Nice Article on the Pros of Black CR-Rs

[mark1101]

I guess he's implying that the media can be the problem and still hold the correct data. Transferring the exact data to a better media (Black CD) using a better writing process (I.E. better player, slower speed, external writer, software tweaks, etc.) can improve the sound.

Can someone verify copying a redbook CD using this method and see if it improves? I'd do it myself but I'm in too much of a hurry to find out the answer.

[mark1101]

After re-reading Max's experiment, question.

Max, are you verifying that you improved a store boughten CD by simply copying it to a black CD-R???

[No Disc]

Already did this. It's verified, move on. Prove it to yourself, take 10 of your worst sounding CDs (Probably sound bad because of poor mastering) and follow the steps mentioned in the Black CR-R article. Burn at no greater that 4x, with Maxell Black CD-Rs from a Hard Disk image of the original Audio CD.

You shoud hear improvement on at LEAST some of the disks.

- tb

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On 3/22/2004 2:35:33 PM mark1101 wrote:

Can someone verify copying a redbook CD using this method and see if it improves? I'd do it myself but I'm in too much of a hurry to find out the answer.

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[Parrot]

It is verified to *you* but not verified as a scientific fact. By the same standard, I can say that I have "verified" that there is *no* superiority with black CDRs or slow speed burns or copying store-bought CDs.

[No Disc]

To stress the importance of buring Audio CDs correctly to improve audio quality , I wanted to point out that Yamaha's Multimedia division makes some interesting CD-RW recorders. They have a patent on what they call "Advance Audio Master Quality Recording."

AAMQR produces audio CDs with less jitter, acording to the web site. And guess what, when you use AAMQR mode, you burn at 1, 4 and now 8 x. They have data to back the claim that burning at slower speeds produces less jitter.

http://www.yamahamultimedia.com/yec/tech/aam_01.asp

I'm jazzed about this burner, and will probably pick one up in the future.

- tb

[No Disc]

If this isn't hard factual test data, then I don't know what is...

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific.asp?ArticleHeadline=Jitter+Tests&index=10

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On 3/22/2004 3:27:38 PM paulparrot wrote:

It is verified to *you* but not verified as a scientific fact. By the same standard, I can say that I have "verified" that there is *no* superiority with black CDRs or slow speed burns or copying store-bought CDs.

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[No Disc]

Paul,

Tell us please, what "specifically" you did to disprove this idea to yourself. You said you tested it, I want to know how you tested it and what methodology you used. I believe your testing was flawed somehow.

I have provided numorous web links backing up what I've stated and you have basically nothing. You discount all this evidence but provide nothing to back up of your own claims.

Put up some evidence Paul backing up what your saying because without it, your just blowing smoke.

- tb

[Parrot]

*Me* blowing smoke! That is a good one. The burden is on you to prove that a black CDR sounds better, that a burned copy of a store-bought CD sounds better, and that a slower-burned CDR sounds better. I have done all three of these things and heard no difference whatsoever. I am not saying that my own experiences have *verified* anything except to my satisfaction.

I am not persuaded by any of the articles you linked to. If you want to go to the trouble, you can find webpages that say none of these things make a difference. There will be more pages, maybe, that talk up your particular preferences here for the simple reason that most people do not waste their time stating the obvious. In other words, by the same token, you will find more sites that talk about the benefits of raising speaker wire off the floor than you will find sites saying it doesn't make any difference because 99.99% of the people in the world realize it doesn't make any difference and don't want to waste their time stating the obvious.

If you or anyone else thinks black/slow/reburn sounds "better," then knock yourself out. But that doesn't prove anything or verify anything other than you think it sounds "better." I guarantee you that anyone could post on some audio forums and get people worked up that *white* CDRs sound better, or *orange* CDRs sound better, or whatever.

On this more recent article, I would again state what I stated above, that different media and different burners are engineered for optimum performance at different speeds. You can have more errors at a slower speed if the recorder was designed to work best at faster speeds. Also, even if we go by this one test, do you think you can hear the difference of one or two nanoseconds higher jitter rating?

By the way, why do you keep ignoring my questions to you about whether you have tried these "wild" tweaks I mentioned (on page one of this thread), mostly from Ric Schultz, and also the one about copying a copy of a copy of a copy, and that supposedly sounding best? Why not grind, sand, ink up, optically treat, and multiple-burn everything? People say it all works.

[No Disc]

>Why not grind, sand, ink up, optically treat, and multiple-burn everything? People say it all works.

Paul if you have in fact looked and tried the Maxell discs then you would of known this is not necessary for the Maxell discs. The center ring is already black, so no inking is necessary, the outside edge is black, so no sanding and inking is necessary.

Thanks for proving my point. People say it works and it does.

>You can have more errors at a slower speed if the recorder was designed to work best at faster speeds.

Where's your scientific evidence?

>Also, even if we go by this one test, do you think you can hear the difference of one or two nanoseconds higher jitter rating?

