ez8947 Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 Has anyone ever heard of applying green highlighter to the outer edge of your CD's. I guess its supposed to keep the laser from escaping the disc, therefore enhancing the sound. Some high end dealers I know swear by it. Does anyone know of any information to support this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darren Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 I heard that years ago and dismissed it as being rumor. If you're getting that from some reputable dealers, I'd like to hear more about it myself. Still, sounds fishy to me - if it were true, why wouldn't one of the studios start doing something similar prior to distribution? Charge and extra $.50 a CD and blow away the other studios?. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WMcD Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 This was a popular tweek years ago. It probably dates back to the first release of CDs. I've never seen any reason to belive it has any merit. As you may know, the optical system for any CD reader is very sophisticated with an infra red laser diode supplying a light source and a very precise microscope looking at the pits in the CD. Basically the same with DVD and computer CD ROM. There is no reason to believe that there is lack of contrast in the system caused by light leakage or reflection at the edges of the disk. I classify this as a situation were there is no problem (caused by the edge) and hence you can't "solve" a problem which doesn't exist in the first place. If the green dye had any effect at all, it would have to have an effect in the infra red region. Naturally it can be hypothecated that the green dye looks "black" or "white" at IR. But that hasn't been shown either. I generally look to the computer industry which uses the same technology in our CD ROMs for software. They are not proposing that green magic marker will enhance reading of data. In conclusion, this is just nonesense. We all like to find tweeks. Some may work. But not this one. Gil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skonopa Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 ---------------- On 5/9/2004 10:23:28 PM ez8947 wrote: Has anyone ever heard of applying green highlighter to the outer edge of your CD's. I guess its supposed to keep the laser from escaping the disc, therefore enhancing the sound. Some high end dealers I know swear by it. Does anyone know of any information to support this? ---------------- BOGUS!!! Boy, that "snopes" website sure can be handy at times I've never seen information that "supports" this (other than some snooty "audiophile" type sites, were they are often trying to sell this to you. Here is one Yokel that feels you must go beyond just simply greening the edge - is that dude serious? I'd be willing to be if you switch discs on him, he would not be able to tell a difference), but I've found plenty of information that says its complete bunk! EDIT: Here is another such site". To add: The idea is that the "green" will absorb any light reflections from the edge, thus supposedly less chance the read head will pickup stray signals, thus "muddying" the sound. Also to add what Gil already said above, the light is so fast that any reflections will make it back to the head while it is still reading the current bit, thus the head would pick up no additional information. As Gil so nicely put it, why don't we see this with data CD's? After all, should this make our computers read the data better? I doubt it. To also add: I am certain back when the format was developed the fine engineers at Sony and Phillips had this possibility in mind and designed the system so that stray reflections would be a non-issue. I can only imagine that the technology has since gotten better in the past 20 years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Disc Posted May 11, 2004 Share Posted May 11, 2004 I am in the minority here and believe there is something to CD tweaking. I don't feel however that the pen color has to be green. This topic, or rather one like it, was discussed awhile back in the 2-channel forum. No pens here, but duping the CD to Black CD-Rs. http://forums.klipsch.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=47204&forumID=68&catID=19&search=1&searchstring=&sessionID={D4B84057-71F2-49A9-9E85-1C50A21F7745} Extra long and drawn out discussion ad-nausea. IMHO it make a sonic difference. Can the listener always here it... that is another matter. Tim ---------------- On 5/9/2004 10:23:28 PM ez8947 wrote: Has anyone ever heard of applying green highlighter to the outer edge of your CD's. I guess its supposed to keep the laser from escaping the disc, therefore enhancing the sound. Some high end dealers I know swear by it. Does anyone know of any information to support this? ---------------- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ez8947 Posted May 11, 2004 Author Share Posted May 11, 2004 I dont understand how copying a cd to anything can make an improvement. When you burn a cd the pits created by the burner are more shallow and less defined than on the original cd, therefore less information results in degraded quality. That could be a reason cheaper players will usually read CD-Rs but better built ones will not, they need more information. I may be wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Disc Posted May 11, 2004 Share Posted May 11, 2004 Your wrong. And the reason why is that commercial CDs are pressed using a glass master. That master presses thousands and thousands