More CD madness

FrankJH said:
So what was that fabled Sony/BMG pressing that caused all of the problems in the first place then if it wasnt a DRM CD??

Not being difficult just enquiring - or was Sony able to do it being the joint holder of the Red Book "definition" with Phillips?
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To bear the title "CD" it must conform to the Red Book standard and you need to pay about $5000 per release to Philips for the right to use it, too.

If it doesnt conform to the red book, its simply just a 120mm disc with stuff on it, rather than a CD.
 
DRZ said:
You have to be kidding me!

Do you have a glass of pebbles on top of your amp? How about putting tinfoil in your freezer and then draping it over your speakers before listening?

You can put a centimetre wide hole in a CD and still get a bit-perfect data stream from it...
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I thought it was 2.5mm for error free correction (along the track) and 7.5mm for interpolated error correction.
 
chaparral said:
If your CD player has problems with reading your CD's perfectly at 1x speed for music....

How come a PC CD-rom etc can read & write a CD at up to 52x speed perfectly without this ..



I think you would been better off trying a new CD player first..
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Because the CDRom format has additional error correction, as it has to be 100% perfect, an interpolated error correction is 'passable' with music, but pretty much worthless for computer data. Not only that, if an error is detected in a CDRom the drive can slow down, and try again. CD Audio players wont do that, because it would introduce a stutter in the music. Unlike car cd players, I dont believe there are any 'Hi-fi' CD players which include a high speed drive to readahead and try and 'fix' errors before the datastream is sent to the dacs. Its all done in realtime, with very little time to recover errors.

The point is trying to reduce the amount of interpolated error correction on a CD-DA. CD Ripping software can actually be configured to 'retry' several times when it hits errors to try and recover the data perfectly, but normal CD players make just a single try and then move on. If an error is present, it smooths over it with the error correction.

Pioneer clearly believed that CD balance was so important, that they designed a platter for CD's to sit on in their old Audiophile range of CD players. There are still 'CD Turntable' type players around. The idea is to add a balanced high mass platter, which renders minor imbalances on the disk itself unimportant.
 
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nice way to destroy your cd's.

You have broken the seal on the edge of your cd's which prevented air reaching the aluminium layer & oxidising it. I doubt some black ink applied afterwards will be as effective as a resin pressure bonded seal.
 
rofl £320 :rolleyes:

For £320 you could make some significant upgrades to your system which would actually enhance the listening experience.

Right im off to paint my discs green, add a load of green LED's, and get some of these revolutionary pebbles :D
 
DRZ said:
To bear the title "CD" it must conform to the Red Book standard and you need to pay about $5000 per release to Philips for the right to use it, too.

If it doesnt conform to the red book, its simply just a 120mm disc with stuff on it, rather than a CD.
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I realise this - (Sony own the rights also I believe as they were part of the original invention) but that doesnt stop a CD with that DRM tosh on it working in a basic cd player incapable of reading anything else.


IE if a basic CD player that is incapable of reading anything else is able to play DRM "cd's" then defacto the disc is a CD
 
While I can believe that improving the balance will lower the error rate from a CD, what happens if the hole isn't 100% central, or slightly oversized? If the CD is out of balance due to less than perfect thickness, can you trim more off to compensate?

If you used a HDD-based system, you wouldn't have to do that to your CDs. Rip once, with retries if necessary, and perfect digital stream from then on. Still need a decent clock and DAC, though, so PCs are a waste of time for replay.
 
adfinni said:
rofl £320 :rolleyes:

For £320 you could make some significant upgrades to your system which would actually enhance the listening experience.

Right im off to paint my discs green, add a load of green LED's, and get some of these revolutionary pebbles :D
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As a percentage of what I believe he's already spent, £320 isn't much.
 
I personally think you're spouting crap - it's a digital bit stream, it either exists or it doesn't, but you're entitled to purchase what you want, and if you think it's worth the difference I suppose it's money well spent.

Edit: On a side note, I love the words that hi-fi fanatics use to explain sound.
 
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clockworks said:
While I can believe that improving the balance will lower the error rate from a CD, what happens if the hole isn't 100% central, or slightly oversized? If the CD is out of balance due to less than perfect thickness, can you trim more off to compensate?

If you used a HDD-based system, you wouldn't have to do that to your CDs. Rip once, with retries if necessary, and perfect digital stream from then on. Still need a decent clock and DAC, though, so PCs are a waste of time for replay.
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The Squeezebox and Transporter seem to work very nicely streaming music (wirelessly if required) from a PC to a DAC.
 
clockworks said:
As a percentage of what I believe he's already spent, £320 isn't much.
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ahh i don't know how much he's spent. But i still think the law of diminishing returns is really starting to appear here !!!
 
