I was listening to the Golden Age of Underground Radio on the 4th, and was wondering what the major differences would be if would have been a gold disc. Same way with the Zombies, or even the Juice Newton, or for that matter any Mo-Fi alum. vs. the gold. Thanks for your input!
Everything I've read about the subject seems to point to the conclusion that there is no sonic difference. MFSL used to explain that gold is better in their literature. I suspect that gold is simply a marketing effort to imply the premium nature of the disc. The most interesting info I've read in JVC's XRCD paper on the development of XRCD where they claim to have explored all types of color and decided that silver was the best. XRCD Page
Steve Hoffman is the best mastering engineer. Period! BUT... the debate Alu. vs. Gold is nonsense! There is no advantage for the sound!!! Gold is only good marketing... for selling collector items!
I agree, I don't believe the likes of MoFi and DCC used gold-coated CD's to improve sound quality - surely, that's down to the quality of the source material and the mastering or re-mastering done for the discs. Perhaps this is a question for SH himself to comment on. I read somewhere once (it may have been MoFi promotional material) that gold-coated CD's - supposedly - are less likely to suffer from chemically-related deterioration than their aliminium counterparts and therefore you will be able to preserve them for far longer. I don't know how much truth there is in this - for a start, CD has only been around for 19 years so who is to say that even gold CD's will not deteriorate over very long periods of time? I don't believe there is any firm scientitic evidence in place - in 100 years from now maybe we'll know!
I seem to remember that someone wrote that silver CDs would only last 100 - 200 years while gold CDs will last for much longer.... Don't forget that gold has a lot smoother surface than aluminium and it's easier for the laser to read gold than silver. I can't see how this makes for a sound quality difference as all CDP's oversample, use three lasers and have other methods to ensure that they do not skip!
It's easy to say that gold has no sonic advantage in retrospect. I can tell you that most (not many, but most) early CDs I bought had bigtime pinhole problems. Now, when a laser is shooting straight through your disc, I can assure you at those moments, you are listening not to the music, but to an error correction estimate of the music. And that was just the defects you could see. I imagine the early discs had the most irregular surfaces, as was claimed by MFSL. In other words, this opened the door to improvements. When MFSL finally solved that problem using gold instead of aluminum, it wasn't necessarily a sonic revelation, but it made sense that fewer errors made for more faithful reproduction. As for today, I haven't seen a pinhole on any of my discs for at least 7 years. I think the aluminum problem has been addressed and solved, so gold is only good now for longevity (maybe fewer errors over the years due to deterioration factors? I don't know). I am also a believer that if you subject your discs to any kind of environmental extremes (heat, moisture, sunlight), then gold will win out over aluminum easily. Otherwise, I don't know. The XRCD claim that aluminum has the best sound is bunk. I think there's even some crap in there about having tried a copper disc for sonic comparisons (whoop de doo). Don't believe the hype for a second. You pay $30 and don't even get gold (which will outlast aluminum, but probably not in our lifetime). What JVC can't say, because it would offend you, is that aluminum and gold sound the same at this stage, so why bother with gold. But we'll charge you as if you were buying a gold disc.... Hmmm...
Gary, The new MOFI SACD's are gold, but they don't come in the lift-lock jewel cases. Also, the gold seems to be a little lighter than the previous MFSL gold cds. BTW, they sound AWESOME IMHO!! The SACD has a sticker on the jewel case that says "Hybrid Stereo", which is kinda of annoying, only because I don't like stickers on any jewel case. Now, for the difference between aluminum and gold... MFSL was tauting that gold has less oxidation than aluminum. That may be true if the metal was exposed to air. However, I can't imagine how this could happen if it is sealed with the polycarbonate exterior coating. I would also think that gold and aluminum have different reflective properties at the laser wavelengths. However, I don't think that that would change the sound quality (i.e., make the sound more "smoother") because all that is needed is to reflect the laser for a one and don't reflect the laser for a zero. It is a cute marketing gimmit though, as gold is sooo much more valuable than aluminum!!
Almost all, if not all, hybrid SACDs have a gold appearance to them. I remember an explanation was that the layering of the coating material to make the dual layer disc actually makes them look Gold, even though they might not be using actual Gold like the old MFSL discs. Regardless, the new MFSL SACDs (the Patricia Barber releases) sound excellent, so Gold or not I couldn't care less. And regarding those stickers on the SACDs that says "Hybrid Stereo", etc. I think if you were to pull them off the disc cover, you will find they come off easily and cleanly. I took a few off some of my SACDs and they came off like a hot knife through butter. But I can't guarantee that they will all come off cleanly so "peel and see" at your own risk.
