I realise that this is something now rarely undertaken by people but nevertheless I’m seeking some advice please. Having abandoned streaming some time ago and reverting to CD playback I find that there are a few albums of interest to me that are only available as digital downloads. So I’ve downloaded them to my Macbook Air and burnt them to CD-R’s using an Apple USB drive and the Music App that comes loaded on the MacBook. Very simple to use and gets the job done with no fuss.
I’ve found however through comparing a burnt CD with a factory pressed one (where available) that the burnt CD, though it sounds fine in isolation, sounds a little soft and lacking in focus in comparison. I suspect that this is simply a result of the burning and CD-R replay process. But I’m wondering if anyone has experience of burning CD-R’s and if there is any software available that will give me much better sounding discs than using the Apple Music software.
To be clear about this. I’m aware that there are low cost streaming options out there and many here will justifiably advocate this as the best and most sensible way around this situation. However I definitely don’t want this for a number of reasons, which I won’t elaborate on here, as it will be opening several cans of worms best left firmly shut!
We’re talking about a very small number of albums here, perhaps half a dozen or so, so it doesn’t warrant any significant expense on better burning hardware (even if that exists). Also because the results I’m getting aren’t bad. If there is any software though that will give me even better results than the Apple Music app then I’ll investigate. Thanks.
I don’t burn CD-R’s, but I have purchased some old, out-of-print albums that are sold as commercially legitimate, non-bootleg CD-R, clearly identified as such when sold on Amazon, for example. They inevitably sound worse than the standard CD. In many cases I have both to compare.
As a verification, I would try ripping from the CD-R and seeing if it passes accuraterip.
The first issue is how do we know they both came from the same source, or master. This is so poorly documented on download/streaming sites I feel it’s become a complete lottery.
It might also be worth trying different brands of CD-R in case your CD player laser doesn’t cope so well with the reflective layer.
Although commercially pressed CDs don’t last forever, CD-Rs can be worse, so be prepared to re-rip later
How do they compare if you take a commercial CD, rip it yourself using AccurateRip to verify, then burn to a new CD? I would expect no difference (N.B it needs a blind comparison, someone else putting them on to play, and changing a few times, someone else randomly switching other times not switching). If there is a difference something is wrong either with the rip or burning.
It is very possible that you are simply comparing different things. The download you are burning may not me exactly the same mastering as the commercial CD. To illustrate this, my eyes were opened some years ago when a friend brought round some CDs for an evening session, one of which I had already. I put on my one, and when we got to the end he looked perplexed: usually he found music played on my system sounded better than on his but in that instance it was the other way round. We checked the CD and they appeared exactly the same. Then we scrutinise everything on the disks and the sleeves and found one, apparently trivial, difference: one said pressed in UK the other one said pressed in Germany. We played the other one and indeed it sounded noticeably different. That is something for which I was completely unprepared always having assumed that all digital was inevitably the same. The answer could only be one thing – some difference in mastering between the CD pressing and the German pressing. That alerted me to the futility of trying to directly compare any two recordings unless there is certainty that they are directly from the same final master.
Yes the commercial CD may have been from a different master to the download. I have tried ripping a CD and susequently burning it to a CD-R. All on my Macbook using the Music app. The rsults were the same. The CD-R sounded slightly softer and slightly less well defined. I should emphasise slightly though. It was really only detectable in a direct comparison. In isolation I would never have noticed.
I’m surprised at that. I did expect a difference. A factory pressed CD is a very different animal to a home burnt CD-R. I think we’re (or should be) way past the belief that “as it’s all digital it must all sound the same”. The data on the disc may be identical in terms of 1’s and 0’s but there are differences in the way it is encoded onto the disc and differences in the way in which a player retrieves the information from the different type of disc. This is analogous to the different sounds of digital files according to the ripping device used discussion that took place some time ago. In that instance it was determined that they sound different not due to any different data content but because the file that is constructed to contain the rip and subsequently deconstructed on playback will result in audible differences due to imperfections and therefore noise created by this process. Different ripping/playback devices will vary in how they construct/deconstruct the file and this will result in different levels of out of band noise which manifests as differences in sound quality. As least that’s how I understood it. The same sort of scenario surely applies to playback of factory pressed CD’s and home burnt CD-R’s. I wouldn’t necessarily expect any differences in data content but I would expect them to sound different. As indeed they do.
