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Is a cd-r back up of a cd album of noticably worse quality than the original?

voltaire

voltaire

pfm Member
Is an original cd of noticably superior quality than a cd-r back up?

just wondering cause i live in one home during the week and another at weekends and am thinking of backing up my orginals to save keep carting a 1000 cd flight case around ( which btw makes me look a james bond villian trying to smuggle plutonioum out of london every week! )

any input appreciated as always.
 
IMHO three aspects are important here:

* rip your CDs with competent software (to avoid jitter problems). Use EAC for Win32 and/or CDParanoia for Unixoid systems (Linux, MacOSX, *BSD, etc.). iTunes seems to have some correction algorithm built in, also.

* make some experiments to find the cheapest CD-R that is compatible with your CD drive. Some information about these compatability issues is available on the Web.

* burn the CDs at the slowest possible rate. This way the "contrast" (difference) between "pit" and "land" is pretty high, which makes it easier for the CDP to read.

I follow these rules myself and could not detect any problem/difference in sound. Others may disagree.

Best regards,

Oliver

Edit: By CD-R I meant the actual media, as they are available in a large variety of colours, etc. I use TDK Metallic Disk and seem to have no problems.
 
a long time ago when cdr was young the meridian rep used to demonstrate

that CDR's sounded better! than the original cd's

in those days you could only burn at 1x though.
 
OTOH....
I've never heard a copied CD that wasn't obviously poorer than the original

Bob
 
I burn CD-r's for the car, using alcohol 120. perfecty good enough for use in there, although on the main rig you can tell the copy from the original, if we are being picky about it.
 
I have read several research papers on the quality of manufacture of CDRs.
The three most favoured Brands for CDRs for recording music are:-
Sony (manufactured by mitsui), TDK and Verbatim. These seem to offer the lowest error rates.

Also one research paper I read seemed to suggets that most CD writers seem to operate best at about half to a quarter of their maximum burn speeed and not at X1.

Also worth noting that the quality of Music CDRs and normal CDRs for computer use are identical. The Music CDRs are for use in HIFI audio CD recorders and have the required code to allow them to operate in such machines.

Regards,

Naik.
 
I use a HP SCSI recorder with HP software. It is 8x max burn speed but I use it at 4x. I can not tell any difference between a CDR and the original.

I believe the intensity of the laser whilst burning is varied depending on the type of media (the burner/software can identify the type of media being used) and the speed of burn.

This can only happen if the burner/software can identify the media. For this reason I only use branded CDR’s. Plus, I have a feeling HP software will control the HP burner better than Nero or similar.

With regard to burning at 1x. I have read that the fastest burners may not be able to reduce laser intensity enough at low burn speeds. The result is an overburned CDR.
 
Yes, I found this to be clearly audible in copies made with two different MS-Windows computers, with the default software installations leading to drop outs or skipping.

Use the free EAC software to copy and then the Accurate Rip database to automatically confirm the checksum from yours matches what others have obtained. Then you have peace of mind about the digital information being correctly copied.

Nick
 
No difference to me but if you make sure you clean them first (in the right way of course) they will slightly better.
 
I can tell a significant difference when using either my main system or 2nd system, whatever the brand of disk or burn speed etc.

When this debate ran on the Naim forum the question was aske whether there was a difference in quality between copies and copies of copies has anyone tried this ?
 
"...the question was asked whether there was a difference in quality between copies and copies of copies has anyone tried this?"


Since the checksum values from locally ripped files with EAC match those on the Accurate Rip database from someone on another system (for the same pressing of a title), I never bothered to try this.

Nick
 
I can tell the difference between an original and a copy, though it's not massive. I now keep all of my originals at home safe and sound, but carry around a wallet of CDRs for the car, where the quality difference simply won't be noticeable.
 
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