Your missing the point. If anyone is going to bother copying a CD and re-buring it another CD to improve the sound, why settle for worse Jitter when the goal is to REDUCE the jitter.

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On 3/22/2004 5:36:35 PM paulparrot wrote:

By the way, why do you keep ignoring my questions to you about whether you have tried these "wild" tweaks I mentioned (on page one of this thread), mostly from Ric Schultz, and also the one about copying a copy of a copy of a copy, and that supposedly sounding best? Why not grind, sand, ink up, optically treat, and multiple-burn everything? People say it all works.

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[maxg]

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On 3/22/2004 2:40:02 PM mark1101 wrote:

After re-reading Max's experiment, question.

Max, are you verifying that you improved a store boughten CD by simply copying it to a black CD-R???

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Well lets just understand what I did and did not do (as far as I am concerned that is):

I did not simply copy a CD - not because I didnt want to but merely because I only have a single Cd player/writer on the computer. Therefore, I extracted the songs from the CD (Dire Straits - Money for Nothing) into WAV files and then created a new CD from that - choosing the "no compression" option.

These WAV files are still on my hard disk (all 670 Mb worth).

In theory the copy should be either exactly the same as the original's sonically, or worse, but obviously not better and any difference should be marginal unless something is seriously awry with my system.

Surprizingly to me - the copy is not the same as the original - it is a slightly harder sound. As it happens, with this music, that results in a presentation I prefer - YMMV. I should also state that I may not prefer the copy using different music. If, for example, I used Grieg's Pier Gynt I imagine that I would prefer the softer original than the harder copy.

Of course I am assuming that the copy of that would have similar sonic properties and come out harsher as it did for the first copy. It may not - for all I know it may come out sounding differently again - needs more play.

All of this ends up with the same question that I have now been wrestling with for a week. That question is simply this:

"Is there any possible reason that the copy would come out better than the original, other than the black CD thing?"

I think I may have an answer as follows:

During the process of reading the CD and copying its contents to WAV files on the hard disk I noticed that the speed at any given point in the process varied wildly, as did the noises coming from the CD player. At times it sounded like the same part of the disk was being read repeatedly - as if the system was struggling to get the data off the CD.

If that was indeed happening then this may well be the source of some, if not all, of the improvement/change.

In other words a normal audio CD player reads the disk in a single pass and then uses whatever error correcting systems it employs to fix problems and produce the signal to send to the audio system.

On the computer the drive appears to be using multiple passes to get the data off the disk - before creating the WAV files. If multiple passes are indeed happening (I am not technical enough to know) and if that does result in a better read of the data then logically less error correcting is required and this results in better sound.

It should be noted that I burned 2 copies of the disk (from the same WAV files) and that I did prefer the sound from the black disk, BUT - both copies were superior to the original and the differences between them was less than the differences of each from the original.

What I do not know if that is due to:

1. The black colour.

2. The black Cd I was using happens to be a better quality medium than the silver CD.

3. Black CD's in general are made to a higher standard - the colour may be irrelevent.

4. My imagination and the power of Tbabb's suggestion (although 2 others heard the improvement too).

5. That I would always prefer black CD's over silver for copying music.

In other words I dont feel I have proved very much, except, that the black CD thing is worth spending some more time on.

[No Disc]

I must confess, it's number 4. It's an old Jedi Mind trick.

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4. My imagination and the power of Tbabb's suggestion (although 2 others heard the improvement too).

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[Parrot]

http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/axatis/FAQs/CDR/CDRec/speedrate.htm#optimal

http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq04.html#S4-18

http://www.feurio.com/English/faq/faq_writer_speed.shtml

http://makecd.core.de/auto/FAQ-english_104.html#SEC104

Most of these links are fairly old, and written at the time of 2x, 4x, and 8x burners. If anything, the importance of a burner being optimized for a faster speed is more so now than it was then. If a burner is engineered to do its best at 24x, and the blanks are designed for fast burns, it only makes sense that burning at 1x or 2x would not be the way to go on a state of the art burner.

[mark1101]

Max,

Thanks for the clarification.

There are so many different software programs that read/write CDs with different algorithms. That may account for either more or less accurate extraction from the source CD to begin with.

There is so much variability one can introduce here.

Bottom line, I believe the author of the article points out some of this important variability. Further, that minimizing the negatives, and accentuating the positives in the copy process can in fact produce a copy either superior to or inferior to the source. Superior being possible only because this is digital information.

Thanks for your taking the time on this. I think it is very interesting, and the results make complete sense to me given the great variations in PC hardware, software algorithms, PC performance, and media differences.

[DrWho]

hey paul, i think what the other guys are looking for is your process of making a CD-R and all that...I too think it's all a load of crap.

I mentioned earlier that I run a CD production studio and I have a few fancy tools: SpinWise Four Drive 52X CD Tower without Hard Drive I also have a mac G5 where I'm using Cubase for the recording and mastering, CD Spin Doctor to divide up the tracks and Toast Titanium to burn the master.