It’s interesting that you mention different factory pressed CD’s sounding different according to where they were pressed. I have an interest in film soundtracks and one particular US label used to license their recordings to a German label. This meant that they were commonly available as US pressed or German pressed discs on a different labels but with identical programme content. It became common knowledege that the US pressed discs sounded superior and to avoid the German pressed ones if at all possible.
Probably my CD-Rs are to all intents and purposes as good as it gets is my guess.
There were some interesting things in those discussions, some perhaps more fanciful than others, at least one from memory that postulated a deliberate negating action by a manufacturer, and there were constructive discussions about pursuing things analytically to find out what exactly was going on. Unfortunately IIRC some people’s comments degenerated into unpleasantness and the thread was removed. It would be good to see a proper investigation of cause of any genuine difference, but it does require some people with necessary analytical tools and time and willingness to pursue, and others cooperating and contributing, and those not liking the subject or its direction to not joining in with unpleasantness to get the thread closed down.
I think the idea there are imperfections is what creates the controversy. This is why verifying the new CD-R with a different drive via accuraterip is useful as an audio CD player gives you no indication if it’s struggling to read anything.
You would expect the CD to verify perfectly on the same drive that wrote it, but it is possible that even this can go wrong. A different drive helps you narrow down issues with the raw CD-R.
The difference between a commercial CD and a CD-R is one is literally pressed with a more reflective coating, but a CD-R is created by burning a dye to create the different reflections. The way that the data is encoded has to be the same, else a CD audio player would have zero idea what to do with it, so different encoding is not the problem. I know that sounds pedantic, but it does matter when trying to identify the right reason for any difference.
Yes I agree. I should have said that the way in which the data is transferred on to and stored on the disc is different, not that it is encoded differently.
As far as imperfections go though let’s be clear what we mean. I’m not referring to data imperfections at all. Verifying the CD-R with accuraterip won’t yield anything useful in this respect. All the data being 100% acurate on different discs doesn’t equate to them sounding identical. I think this is what causes the controversy. Some people can’t seem to accept that if the digital data is 100% identical between different CD’s, rips or data streams that they can still sound different. Not due to data differences, but in the way the data is handled to put it simplistically. That this is so is manifestly the case. Take for example the differences in sound between different CD transports into the same DAC. Assuming that the data streams they output are identical in content there must be another reason to account for the difference in sound. And there is. Jitter and out of band noise created by reading errors as I understand it, though that as well is most likely a gross over-simplification of reality. But you get the idea. Identical data content does not equal identical sound. And that’s what seems to really upset some people, though I really can’t see why it should.
Yes and no… I don’t think yo can say we have 100% accurate data on disc and then claim read errors, as that means it isn’t accurate on disc. Often explanations lapse into this and I really don’t think it’s that error prone.
Much more likely is jitter as for a CD the timing is encoded in the stream… and different plants could use different stamps, and accuracy of the CD writer may well cause unintended jitter when burning. I think these are more likely to be the issue personally.
As I understand it some replay devices (ie. disc transports) sometimes fail to read some discs 100% accurately or struggle to do so for various reasons and in so doing can create out of band noise which impacts on sound quality. This is quite distinct from any data erros on the actual disc. So the read errors I’m referring to are not data errors on the disc but rather errors in reading. Perhaps errors is not really the right word here as that implies something amiss with the data that’s retrieved and that isn’t what I’m referring to at all. Rather that the reading process isn’t 100% flawless and because of this it produces noise. I could be wrong but that’s how I understand it. Again though I’m sure it’s a gross over simplification of what’s actually going on which would be beyond my knowledge of digital technology.
I burn CD-ROMs. I have always used XLD (free, for Mac) to rip and to burn my own files. My burned CDs, to my ears, sound no worse than commercial ones and sometimes I dare say a tad better. XLD never reports reading errors.
I always use the slowest speed available for both ripping and burning.
Hope it helps.
