Burning speeds affect quality???

[kleanop]

I have heard rumors about burning speeds affecting the quality of a music cd. I have heard that it is more likely skip if it is burned at higher speeds? Anyone know the truth to this matter? Thanks

 

[TunaBoo]

I have never had a problem of a CD skipping unless it was from buying cheapo media. I find selling AUDIO CD's for twice the price of data CD's is also bunk. Maybe it is becuase my car has an AWIA CD-RW CD player, but it never has any problems on CD's burnt at 1X or 16X

 

[nate83]

Why I don't see why it should really make a difference, I know from experience that a CD burned at a higher speed (say 8x) is more likely to skip after light usage than a CD burned at a lower speed (i.e. 2x). This applies to music CDs in my car stereo. I don't know in theory why this would happen, but it's true. My guess would be that the players not as well equipped to play cds burnt at a faster speed, and therefore when they are stratched they skip more not because of the burner but the limiting characteristics of the player.

 

[Zepper]

IMO, you should take the target into consideration. If all your burned disks are to be read or played on computers with relatively recent CD readers, then burn at full speed. If you're making audio disks to be played in cheap stereos, walkmen, car stereos etc. don't burn higher than 4x and don't use 80 minute disks, only 640k/70min. Also use the highest contrast media you can find. I have some Dysan CDR disks that look a lot like CDRW disk. Cheap players won't read at any speed.
.bh.

 

[kleanop]

Why wouldn't you use 80 min cd's? This CD will be played in a portable CD player with 48 sec skip protection.

 

[simonthought]

TunaBoo:

you are paying a royalty to record companies everytime you buy "Music" CD-R's

That is why they're so much more.

As far as I know, these discs are the only one's that'll work in standalone CD copier units as well.

 

[Sugadaddy]

From experience, burning mp3's with Nero to an audio CD at 12X results in crappy quality. Of course it's subjective, but I can really notice the bass being muddier, and the highs not being separated from the mid range enough. I never burn audio CDs faster than 8X unless I forget to change the speed. I'll even use 4X when I have the time.

BTW, I have a Plextor 12/10.

 

[slipperyslope]

Sugadaddy,

CDs are just 1's and 0's if there were some errors you would hear more than just muddy bass. You would hear big errors. Now I can see there being errors from higher speed burners and some older cd players can't correct for the errors but I have never run into this. My cds burned at 20x sound the same as my cds burned at 2x.

BTW I just realized that you are burning mp3s Suga. That is most likely the cause of muddy bass.

Jim

 

[Shmorq]

It seems to make sense that at higher burn speeds, more errors are created than at lower speeds. And since the error correction of an Audio CD format is nearly nothing compared to data CDs, this higher error rate is more evident when making music CD's as opposed to data CDs.

 

[Sugadaddy]

<< BTW I just realized that you are burning mp3s Suga. That is most likely the cause of muddy bass. >>



Well, if that would be the problem, they wouldn't sound better when burning at slower speeds... It could be that Nero doesn't decode them as well when you burn at a faster speed. I almost never burn directly from audio CDs, so I'm not sure if the same thing happens.


You got me curious , I'll try copying an audio CD directly at 10X and then at 4X. I'll be back...

 

[Shack70]

Yes burning at faster speeds can cause lower quality disc.
A cd has &quot;dimples&quot; on. These dimples are read by the cd-rom drive and interpreted into 1's and 0's(digital!). When you burn at a lower speed, these you can actualy get deeper dimples. At a higher speed the dimples may be not as deep. Skipping can occur when these dimples are not deep enough for the reader to catch them. This skipping can be a combination of a poor burn and a not so great reader....

Now don't take this as I am saying burn slower. I am not. What I am saying is that if you are getting skipping and you want to fix it, then you may want to try burning at lower speed or getting a better equipment. Whether that better equipment is a better burner or better equipment to play the cds.

 

[slipperyslope]

Well actually blackflag, with burned cds there are no &quot;dimples&quot;. The laser simply changes the color of the dye so that it reflects the laser differently. That is then interpreted as 1's and 0's. Now real cds have pits and grooves aka &quot;dimples&quot;.

As blackflag said, if the burner doesn't completely change the phase of the cdr dye then you will get skips. I can see this as being possible but it will not cause a difference in sound quality, just errors like skips.

Sugadaddy, I recommend using Exact Audio Copy to rip a good cd to your hard drive then burn it at 2x and then at the fastest speed you can. If there aren't skips then I bet you can't hear the difference.

Another thing to consider. If you listen to the 2x burned cd then you will think it is better. All the pepsi challenge crap give the Pepsi second. It is a mental thing that the second thing seems better. I recommend a blind listening test. Have someone put the cds in for you and not tell you which one you are listening to and give it two trials.

