Copying from CD to CD-R----Help!

I burned a copy of my Japan CD of Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town for a friend of mine. While I was playing the CD-R back, just to check if everything was OK, I noticed that it sounded quite bright, but I was busy doing other things, so I didn't listen that closely.

Later, that brightness was nagging at me (as I had recommended this CD for the excellent sound quality), so I put on headphones for a closer listen. No doubt about it, very bright, and I didn't remember the original sounding bright. So I did an A/B comparison and I was shocked - the CD-R was MUCH brighter than the original CD. This wasn't a case of 1/2 db brighter, it was more like 4 or 5 db!

My wife suggested that I try the Nero software to burn another copy. I did, and I got the same result - identical to the first burn. Then, thinking it was some sort of write problem rather than a read problem, I tried using EAC to make a wave file and put it on Cool Edit. Same brightness problem. Then I used EAC to make a wave file out of the brighter version, thinking it might make it brighter still, but that 2nd generation copy came out the same as the first.

Convinced this was some sort of read problem, I tried one more test - I used the burner as the drive for my PC CD player and listened. Surprise - the brightness was gone!

I am totally confused. I don't understand how can the CD drive read the data differently when feeding the CD player software and another way when writing a wave file. Can anyone help?

 

Alll you can do is to do what you have done.

 

I'm curious, have you compared the sound of the original and copy on an audio CD player, instead of your computer? If so, were the results the same?

 

Yes - I did my A/B comparison with two players hooked up to my receiver and switched back and forth between the original and the copy.

I am still in shock - I never would have believed something like this was possible. I have burned a couple hundred CD-Rs and never really heard ANY difference between the original and the copy.

 

I wonder - is Darkness one of those few CDs that used the preemphasis bit? I wonder if the bit can get lost when being copied?

 

Could anything else be different? Different brand of blank, different burning speed, etc?


I'm as stumped as you are.

 

Sounds like preemphasis might indeed be the culprit: check this out...

http://www.mrichter.com/cdr/primer/analogue.htm

 

I bet that not only are you a Gort, but a genius too! If it is an early pressing the chances are that pre-emphasis is used. I wish I'd thought of it.

 

Steve, could you give a dummy like me the short form? Had no idea about any of this.

ED

 

Thanks - I think that's it. This CD is indeed very old..I'm guessing around 1985, it's one of the first CDs I ever bought.

The website says that I have to "set" the pre-emphasis before I record onto CD-R...what software will allow me to do this? I'm suprised that EAC doesn't have this provision (at least I don't think it does), and I don't think that Cool Edit does either.

Once again I have been impressed (and humbled) by the knowledge shown by the posters on this board...

 

Steve,

Wouldn't the pre-emphasis information carry over to the new CD-R no matter what?

Dob,

Many CD-ROMS that come with the computers are poor at ripping. I can see where jitter can take it's toll. I believe it is always better to use the CD burner as the ripper.

You also didn't say if you did your rip and/or copying in real time. Some pC configurations have the CD-ROM running through the soundcard or onboard chip, and the burner not. If this is true about your PC, that could answer your question about the brightness. To make sure nothing ever goes through the soundcard, rip and record at more than 1x.

 

Not necessarily. Even if the bit does get read in, there's a chance it's not being saved and set in writing.

There's nothing unique about the ripping ability of CD-R drives. Some CD-ROMs are good at it, some aren't. Some CD-R drives are good at it, some aren't. Almost all ripping software will overlap reads to eliminate jitter anyway, so that's not an issue. These days really the only issue is error correction, and if you use EAC, that's not even an issue either.

You might spend more time ripping with a poor drive, but as long as you're using good software the results will be the same.

It's *very* rare for programs to rip at 1x. Most programs will rip as fast as the drive allows. It's even more rare for a program to play back a CD and digitize it rather than rip it.

 

Are you ripping individual tracks with EAC? Or the entire disc image as a CUE file and a single WAV file?

Perhaps the CUE file (Nero burnable) carries over the pre-emphasis bit.

 

All ripping programs I've used gives you an option of ripping speed.

 

Well, Exact Audio Copy only lets you go as slow as 4x, and I've used other programs that don't even give you the option. Even if one selects 1x (which doesn't make much sense), most programs will still use DAE. Playing a CD back and digitizing it is a *totally* different process from DAE, and not something that most programs will do by default, if at all.

 

I know this...

 

perhaps you need to try a program like CloneCD - that is designed to do a complete and exact duplicate of a disc, and to read all the stuff that sometimes gets overlooked ie. subchannel data etc, which i don't really understand. CloneCD I think was designed to allow folks to back up all manner of CDs and CD-Roms including some copy-protected ones.

EAC is a great audio ripper, but I really don't know how it goes on doing a full CD duplicate. Nero might be able to do what CloneCD does, but you'd have to get your settings right.

As others have mentioned, your CD-burner or reader could be letting you down. If your reader can't read all of the bits, or your burner can't write them, that could be why your not getting the preemphasis bit across. I think the CloneCD website has a listing of all the major burners and their capabilities as far as various cloning functions.

I must say, I am amazed at this business about the preemphasis bit - I'd never heard of such a thing.

 

The first burn was a "CD copy" using NTI CD-Maker 2000. The second was using Nero (not using the CUE file). I don't use Nero, my wife does, and she doesn't use CUE files because she says they are buggy.

I use EAC to rip individual tracks. In this case, I tried every mode that EAC offered (except "paranoid") and tried both of my CD-ROM drives.

Since my burner PLAYS the CD with proper frequency response, it seems clear that the pre-emphasis bit isn't making the transition to the wave file. If I can already hear the alteration when I play the wave file in Cool Edit, the burning process shouldn't be a factor at all.

I'm guessing that the pre-emphasis bit must be set BEFORE writing to a wave file, otherwise it's too late to fix.

 

Hmmm...it is my understanding that copies are never bit for bit matches; i.e., the data is all there but it may be in slightly different order. I was told this is one reason why CD-R copies are always slightly larger in data size than the originals.

I think what may be happening is that the CD-ROM sees the extra bit, but the software disregards it for writing the wave file.

Suddenly the world of digital audio, especially burning CD-Rs, seems a lot more untrustworthy. It makes we wonder what other anomalies are lurking out there.

 

No, I *believe* that such a track will indeed sound "wrong" when you rip it, and will only be "correct" if you re-burn it with the bit set.

Or maybe not...let me think about it

 

I'm not sure why you say it is in a "different order". The audio data itself is certainly in exactly the same order as on the original CD.

Well, it's not as if it's "disregarding" it. That bit is there for playback - basically the audio on the CD is "bright", and when a player sees that it "dulls" the sound. When you rip via DAE, you're getting that "bright" audio. It's just that there's no way to compensate for that in WAV playback.

If you burn that "bright" WAV file to CD-R with the bit set, things *should* go back to normal.

 

Just for the heck of it, I just burned the same song twice, once with PE, once without. Both came from the same (normal) audio file. The version with PE, when played back on a CD player, sounded like somebody turned on Dolby for a non-Dolby tape. The version without sounded fine. On the other hand, when I played both back via DAE on my computer, they sounded the same.

Basically, all you need to do is set the PE bit when burning. Once you do that, everything will be fine.