitely until it either get's it right, or gives up
>>because the disc is too badly damaged, at which point it'll tell you
>>and you can decide to buy a new CD or ignore the problem. A better
>>PC drive will rip more quickly (less retries) and will probably rip
>>a more damaged disc that a poor drive, but otherwise they should
>>be pretty much the same.
>>
>>I'm actually using a DVD-RW drive to do my ripping, and it has never
>>got a CD wrong. (Sod's law - it's just done it as I've been writing
>>this, so OK, almost never - second try got it right though....) A
>>DVD-RW drive is designed to be able to read pits on the CD almost
>>an order of magnitude smaller than those on a regular pressed CD,
>>and since it's RW with a very small difference between a '1' and
>>a '0'. As a result the pits on a regular CD are childs play in
>>comparison.
>>
>>Once the CD has been ripped to hard disk it's subject to so much
>>error correction that it will never have a read failure until the
>>disk is well and truly worn out.
>>
>>This gives it a theoretical advantage over your Linn. Of course,
>>if your Linn always reads the CD perfectly then there is no difference
>>in the bit stream accuracy, and the only *theoretical* difference
>>is the integrity of the data trasnfer to the DACS, which is almost
>>certainly 100% in both cases, and the jitter of the clock into the DAC.
>>
>>Using your Linn as the source for the ripping is a bad idea:
>>
>> 1) You will have no idea when it has read a disc badly and made up
>> some of the samples, and so there's no way of correcting them
>>
>> 2) even if it never reads incorrectly you'll have to type in all
>> of the CD/Track information yourself rather than look it up from
>> CDDB
>>
>>Just my analysis...
>>
>>Graham Ridgway at home wrote:
>>
>>>Good point, but how do you know that the reading mechanism (hardware and
>>>software) in a PC is better than in a CD player.
>>>
>>>I would have to refuse (out of sheer audiophile principles!) to accept
>>>that the cheap CD drive in my PC plus EAC (no matter how good it is -
>>>and it is) is better at reading a digital stream from a CD than my Linn
>>>CD12!!
>>>
>>>Mind you, I quite fancy the idea of using my CD12 as the disk drive to
>>>produce the digital source to create the flac/wav/whatever files to run
>>>a squeezbox off! So, take the CD12 off the Naim system, plug it in to
>>>the PC and then plug the squeezebox into the Naim system via an
>>>audiophile DAC! How rebellious!
>>>
>>>So how would I take a digital output from the CD12 and 'record' it on
>>>the PC?
>>>
>>>Graham
>>
>>
>>