of CDs and does wear out and the pits become less defined. A ( properly burned ) CD will have have uniform pit structure and is capable of producing a CD that was pressed like a virgin glass master. Look here: http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific.asp?ArticleHeadline=Writing+Quality&index=27 And here: http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific.asp?ArticleHeadline=Jitter%20Tests&Series=0 Another good one: http://www.yamahamultimedia.com/yec/tech/longdata.asp There is more to it than ones and zeros... Tim ---------------- On 5/11/2004 10:13:11 PM ez8947 wrote: I dont understand how copying a cd to anything can make an improvement. When you burn a cd the pits created by the burner are more shallow and less defined than on the original cd, therefore less information results in degraded quality. That could be a reason cheaper players will usually read CD-Rs but better built ones will not, they need more information. I may be wrong. ---------------- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ez8947 Posted May 11, 2004 Author Share Posted May 11, 2004 why do all my CD-Rs sound like sh!t? I have been making them for years, different burners, different speeds, different CDR brands, but same sh!t. Not one can compare to my originals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenratboy Posted May 11, 2004 Share Posted May 11, 2004 All I have to say is: all the laser is doing is reading 1's and 0's, either it will get them or not. There seems to be a myth that CD players skip a bunch and fill them in, lessening sound quality. If that is the case, why can I install a 600MB program on my $60 Pioneer DVD-ROM with 100% perfection? I call BS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Garrison Posted May 11, 2004 Share Posted May 11, 2004 KEN, Ken, ken... Yes the data are identical. The point is that music involves both timing and data values, whereas computer data files involve (within broad limits) only data. No one is claiming that CD copies have lower data read errors than the original CDs. What they have is clearer land / pit boundries and cleaner eye patterns in the analog signal recovered off the disc, resulting in lower jitter and more accurate reproduction. If you google for the combination "jitter eye pattern land pit laser" or some such you'll get a bazillion hits that will go into grotesquely deep levels of detail about this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Disc Posted May 11, 2004 Share Posted May 11, 2004 ez8947 Do me a favor and read this PDF and then let me know what you think. http://www.genesisloudspeakers.com/whitepaper/Black_CDsII.pdf Just a thought... Did you record disk to disc or did you first copy to your hard drive, then make the copy from the image on the hard drive? ---------------- On 5/11/2004 10:38:15 PM ez8947 wrote: why do all my CD-Rs sound like sh!t? I have been making them for years, different burners, different speeds, different CDR brands, but same sh!t. Not one can compare to my originals. ---------------- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ez8947 Posted May 11, 2004 Author Share Posted May 11, 2004 ---------------- On 5/11/2004 10:50:40 PM tbabb wrote: ez8947 Do me a favor and read this PDF and then let me know what you think. http://www.genesisloudspeakers.com/whitepaper/Black_CDsII.pdf Just a thought... Did you record disk to disc or did you first copy to your hard drive, then make the copy from the image on the hard drive? ---------------- On 5/11/2004 10:38:15 PM ez8947 wrote: why do all my CD-Rs sound like sh!t? I have been making them for years, different burners, different speeds, different CDR brands, but same sh!t. Not one can compare to my originals. ---------------- ---------------- I am not throwing blows at anyone, I would really like to have great sounding CD-Rs. Referring to the question above, I can and have done both. My desktop has 2 drives to go disc to disc, and my laptop rips the cd to the hard drive and takes the info from there. Does this procedure make a difference? Oh yeah, and I just noticed I have graduated to "Crazy Poster"!!! Wooo Whoooo (be sure to catch my 2nd show at 11:00 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Professor.Ham.Slap Posted May 11, 2004 Share Posted May 11, 2004 ---------------- On 5/11/2004 10:24:41 PM tbabb wrote: Your wrong. And the reason why is that commercial CDs are pressed using a glass master. That master presses thousands and thousands of CDs and does wear out and the pits become less defined. A ( properly burned ) CD will have have uniform pit structure and is capable of producing a CD that was pressed like a virgin glass master. ---------------- Actually, a burnt CD has NO pits at all. The bottom of your CD-R is colored for a reason. The recording (data) layer is a complex dye. When you put a blank CD in the recorder, a special laser reacts with the dye. It either makes it reflective or non-reflective--to a point. The problem arises when the amount of available power comes into the equation. Most people only have ~350 watt power supplies in their computer to power everything inside. This spec is far below the wattage requirement a laser powerful enough to literaly cut or sufficiently change a surface structure. Therefore, we only have reactive dyes that can be slightly "swayed" by a more-powerful-than-a-reading-laser laser. