CD ripping with jitter correction

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Grant, Feb 8, 2003.

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  1. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    I shouldn't have to ask this because I should know already, but I use Nero 5.5 for ripping these days. Using my Yamaha F1E, ripping with Nero using the jitter correction option, many of my resulting burned rips wind up sounding smoother and more open, particularly songs ripped from CD-Rs I have made with my wife's Plextor. I'm very happy!

    What is going on, technically?

    BTW, I can't say enough good things about the Yamaha F1 and it's "Audio Master Quality II" feature! Audiophile sound from a PC burner all the way!:thumbsup:
     
  2. RetroSmith

    RetroSmith Forum Hall Of Fame<br>(Formerly Mikey5967)

    Location:
    East Coast
    Good Question.

    THe problem I have is that Im using Exact Audio Copy to Rip, and if I do a whole Cds worth, in a few songs I will get a dropout. Im still in the process of troubleshooting that.

    Anybody else having this problem?
     
  3. LeeS

    LeeS Music Fan

    Location:
    Atlanta
    This will explain it all.

    http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/jitter.htm

    Also visit Bob Katz at www.digido.com (see articles-jitter)

    Bob is one of the foremost experts on the topic and an all around good guy. I have worked with him and he knows how to record too. :)

    By the way, all of my recording team has been able to distinguish jitter as low as 20-30 picoseconds.
     
  4. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    After reading the Bob Katz article, i'm more confused than ever! My copies sound better burned with the Yamaha than with either the old HP or Plextor. Maybe i'm not getting it...
     
  5. Dave

    Dave Esoteric Audio Research Specialistâ„¢

    Location:
    B.C.
    No sir Mikey. EAC is working perfectly for me and the Plextor I'm using. Wish I could help there man but I really have no idea why that would happen. Could it be more of a cd-r issue do you think?
     
  6. SVL

    SVL Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kiev, Ukraine
    Are you running anything else in the background while ripping a CD? If you do, I would try running EAC with no other apps in the background, or at least not anything that consumes a lot of memory.
     
  7. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    Mikey,

    Are the dropouts happening when you play back the CD-R on everything, or just one CD player? If it's just one, it could be the player's converter.
     
  8. Dave

    Dave Esoteric Audio Research Specialistâ„¢

    Location:
    B.C.
    Great point Sergei!:agree: Yes, quite often we tend to forget that your chosen media player may be running in the background after you insert a CD for copying and unless you terminate it it will run even during burning.
     
  9. FabFourFan

    FabFourFan Senior Member

    Location:
    Philadelphia
    Great links, but they're not about the "jitter" that's the title of this thread - CD ripping with jitter correction.

    The "jitter" in those links involves variations in the timing of digital signals during D-to-A conversion. A popular topic nowadays.

    On the other hand, the "jitter correction" option during ripping involves trying to more intelligently read the audio data from a cd. (There is also a "jitter" option in CDRWin like this.)

    Confusing, a little, but not too hard to keep straight, right?


    FFF
     
  10. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    My machine is happy as long as I turn off the antivirus and modem. I disabled the Windows98 Plus CD player in startup because it does interfere with things.
     
  11. Gary Freed

    Gary Freed Forum Resident

    I/O issues, CPU and memory issues are more frequently the cause of
    recording problems.

    Regardless of what your CDR Recorder manufacturer recommends as the minimum harware and software requirements, I feel that you should always record with all backround programs turned off, screen saver turned off, network turned off, at least 1 gigabyte of free hard disk, 700 megabytes of memory and at least a 700 mhz CPU.

    In other words plenty of horse power and memory to allow the computer
    to do its job efficiently.

    I know that you can get away with as little as a 233 MHZ machine with 32 megabytes of memory uisng some recording CDR software but......

    You're less likely to have problems if your setup is robust.

    Bottlenecks tend to occur in the I/O using older machines.

    If your system is short on resources, avoiding the Disc at Once option will
    help prevent bottlenecks that cause drop out errors and causes cutting off of the first second or last second of a recorded track.

    This is just my opinion.
     
  12. LeeS

    LeeS Music Fan

    Location:
    Atlanta
    "Great links, but they're not about the "jitter" that's the title of this thread - CD ripping with jitter correction. "

    Not true Fab Four. Bob addresses n+1 copying effects of jitter so it is right on target.

    :)
     
  13. ZIPGUN99

    ZIPGUN99 Active Member

    I found the Jon Risch one interesting:

    "With digital cables, there are three things that are paramount:
    proper impedance, proper cable termination, and wide bandwidth.
    It may be that a particular cable more nearly matches a systems
    actual impedance. The other factor, proper termination includes,
    but is not limited to the actual electrical termination inside
    the components, as well as the connector on the end of the
    cable. If the connector is NOT a perfect 75 ohm, 110 ohm, or
    whatever, it will cause minor reflections in the cable, which
    makes our old friend JITTER raise it's ugly head again.

