Pros of buying cd's?

[Starkraver]

At least when I will go completelly broke and spend my entire life in my room without money for internet I will have lots of music to enjoy.

Ha ha this! 👆

@abasio - flush with cash? complete opposite. In a few months, banks will classify my loan as a non performing asset

[antic604]

None, really... It's not environmentally friendly, it takes up space in your home, the d/l can be of higher quality (like 96khz/24bit), it's more expensive and time-consuming (packing & shipping), the way people are listening to music nowadays - as files - requires you to rip the CDs anyway...

 

BUT, I was first buying music on tapes and later on on CDs and I remember I always cherished the moment of unwrapping the box, "smelling" the inlays, looking at the disc. I know it's irrational, but I can't really enjoy music I bought as digital d/l knowing, that there's physical version available. To the point I'll refuse to listen to some music that I won't / can't buy because of ridiculous pricing (e.g. some US labels charge almost twice the price of CD for shipping to Europe) or because it's no longer available and now costs 100EUR+ used (e.g. never heard "Accidental Occidentalism", "Hypnorhythm EP" or "Juggling Alchemists (...)"

 

Yes, I know it's stupid.

 

It's obviously not the case with releases available only as d/l, but I really avoid those, unless that's something I really, really want to have - I probably have less than 10 releases I bought digitally.

[abasio]

I'm pretty much the same. It's irrational but also makes sense in my head. The feeling of seeing that your file has downloaded doesn't compare with seeing your CDs in the post which again doesn't really compare to finding that CD you want in a record shop. I've downloaded a few things: Ishq & Plank were only available as download and dataobscura has better quality downloads as all their stuff is CD-R anyway and the download is much cheaper.

[Starkraver]

How much did you pay for Ishq & Plank download? They are available for 10.99GBP straight from Jacqueline. Also, Same price with free postage from me

[Psychedelic Alien]

Cds forever! I never paid for a download and always bought releases as a cd! So I am connected to them. The smell, the attention, the happiness when you receive it...

 

I also think it is still important djs play with cd or vinyl. Old school freak!

[Mantra604]

Other p.o.v: If I can I'm listening to music on my desktop audiocd player and my strong opinion is, the original CD sounds better (airier, more detailed) than any CD-R copy (ex: digitally bought wav's), what I can made with a CD/Dvd or Blu-ray burner.

 

One of many possible explanation (if someone is interested, who's use cd-player yet >

 

- I've read somewhere that when the manufactured audio cd is PRESSED, the 'shape' & 'depth' & 'location' of data pits/lands are PRECISELY, because there is no rotation & dithering (as under 'cd burning')

 

-If a (low-grade) audio CD-R is written at high speed -4x or more (24x? -, the extreme spin & vibration can cause instable laser positioning, so, a part of pits/holes put for hardly readable 'wrong' place at spiral track of data -OR- the pits 'shape' and 'length' can be malformed. These problems cause poor "back readability" at disc and audio cd player will be forced 'error correction' or skipping. (Most hifi cd players can't do 'cache' or direct 're-read', as computer optical drives do) This may explain why some people experienced [like me:] that burning disc's can sounds a bit flat /muddy (ex: lack of high / low frequencies) or distorted compared to originals.

 

So, that's why i prefer original cd's and recommend them.

 

p.s: of course , listening to music on computer is a very different story..

[Purple Sunray]

- I've read somewhere

 

Don't let em fool you

 

that when the manufactured audio cd is PRESSED, the 'shape' & 'depth' & 'location' of data pits/lands are PRECISELY, because there is no rotation & dithering (as under 'cd burning')

Yeah, CDs are stamped. "Pits" and "Lands" are on a stamp which stamps CDs. On CD-R/RW a laser creates those "Pits" and "Lands".

This doesn't affect sound quality though (see below)

 

 

 

If a (low-grade) audio CD-R is written at high speed -4x or more (24x? -, the extreme spin & vibration can cause instable laser positioning, so, a part of pits/holes put for hardly readable 'wrong' place at spiral track of data -OR- the pits 'shape' and 'length' can be malformed. These problems cause poor "back readability" at disc and audio cd player will be forced 'error correction' or skipping. (Most hifi cd players can't do 'cache' or direct 're-read', as computer optical drives do) This may explain why some people experienced [like me:] that burning disc's can sounds a bit flat /muddy (ex: lack of high / low frequencies) or distorted compared to originals.