Jim

 

[Sugadaddy]

testing is finished.

I made an image of an original audio CD to my HD using cloneCD. I then burned a copy at 10X, and the other at 4X. Result: I can't really tell the difference between the 3 CDs... (using a good pair of headphones)

I'm not really surprised, but now I know it's Nero's on-the-fly mp3 to audio CD decoding that degrades the quality when you burn at faster speeds. I guess it's normal since the program, in my case, has 1/3 of the time to decode the file compared to burning at 4X...

Well, at least now I know I can burn audio CDs at higher speeds, but I'll still burn slower when I'm burning from mp3 files. (there's a night and day difference between 4X and 12X when burning from mp3s)

 

[TunaBoo]

I always make a mp3 a wave first, then burn to cd. I cannot count how many times I had, say, a 5 minute CD but 2 minutes into it there was some type of inaudible glitch that causes nero or ez cd creator to quit and skip to the next song (ant not even tell me there was an error. Blah)

 

[AnitaPeterson]

I ALWAYS use normal speed to record my music, and I always convert my mp3's to .wav BEFORE burning the disc - as opposed to on-the-fly.

Result: my CD's are always good quality.

So what if I use more time? I like to do things thoroughly.

On a more serious note, I was readind AudioMedia (a publication for professionals), and they recomended burning audio at nominal or double speed maximum.

Frankly, I think that recording a disc in 8 minutes encourages waste, because it creates a strong consumerist mentality...

As a sidenote, I have to say that I can't seem to be able to use Exact Audio Copy on either one of my computers. The extraction is really slow and full of errors (skips), as opposed to Adaptec SpinDoctor, which I've used since 1998.

 

[slipperyslope]

AudioMedia (a publication for professionals)

Well audio professionals would NEVER use cds. They just plain suck. I am not going to get into the details because Harvey has explained it many times better than I ever could. So keep burning at 1x or 2x if it makes your mind THINK it sounds better. CDs aren't the greatest for quality music in the first place. I will continue to burn mine as fast as I can because I know I can't hear a difference. Hell most people can't tell the difference from 128bitrate MP3s and cd(I can tell a difference between a 256Kb MP3 and the original cd).

Each to their own.

Jim

 

[Angus]

i think it's the cd quality problem
it shouldn't be the burning speed

 

[Sugadaddy]

yeah, CDs suck, let's all go back to records and tapes... Bah, the 8 track was so much better quality!

 

[Pete]

<< Frankly, I think that recording a disc in 8 minutes encourages waste, because it creates a strong consumerist mentality... >>



Once I decide what I want on my CD, I prefer waiting 8 mins over 40. That's not consumerism, that's valuing my time.

 

[LocutusX]

<< As a sidenote, I have to say that I can't seem to be able to use Exact Audio Copy on either one of my computers. The extraction is really slow and full of errors (skips), as opposed to Adaptec SpinDoctor, which I've used since 1998. >>



For EAC to function best in its most secure reading-mode, it must be configured to the specs of your CD-ROM reader drive. There are sites on the web that publish EAC configs for most well known drives, one of them is The Coaster Factory... http://www.ping.be/satcp

EAC also has two non-secure reading modes which are similar to what older CD ripping programs use and thus inferior.

 

[slipperyslope]

here ya go Sugadaddy since you want to be a smartass, hope Harvey doesn't mind me cutting and pasting from him. Read and LEARN

Harvey Quote,
&quot;Welcome to Reality 101. I am an electronic design engineer, and I design audio electronics, primarily analog products for the recording studio and broadcast markets. You have heard of some of my clients, I promise.

It starts with the fact that CD's suck compared to old analog recordings, but we'll get to that at the end of this piece. As you know, CD recordings contain data -- sixteen bits @ 44 KHz x 2 channels, plus other identifying info, such as the title and location of tunes on the disk and control and formatting information. A complete CD holds about 650 MB. It's not exactly accurate, but if there are ten tunes on the disk, then about 65 MB would be enough for one tune. There simply is not enough bandwidth on a 56K line to transfer an entire CD and play it in any kind of useful time.

Enter data compression. Unlike PKZIP, which is a lossless compression scheme that allows you to retrieve all of the original information in the file, MP-3, Dolby AC-3 and other, similar formats use lossy compression. In these schemes, a computer uses principles of psychoacoustic masking eliminates parts of the sound it &quot;thinks&quot; you can't hear under the louder parts of the sound.

Here's a clue. I belong to a couple of professional audio groups. At one meeting, we ran a CD through a Dolby encoder and digital delay that gave 100% accurate data with enough delay to match the output from the encoder in time. We then subtracted one output from the other. What remained was just the parts that the computer removed. Every person in that room who was experienced in recording was shocked. What we heard was a bunch of subtle subtextures, such as room echos and other audible cues that no experienced recordist would want left out of their carefully crafted mix. In other words, such schemes will never give you an exact copy of your CD.