Oversampling has nothing to do with error correction Gary. And not all CD transports use 3 lasers. A cheaper mechanism using one laser works. Regards, Metralla
Hi All, I have a question for those who feel there is no material difference between aluminum and gold cd's. If your favorite cdr manufacturer (Mitsui, Taiyo Yuden, Kodak, etc) would sell you 80min. aluminum and gold blanks for the same price which would you choose? Personally, I want the gold! -Jeffrey
Gold is better from a preservation viewpoint....sound wise there is probably nothing in it. I work for a major media organisation in the UK and we have opted for gold cds/dvd's for storing audio/visual program material...
I think there is a world of difference between "Correctable" errors and "Uncorrectable" errors when the decoding algorithm has to interpolate (ie make it up). Disks with uncorrectable errors are and I believe always were quite uncommon - even with Pin-holes - the red book allows for quite large physical errors in the medium. See http://www.ee.washington.edu/conselec/CE/kuhn/cdaudio2/95x7.htm (a "bit" heavy (no pun intended) ) - The data on an audio CD is not sequential - digital drop outs are more likely with intermittent minor distruption to the data substrate rather than from localised pin holes. Gold is chemically less reactive than aluminium but that in terms of sound quality is a bit of a non sequitur - you may as well say that vinyl sounds better because it is blacker If I gave you 2 cents then you would be 2 cents better of than what I have written above - Andrew
Actually Mike what JVC did say was that they experimented with all possible Cd layering metals, Copper included and found absolutely no sonic benefits to using anything other than aluminum. You are however totally correct as to why MFSL used gold layering.
DCC vs. XRCD Well, whatever JVC was doing, they were right. The XRCDs are among the best-sounding discs ever made, alongside the DCC catalog. Anyone have the bucks to compare albums released by both DCC and JVC XRCD? Most, if not all, the common titles were from the Fantasy-owned jazz labels: SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS; WORKIN'; STEAMIN'; RELAXIN'; COOKIN', etc. The DCCs I own are so good I can't rationalize buying those albums again, but I've always been curious.
Well Ron, I've compared the sound of DCC's Steve Millers Gretest Hits and JVC's Steve Miller The Joker. The Joker does sound different on these 2. As to which sounds better, really, really tough call as they both sound really good, and it comes down to personal preference. Neither one is bad IMHO, just different. I have no preference on this one.
Silver has a greater reflectivity than gold. Gold is not nearly as reflective in the spectrum of blue, and especially green. Based on its higher cost, some manufacturers of gold cds, including Mobile Fidelity, at times used a very thin layer. And since a thicker metal reflective layer would have greater reflectivity, a thin gold layer might perhaps have an increased potential for errors. Many dyes since have been developed to increase the reflectivity of either. Where gold might have superiority to silver is its greater longevity. But since CD manufacturers rarely release longevity information, it hasn't been adequately proven. And with better manufacturing standards over the last fifteen years, in practice, longevity information might already have been made irrelevant.
Are pinholes still considered a problem in aluminum CD's? I don't see any on some new CD's I have, but I wonder if they'll begin to pop up with age.
That's an interesting point. I wonder if the manufacturer takes into account the difference between the melting points between gold and aluminum. I don't know the melting points off the top of my head, but I would think there would be a difference. Maybe it doesn't matter because the pits are put on the disc at a high enough melt temperature. Somewhat related...gold mini-dics vs. aluminum mini-discs. I have both at it seems that the gold minis sound pretty much the same as the aluminum minis. I guess the only way to tell is to somehow (and I don't exactly know how) very accurately measure the frequency spectrum (within a fraction of a db) for each with identically recorded material to see if the spectrum is different. I would think that it would be so close that the human ear can't tell the difference.
I've actually never had a disc that skipped or had other sonic problems because error correction didn't work well enough. My point is the same point Steve Hoffman has made (if I remember correctly), and those from MFSL made when developing the Ultradisc. In theory, if you can minimize (minimise ) errors by perfecting the physical media, music reproduction will be more accurate (whether or not you notice it). Now accuracy, of course, is the issue at hand. We're talking accuracy to what the mastering engineer came up with, not necessarily true accuracy to the original performance or master tape. So, by and large, mastering (and of course the original recording, signal path, processing or lack of, etc ad nauseum) will by far be the factors which determine whether or not your recording has the "breath of life". As they say, a chain is only as good as it's weakest link, and when the Ultradisc was developed, I think (correctly) that MFSL saw this as the final link in perfecting 16/44 digital playback via CD (as for mastering, that's another story ). As for today, I'm perfectly comfortable saying aluminum has all the sonic character and nearly all the accuracy of gold. Again, the big differences down the road would probably be caused by storage/environmental factors. I've just realized I owe my wife a hug (she just came in from work). Excuse me folks!