 

Then you hear some other distortion. Same EQ settings? Same player? Same headphones? Same ...?

If your drive runs into a read error, it will retry to read that sector a couple of times then give up. If this is the case, a block of 2,352bytes (CD sector size) is missing for playback. This is about 75ms of audio for 44.1kHz/16bit.

So the problem the CD player has to solve, is that 75ms of audio is missing in between the file playback.

I do not know any player that solves this problem by producing 'flatness' or 'mud'. I could think of some pre-cache + timestrech approach, but this would more sound like movement of the 'keynote' or mikeymouse like if a simple re-sampling is used.

Most of the players simply mute during the gap. So you hear the very well known stuttering. Physical errors on a CD should never lead to change on the sound quality, but dropouts.

 

 

 

p.s: of course , listening to music on computer is a very different story..

Not that different. Back at the old days CD audio player had 1x drives only, while PCs generally had fast drives.

Now.. if you read with a speed of 1x, there is not much room for any re-try if you face a read error. Such players needs to skip immediately and continue to read next sector, otherwise playback will be on pause during read tries. If you have a drive that is faster than 1x, you can buffer. i.e. you fill your buffer with double speed then consume (play) it with normal speed. So if you run into a read error, you have time for re-tries until the buffer runs empty. After playback continues, the buffer will refill, because drive reads at > 1x while you play at 1x.

But this is history, more or less. If there is any kind of anti-shock feature on that CD player, it will have a drive faster than 1x. So playback, buffering and timings will work very similar to a player running on a PC.

[Mantra604]

@Purple Sunray: thanks for feedback, but my opinion about "home audio-cd burning" is; same quality copy as original is IMPOSSIBLE.

If I think good (from your answer), you can't agree with me.(you suggest that problems are at my part as cd player/eq/headphones etc)

I do accept it, there is no point for discussion.

 

Just a last note for end, and case closed;

 

If you want to burn cd's at your home, and change anything in your system, example:

- cd-r disc type ex: 'mam gold' audio disc(15$) vs a cheap princo budget disc(1$);

- cd-r media 'color' : green vs gold vs silver vs blue "material".

- burning software ex: nero vs plextools (win) vs K3b (linux)

- burning speed : 2x vs 40x

- cd ripper software : EAC vs plextools vs CDDA Paranoia(linux) and great many options

- optical drive for grab/burn : old plextor premium cd (ide) vs yamaha cd (scsi based) vs bluray/dvd (sata)

etc..

 

You will always get different audio quality, but NEVER same -good- as your original pressed cd.

(i checked it for years on very expensive system)

 

So, i think, you can't made perfect audio cd at your home. It isn't a DVD or Bluray standard, which can be easily copied.

 

And Sony/Philips knows it well!

At 90's years exist a (high-end) desktop audio-cd recorder which could made 100% SAME copy from CD.

After a half year the manufacturing has been cancelled. (At the request of music industry rights defenders and sony/phillips)

 

I think, the 'quality' is one of main reason, why some people pay hundreds of euros for physical disc's and dislike

digital downloads or poor quality copied disc's.. (especially in the acoustic -audiophile- music world, where the quality is the most important)

[Purple Sunray]

On CDs you need to think digital.

0 or 1. Works or Doesn't work. Music or No Music.

There is no 0.5 on the digital domain.

 

Now, let assume you have a very simple kick-drum audio format, where 0 means silence and 1 means a drum hit.

Your data looks like

1000100010001000 ( a "4 to the floor" kickdrum).

If you now burn that to a CD, it will become something like:

1000100010001000[4]

The [4] is a number stored with that block of data (sector), called a checksum.

My checksum is the number of 1's on the block, which is 4 (real checksum do not simply count 1's .. )

 

The kickdrum audio player reads that file now and because the CD is bad, a couple of bits are wrong. Like:

1000101000110000[4]

Now the player check if the read data is actually correct. There 5 1's on the sector and but check-sum says 4 => read error.

Data on that sector cannot be trust, so the player will mute instead.

 

You get my point?

A digital copy will not alter the data. 010101 will still be 010101 after a digital copy.

A CD can lose data because of bad sectors, but then this data is either readable or not readable. If a sector is corrupt, it will be detect at such and the player will not play it.

 

That is the big advantage over analog, i.e. Vinyl.

On Vinyl your data looks like

0.01, 0.72, 0.383, 0.588, 0.454, 0.489, ...