    The third factor, bandwidth, is only an issue because both the
    AES/EBU and the SP/DIF interface formats were designed before
    Sony/Phillips knew all there was to know about digital problems, and they
    require PERFECT unlimited bandwidth cables in order for the
    transimission systems to be free of jitter. The more you limit
    the bandwidth, the more jitter. This is a known engineering
    fact, and an AES paper was given about this very subject not
    too long ago. "

    This might explain why my burns from CDP to stand-alone machine come out better with a fibre optic transfer, than a digital transfer.
     
  14. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    Actually, I use a 166 mHz machine running a Pent 1 MMX, and I can burn quite well with all software except CD Architect.

    I always use Disc-at-once without any problem. If you get problems with parts being cut off your songs, it ain't your computer, memory, or CPU that is giving you the problem. It's the software/burner.
     
  15. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Question, Grant. Do you hear any differences if you rip something in both EAC and Nero, and then burn them the same way? The reason I ask is my guess is the differences you hear are due to the burning process, rather than the ripping process.
     
  16. Paul C.

    Paul C. Senior Member

    Location:
    Australia
    I was using nero with my F1 the other day, and i noticed the "jitter correction" option was greyed out - I couldn't select it at all. Not sure what was going on there.... Any thoughts?
     
  17. FabFourFan

    FabFourFan Senior Member

    Location:
    Philadelphia
    Au contraire! :)

    The first posting in this thread was about "Using my Yamaha F1E, ripping with Nero using the jitter correction option, ..." .

    That "jitter correction option" is a way to try to more intelligently determine the correct data when ripping a Red Book audio track.

    That ripping option has nothing to do with the "jitter" that affects the D-to-A conversion step, which is what the articles discussed.

    I wish that the CD ripping software would not have used the word "jitter" for that feature. It only causes confusion, e.g., in this thread.


    FFF
     
  18. audiodrome

    audiodrome Senior Member

    Location:
    North Of Boston
    With Nero, you shouldn't have to use the "jitter correction" setting if you have a good, compatible CD-ROM reader/burner. I've never used the setting and all of my CDRs sound great. Any glitches I've encountered were due to the burning, not the ripping process, and could be corrected with just a restart and another burn. I also recommend turning off everything but Explorer and Systray while ripping and burning.
     
  19. Michael St. Clair

    Michael St. Clair Forum Resident

    Location:
    Funkytown
    There is a huge difference between 'copying' a digital source to another in realtime, and ripping.

    Ripped music is pure PCM, ones and zeroes. There is no timing data stored in the intermediate file.

    If EAC returns the same checksum for a track every time, jitter is not affecting the rip.

    With a proper PC setup, the only jitter that you should ever be concerned about is on the burning side, not the ripping.

    The articles posted are not relevant to ripping.
     
  20. LeeS

    LeeS Music Fan

    Location:
    Atlanta
    Michael and Fab Four,

    You both miss my point:

    The thread (first post) stated: "Using my Yamaha F1E, ripping with Nero using the jitter correction option, many of my resulting burned rips wind up sounding smoother and more open"

    So the thread concerns both the ripping and subsequent burning/copying of music. Jitter can and does affect the copying of music and the Katz articles refer to different sonics that result from copying and why they (n+1 as the engineers call it) may sound better or worse.

    Jitter does not affect ones and zeros - by definition it's impact is on the time code and is defined as time-based distortion. Jitter is often increased by both DAC conversions, poor connectors, and less stable transports.

    In this example, it is possible that the F1 is somehow lowering jitter which typically creates a smoother and more focused sound.

    By the way, many CD burners have high jitter so finding one with lower jitter may make more of a difference that Yamaha's vaunted Audio Master software.

    The best way to think of all of this is "bit is bits as long as they arrive at the exact, precise time they should".

    Error correction of the ones and zeros is no biggie and was figured out a long time ago.

    I hope this helps. :)
     
  21. Michael St. Clair

    Michael St. Clair Forum Resident

    Location:
    Funkytown
    Lee,

    In the transport/DAC world, jitter can result in distortion.

    In the world of audio extraction, jitter can actually result in 0s being read as 1s and vice/versa. Jitter can actually cause the same track never be read the same way twice.

    1) Make sure your reader supports accurate stream (99% these days do).
    2) Make sure your extraction software is configured correctly

    After that, the only 'jitter' one should be concerned about is jitter on the burning side.

    n+1 copying effects relate only to realtime copying, not rip and burn.
     
  22. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    For some weird reason, I just never could get EAC to work on my PC, so I don't mess with it.
     
  23. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    I don't know what to tell you, except that mine is enabled. Do you have "DMA" turned on in the burner's properties?
     
  24. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me! Thread Starter

    Any glitches i've ever had occurs during the ripping, not the burn. How do I know this? I open virtually every file I rip into Cool Edit to examine it first.
     
  25. audiodrome

    audiodrome Senior Member

    Location:
    North Of Boston
    In general, I think basic PCs suck for consistent "perfect" copies of audio tracks and CDs, that's why when I really want a flawless, glitch-free CDR, I always use my Mac G4 with Sound Designer or Spark and Adaptec Jam. This works without a problem 100% of the time. When I'm at home, I have no choice except to use my PC and Nero which works fine 90% of the time. I've never had a problem with the ripping using Nero.
     
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