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Disc Posted May 11, 2004 Share Posted May 11, 2004 There is no apprehension here... disk to disk is bad, don't do it. Copying the audio CD to hard disk first is the correct method, but also the copying modes you use. Not all software is the same too. When you said "rips the cd to hard drive" that would lead me to belive you are using some sort of audio extraction method, which might not be doing any sort of error correction on the extracted data. Treat the audio cd as though it were data. The do's and don't are explained in the pdf I referred to, and many of your questions are answered there. Please take the time to read it. - tb ---------------- On 5/11/2004 10:57:52 PM ez8947 wrote: I am not throwing blows at anyone, I would really like to have great sounding CD-Rs. Referring to the question above, I can and have done both. My desktop has 2 drives to go disc to disc, and my laptop rips the cd to the hard drive and takes the info from there. Does this procedure make a difference? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
No Disc Posted May 12, 2004 Share Posted May 12, 2004 Can you provide a url to back that up? I'm kind of curious myself as to which it is because everything I've read indicates there is a "pit" and "ridge" to burnt cds. http://www.vallartacafes.com/jamie/article134.htm ---------------- On 5/11/2004 11:08:41 PM Professor.Ham.Slap wrote: Actually, a burnt CD has NO pits at all. The bottom of your CD-R is colored for a reason. The recording (data) layer is a complex dye. When you put a blank CD in the recorder, a special laser reacts with the dye. It either makes it reflective or non-reflective--to a point. The problem arises when the amount of available power comes into the equation. Most people only have ~350 watt power supplies in their computer to power everything inside. This spec is far below the wattage requirement a laser powerful enough to literaly cut or sufficiently change a surface structure. Therefore, we only have reactive dyes that can be slightly "swayed" by a more-powerful-than-a-reading-laser laser. ---------------- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Professor.Ham.Slap Posted May 12, 2004 Share Posted May 12, 2004 ---------------- On 5/12/2004 12:05:18 AM tbabb wrote: Can you provide a url to back that up? I'm kind of curious myself as to which it is because everything I've read indicates there is a "pit" and "ridge" to burnt cds. http://www.vallartacafes.com/jamie/article134.htm ---------------- I read that information from here, here and also I remember hearing it on The Screen Savers. For convenience's sake, here's the quotes, respectively:"A pressed CD has raised and lowered areas, referred to as "lands" and "pits", respectively. A laser in the CD recorder creates marks in the disc's dye layer that have the same reflective properties. The pattern of pits and lands on the disc encodes the information and allows it to be retrieved on an audio or computer CD player." "The polycarbonate disc is covered by an organic dye where the recorded information data is stored. The dye will decompose under the effects of the heat generated by a writing or recording laser beam (wavelength of 780-790 nanometers). The dye blackens during this process and the information carrying pits are created." Basically, the idea is the same (reflective vs non-reflective) but there is more reflection in the pits when it comes to CD-Rs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kenratboy Posted May 12, 2004 Share Posted May 12, 2004 ---------------- On 5/11/2004 10:49:26 PM Ray Garrison wrote: KEN, Ken, ken... Yes the data are identical. The point is that music involves both timing and data values, whereas computer data files involve (within broad limits) only data. No one is claiming that CD copies have lower data read errors than the original CDs. What they have is clearer land / pit boundries and cleaner eye patterns in the analog signal recovered off the disc, resulting in lower jitter and more accurate reproduction. If you google for the combination "jitter eye pattern land pit laser" or some such you'll get a bazillion hits that will go into grotesquely deep levels of detail about this. ---------------- While I know nothing about this stuff, it always seems the assumption is that CD players are STUPID and cannot figure this stuff out. Why can't a CD player 'know' how to read imperfect material and decode it properly? Again, I am taking the skeptics POV, but it is like the photography forums - it's all about lenses, CMOS's and FPS, not about pictures Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Garrison Posted May 12, 2004 Share Posted May 12, 2004 They can. It's not black magic. Phase locked loops with proper input buffering can dramatically reduce, if not eliminate, jitter distortions due to the interface. It's just not cheap to do it right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluless Posted May 13, 2004 Share Posted May 13, 2004 I use an amethyst stylus to place a small, perfectly circular groove on the outer edge of my CDs to allow for a focal, central, and harmonious point of convergence. It's all very Zen..... And Then.....I take the bag of rabid weasels and half dogs.... And Then.... I order some more egg rolls..... And Then.....I remember.... Upon us all .... A Lil'Lo Mein Must Fall.... .....Ah haa....Charade You Are! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fini Posted May 13, 2004 Share Posted May 13, 2004 I was under the impression that if you used a highlighter pen on a cd, that only the best tracks would then play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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