The player will play whatever it reads. If the disc is bad it will read wrong values and play wrong music.

A CD player in the other hand, will know that data is correct (can be read), or data is not correct (cannot be read).

 

 

So I really don't get from where the audio quality degrade comes in, in your opinion.

 

 

 

At 90's years exist a (high-end) desktop audio-cd recorder which could made 100% SAME copy from CD.
After a half year the manufacturing has been cancelled. (At the request of music industry rights defenders and sony/phillips)

This was related to copy protection based on intentionally corrupt sector on the disc, not related to quality. That tool was able to copy those corrupt sectors, which music industries did not like at all (normal CD burners do not copy, but skip corrupt sectors).

 

 

burning software ex: nero vs plextools (win) vs K3b (linux)

 

Nero ofc!!! (was working from them for quite some time... xD)

[Mantra604]

@Purple Sunray: if you like technical problems - >

Why Power Makes a Difference in Digital Audio
http://www.coreaudiotechnology.com/why-power-supplies-make-a-difference-in-digital-audio/

Not Just Ones and Zeros!
http://www.coreaudiotechnology.com/not-just-ones-and-zeros/

 

"What determines a "one" vs a "zero"?

Here's the secret: The only time a digital signal is a one or a zero is when it's sitting on a hard drive. A computer, much like a CD Player, process all audio signals in real time as a PWM Square Wave.

Here is where the noise comes into play. Ever notice how noise is often measured in microvolts? That's because noise is a voltage that adds or subtracts from the voltages in the PWM Signal. This translates to amplitude distortion and harmonic distortion in the PWM. Sonically, they introduce harmonics that Do Not Exist.

Unfortunately the IC doesn't know the difference between 120hz noise and 1ghz noise, it all carries a voltage that contributes to the resulting distorted square wave. That means that any noise up to infinity will in some way impact our audio signal through amplitude distortion."

 

The technicalities of CD Ripping

http://www.coreaudiotechnology.com/ripping-a-good-one-the-technicalities-of-cd-ripping/

 

"Let’s say we have perfect algorithms, whatever that means. These algorithms are processed by the CPU in real time. For the CPU to process data it must first be loaded into memory. Bottleneck alert! (If you haven’t done so yet, read our article on the RAM and CPU relationship, it will explain this bottleneck in more detail).

I’ll simplify this down to speed of processing. When the algorithms are not processed quickly enough latency occurs and the data “floats” in limbo waiting to be processed. During this time the square wave picks up noise, which causes amplitude distortion"

[Purple Sunray]

You are talking about the DAC (DigitalToAnalog converter), not the CD.

I do agree that differnt players sound differnt.

But this was not the topic, we are talking about audio quality degrade because burned to a CD

 

When the algorithms are not processed quickly enough latency occurs and the data “floats” in limbo waiting to be processed. During this time the square wave picks up noise, which causes amplitude distortion"

Hm?

If the processing during buring is not fast enough you face a buffer underrun. Depending on the drive, the burn software migth be able to resume burning after that underrung or not (error during buring).

If the processing during playback is not fast enough, the DAC runs out of data. Again it depends on the implementation - it can mute, do a fade ramp, repeat the last buffer, or..

[Purple Sunray]

Edit:

 

That CD ripping artice cross-checked against reality:

https://www.psynews.org/forums/topic/71900-why-people-buy-100-hdmi-cables

[Mantra604]

Dude, I think we should close this case. This is not appropriate topic for this complex problem. (not about 0 vs 1 ... Not just the audio data is transfered, the timing/clock is transfered also from the crystal reference clock. There is jitter and other lot of unsolvable timing problems yet (especially at high speed reading) or cdda file system/subchannel incompatibility against NTFS/FAT32 why cd ripper software's can't access perfectly to audio data, so lot of data is lost in first -reading- step.. etc etc

 

We could argue for weeks, but not here on psynews ..

[Purple Sunray]

Agreed, started a new thread on tech corner for the ones that are intereseted on my point of view =)

 

 

https://www.psynews....100-hdmi-cables

 

(I do c++ coding on multimedia stuff since about 20 years and part of that was to implement such a ripping system. It was the very first prototype arround 1995, in cooperation with drive vendors, CPU manifactors & co... We did the software part. Was on that dev. team until about.. hum Nero 6/7 release? So know that stuff inside out.....)

[Redo]

.