As I said at the start, CD's suck, too, compared to original sounds. The sampling rate is way too low, and there just aren't enough bits. The inherant distortion in CD's is non harmonic. That means, unlike harmonic distortion (THD), the distortion products are out of tune with the music, which, in turn, means that human beings are far more sensitive to this kind of distortion. If that wasn't enough, unlike almost every musical sound generator, amplifier and speaker, the distortion gets worse as the music gets softer. Therefore, when it's full bore blowing your ears into distortion, it's as clean as it's going to get. In a moderately soft passage, where your ears are more sensitive to distortion, CD's are glad to give you lots more distortion.

44 KHz is an inadequate sample rate. This sampling rate was chosen based on Nyquist's theorem, which states that, to recover a given frequency, you must sample the information slightly more than twice the highest frequency. The problem is that Nyquist wasn't a musician. As you get closer to the high end of the audio spectrum, this theorem is only valid for a single, steady state tone. If you change the conditions to allow for a second tone, or to modulate the amplitude (volume) of the sine wave while it is being sampled, you have created a condition where there are literally an infinite number of possible outputs for a given sample. As a designer if analog gear, when people ask me how many bits I want, I always answer, All of them! No matter how many they have, I have more.

I used to be a professional musician, too. Music (and any art form, for that matter) transcends the medium. It isn't just counting to four and getting the notes in the right place. The subtle undertextures of a musical performance are part of the &quot;magic&quot; that moves your soul. When I turn off the scopes and meters and just kick back to play or listen, CD's don't cut it. I have CDR's in my machines, but I don't own a CD player.

If you want to hear the difference, get ahold of an old LP in good condition of something that was recorded analog, and a CD re-issue of the same thing. Cue them up so they are in sync, and switch between them. LP's win every time. Good examples would be Eagles, James Taylor, older Steely Dan and anything else with good air space in the recording.

kami -- << hmm, you haven't heard DVD-Audio have you? >>

Soccerman -- << he problem with analogue audio (whether it be tapes, or records) is that they don't stay at the quality that they come in. >>

When CD's first came out, some friends and I proposed a perfectly good way to do analog on a laser disk. It's called FM, just like your radio. FM was used for the audio in the original 12&quot; video laser disks, as well as Beta and VHS Hi-Fi, and if you don't have to deal with the problems of reaching remote locations with a broadcast, or giving up storage space to video, you can record gorgeous audio tracks that are as durable as any other laser recording. I've seen internal Sony documents that support the same idea.

There is hope on the horizon. The highest standard for the new audio only DVD (not necessarily the same thing as DVD-A) is two channels of 24 bit data @ 192 KHz with only lossless compression. At that sampling rate, it will once again matter if the analog electronics I design can do a good job of reproducing the signal.

Don't worry. It's a multi-format standard that is compatible back to current CD's, so you'll still be able to play them. Of course, once you hear the new stuff on a good system, you may not want to, anymore. We may finally be about to come out of the Audio Dark Ages. &quot;

 

[nate83]

Haha, we get that audio CDs can't match Analog LPs, and that DVD audio will be far superior (I, for one, am looking forward to it greatly, being able to tell the difference between each of the standard bitrates of mp3 and real cds). However, there is on the horizon hope in the form of Mp3pro, which is not cutting out the same nuances that were contained in the original as its predecessor did (or at least does a much better job at being nearly lossless). Meanwhile, it is not a good idea to burn audio at 8x or above unless you only plan on playing it in your comp. Practical experience and theory says that burning that fast is bound to have problems eventually, especially after your CDs undergo a little bit of the wear and tear that accompanies my driving style

 

[Phatty106]

So if CDs suck, what are our options? Put a turntable in our car? Listen to the radio all day? No thanks! I think I'll choose to stay comfortably numb...

phatty

 

[slipperyslope]

You guys just don't get it. Cds are the standard. That is what we are stuck with but that does not mean that it is GOOD QUALITY. I have about 500 cds. I love music. My only access to the artist I like are on CD. I have a portable cd player and a car cd player.

Just because it is the only option does not mean it is high quality. The music business wants you to think it is the end all be all until they come out with something better.

Explain to me how a cd burned at 12x that has all the correct 1's and 0's is different than one burned at 2x with the same 1's and 0's???

It is either a 1 or 0 there is no in between. If it isn't correct then there is an error on the cd and it will skip. If the drive consistently writes bad data then who cares if it is an 2x or 12x writer.

Jim

 

[Shmorq]

Can't you still buy new releases on cassettes?

By the way, that was a great read.