Your a brave man Mr_S ;)

Some thoughts to above, anything that reduce the use of error correction in a CD PLAYER, is a good thing, one of the reason why better/expensive players sound better is they turn down the error correction, and hence some times are worse at reading poor discs... you pay more for poor reading !! LOL

I have had a disc "cut" for me to try, the balance issue I don't really buy, it only puts a bevel, and doesn't remove enough IMO to re balance a disc.
Nor does it re-centre the disc, as it does not change the relative postion of the centre hole to the foil, the outer edge concentricty is meaningless.

The manufacture claims it used to deflect internal light away helping the read performance of the laser. (the angle is said to be critical)

I too worry about the open edge and CD life.

Well to be open, I tried my one CDR cut disc against a identical uncut disc in my £6800 Linn 1.1 Unidisk..... and it made such a small difference I could not be sure it was there.... similar result on my old Linn Karik......

For sure it it may be player and disc dependent, so one player and one disc is not proof of anything............... but I'll be keeping my discs as original spec !!!
 
Wow, where to start on answering this lot:
- Yes I think it makes a good noticeable improvement
- Yes it cost £320, which is a lot in the context of a system from Richers, but isn't from the perspective of the total value of what I'm now using
- Yes I could have upgraded to a new CD player, but that would have cost SUBSTANTIALLY more. My a recent dem, to get a substantial difference, I think I'd be looking at a £10k CD player, which certainly isn't on the cards
- I'm probably going to buy a squeezebox at some point, as I like the idea of the functionality. Having said that, everyone I know who's used a standard one rates them as no better than a normal CD player, and don't think that they're capable of matching a decent CD transport. Note that I'm talking about running the SB into a decent external DAC and by decent I include units like the Chord DAC64 and Audio Synthesis units.

Sorry I can't answer during the day, but OCUK is not available now for browsing whilst I'm in the office.
Before anyone asks, nope, I'm not taking the pee with this lot, just trying to say that there is most certainly a more off the wall way of trying to improve systems.
 
Alibaba99 said:
The Squeezebox and Transporter seem to work very nicely streaming music (wirelessly if required) from a PC to a DAC.
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Ah, but the PC isn't actually doing any of the music replay - it's just supplying the raw data, the Transporter is re-clocking it, same as a dedicated media player would. The PC is only really acting as a glorified NAS.

In most PC-based setups, using a soundcard or USB device, the PC clock is used to control the speed of the data. IMHO, that's where the problem lies.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
snip...
- I'm probably going to buy a squeezebox at some point, as I like the idea of the functionality. Having said that, everyone I know who's used a standard one rates them as no better than a normal CD player, and don't think that they're capable of matching a decent CD transport. Note that I'm talking about running the SB into a decent external DAC and by decent I include units like the Chord DAC64 and Audio Synthesis units.

...snip
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I feel that the entry-model squeezebox, while probably better than a straight PC-based player, will still fall down due to the quality of it's clock. The Transporter is a different matter.

Have a listen to a PixelMagic HD-MB200 (TCXO model) through a decent DAC. Not sure if it'll match a true high-end CDP (I was too scared to try a demo, incase I ended up blowing a grand+), but it compares very favourably to CDPs around £500.
 
How do you know that the CD is overall more stable - i.e. how accurate is the lathe?

It would be interesting to compare an entirely digital version of the track (as produced in the studio) with the normal CD version, and then eventually with a CD version that has had the lathe used on it.

In my personal opinion, I think i'd struggle in a double blind test of the above.
 
Corasik said:
Pioneer clearly believed that CD balance was so important, that they designed a platter for CD's to sit on in their old Audiophile range of CD players. There are still 'CD Turntable' type players around. The idea is to add a balanced high mass platter, which renders minor imbalances on the disk itself unimportant.
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I had one of those in 92. A Pioneer PD-S501.
 
daz said:
In my personal opinion, I think i'd struggle in a double blind test of the above.
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If you've already decided up front that you'll definitely not hear a difference, then I'm sure that it would be the case.
The point being, who knows until you've tried it?
 
If it makes the OP happy and he feels he is getting something out of it, then good on him.

I know that my hearing can barely distinguish the difference in sound quality between 128 mps and 256 mps MP3s, let alone all the fantastically expensive audio stuff that you can buy. But I can see the attraction in buying a gadget like this. Just be careful about destroying the structural integrity of the CDs.
 
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