Ok, so recently (in light of this thread) I have burned my masters at 2x,4x,8x,12x, 18x, and 24x. I did this once using imation CD-R and memorex. I did the same thing with the Taiyo Yuden (which is still a silver disc, but the material it's made out of is way different). The result? There was no difference between different write speeds...like none at all. I just want to point out that I was also the one doing the recording, so I am indeed very familiar with what it's supposed to sound like. and again, i say i noticed not a single difference with burn speed.

However, I did notice (verified through many blind AB tests) that the Taiyo Yuden master did sound more realistic (it seemed less harsh). was the difference big? not at all, but it was obvious enough to where i can constantly pick it out while blind.

So then I started making copies with the Telex. I did every speed from the Taiyo Yuden to Taiyo Yuden and noticed not a single difference. I then went from the Taiyo Yuden to memorex and imation at 52x and the sound went back to the same as all the memorex and imation masters. I would just like to note that the difference in sound between the memorex and imation was negligible at best (and that they both have the same texture on the surface). And the difference between Taiyo Yuden and the imation/memorex was only noticeable in a direct comparison.

The reason? No idea. I am pretty certain though that it is not jitter at all. You can induce jitter onto CDs and it sounds nothing like the difference between the two. It's not a result of the error correction...that is a system that has been perfected since home computers became popular and there are no flaws in the design. When your CDs are being played by your CD player, the data from the CD is being put into a few buffers here and there. When the error correction detects an error, it keeps reading from the CD until it fixes it...hopefully before the buffer runs out. when the buffer does run out, that's what you would hear as a scratch in the CD and notice that the CD player gets stuck and keeps trying to play that one part over and over and over until it gets it right (or your fastforward through it). And I don't think it's a matter of reflectivity of the CD or anything like that. If one data point is misread, then the error correction kicks in and that process starts over again. All that to say, there is no reason for what I hear. Perhaps I'm just repeatedly lucky in guessing which one is sounding better?

Now I know I didn't do the testing with black CD-Rs, but I think my experiences are still relevant. Perhaps the surface of a black CD-R is different than the other options? I don't know how the surface makes a difference, but that's really the only variable changing.

Anyways, I want to end with stating that when I read what I write, that I think I too am full of crap and I want to point out the absurdity in all this. Even if there truly was a difference (which i find extremely skeptical), then all the resources put into this process are still futile. There are much larger factors that affect the final sound arriving to the ears. I plan on going back and doing another blind A/B test (I still have all the CDs I made) and I will perform the test in other environments as well...ie: a few cars, my walkman, my home setup, and my computer.

Oh crap, I forgot to point out that I did a recording from imation/memorex to the Taiyo Yuden and the Taiyo Yuden sounded like the original Taiyo Yuden master! hah, put that on for size.

So ya, even though I think I hear a difference during a blind AB, I still thinks it's a load of crap. And Paul, it'd help out your credibility if you just list your process and draw your conclusions from a nice neat little story I've read parts of all the articles referenced so far from everyone and I would discard all of them as just opinions supported by "scientific-talk" (aka, mumbo jumbo or watever you wanna call it). What we really need here is a CD player engineer dude to describe the process involved and where all the possible flaws and tweaking occurs to tell us that this is all just a load of crap

[Parrot]

DrWho,

I use the same burner I've had for quite a while now, the Plextor 12/10/32A. I've used several different extraction programs; typically I use either Golden Hawk's CDRWin or Exact Audio Copy.

I've used several different burning programs. Typically I use EAC or Nero. I normally let EAC go at whatever speed it wants to. Nero I set for 12x.

I normally use Mitsui blanks, but have tried many different types. The black CDRs I used were Memorex and some off-brand ones I bought over the internet.

[mark1101]

Dr Who,

Your last point "oh crap..." seems to confirm that you can take a sub standard copy of an original, and improve it by simply making a better copy of it. If that is true and you agree that you actually did it, then what the author of the article said can be true to a degree.

For me, I just thought the whole thing was interesting. No arguement here to put up. I can't say if I will go out and buy black CDs or not.

I think the guys that don't see much of a difference probably have the better set ups and more optimized procedures. Just my guess.

You guys can finish up here, I'm done beating this horse. But thanks for all the info both ways. Again, very intereesting.

[DrWho]

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On 3/23/2004 4:03:22 PM mark1101 wrote:

Your last point "oh crap..." seems to confirm that you can take a sub standard copy of an original, and improve it by simply making a better copy of it. If that is true and you agree that you actually did it, then what the author of the article said can be true to a degree.

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instead of better, i think different is a better word...because i am able to get the same sound from a different sounding disc, i think that if anything is being shown, it is that the different kinds of discs might sound different and that the data stored on them is the same.

i did another blind test today and i couldn't hear the difference at all. but that's prob cuz i was tired and had mixing fatigue (i've been putting in lots of hours onto an xmas concert dvd that im trying to finish). I'm usually beat after 3 hours of critical listening (which is when i did the test).