After- Math London 820 050- 2

AFTER- MATH LONDON 820 050- 2

I have just made a CDR copy of it and have cranked the volume by a good 40% on the NERO equalizer. The result seems to be a lot more dynamics and punch.
Could a technically minded member tell me if it is just in my mind or has the sound actually really been improved?

Regards

Dan

 

Dan, turn up the volume on the original to match the CD-R and you tell us.

 

Dave
"Dan, turn up the volume on the original to match the CD-R and you tell us."

It sounds cleaner with les background noise.

Dan

 

There is a good article on 6moons that indicates why this is possible. I had no technical insight prior to reading this that could have led me to imagine it's possible, but now I'm open minded. In fact, I have a PlexWriter SCSI on the way to see if I can duplicate what others are finding.

http://www.6moons.com/industryfeatures/eac/eac.html

 

Please define "background noise" for me. I suspect that something is being taken away, not good, as opposed to something being gained. I've used various ripping/burning programs over the years and Geoff is right on the money regarding which program is the most accurate being EAC. However, even EAC isn't perfect as the original is always just a bit better at revealing the full top and bottom frequencies. All IMO of course and YMMV.

 

"However, once purchased, we can do something about the often bad stamping quality of a CD. When we first discovered the potential improvements possible by making a CD-R copy from an original, it was a surprise in two ways. One was the musical improvement: The copy wins in transient response, blackness, bass and treble while not much changes in the midrange. The second was the lack of difference in the pure digital domain. A bit-for-bit comparison does not show any differences between copy and original. This proves that the time domain is a factor - the clock is not on the CD and improperly formed pits affect it."
I am still reading Metralla's link but the above already sounds interesting!

Thanks Dan

 

Metralla, thanks for the link.

From what I gather it is not so much a question of volume but the simple process of rewriting the Cd which might improve on the original if this original was not perfect. I often found that a copy of a copy sometimes sounded brighter than the original.
So Dave you may well be right about the background noise, but I still persist it sounds better after my new copy. I chose Aftermath because I 'm into the Stones at the moment and also because I read here and knew from experience that the London version was a "good one", but I also found it was a bit low in volume so this is how it all started! Vow!

Regards to all

Dan

 

No, it's not you. Labels are releasing tons of CD with the volume jacked up in order to make them seem like they sound better. But no, they don't really sound better.

Jeff

 

It's just you, unfortunately. You can't improve the quality of a disc by raising its volume. Theoretically, if your player is really prone to jitter-related audio smearing, you could theoretically get a cleaner data stream by copying the disc to CDR. Beyond that, however, no; in fact, there is likely an inaudible reduction in audio quality, due to the rounding that occurs when you raise the volume of digital samples.

 

Thank you all!
ok I must admit defeat, you must be right, but I'll give EAC a try, it sounds interesting, have many of you tried it yet?

Regards
Dan

 

EAC is not much if any better than others. No magic there. Don't waste your time.

Jeff

 

Jeff, so what program do you figure measures up to EAC? I've yet to see one, well hear actually, come even close.

 

I just don't believe it's all in the mastering.

 

EAC has it's merits if you own a Plextor drive, and don't already have/use Plextools for audio extraction. I've had two Plextors, and my experience is they need the software to tell them what to do, if an error is encountered during extraction. Does the drive slow down and read the section again? How many times should it re-read? Etc.. EAC does this very well.

With most other makes of drive however, the drive figures all this stuff out itself, regardless of what software you use - e.g. Yamaha F1 drive, Lite-On 52246S, Pioneer DVD writer... the drive slows down of it's own accord if it spots an error. If the disc is in reasonable condition, there's no reason why the extracted file shouldn't be digitally perfect. If the disc is in very good condition, it can do it at one of the faster speeds.

EAC has several other features that make it a useful application, but I shake my head when I see it lauded as the only software that does perfect audio extraction (as on the website linked above). Postcardware or not, the statement over-simplifies things. However, if yours is Plextor and you've struggled with other software in the past...

 

Now let me hear you tell Steve this one.

I've tried several programs with my Plextor and have never had any problems with using other programs. My point is only based on the finished product ie. the sound quality. If there is better in this dept. I've yet to hear it.

 

If all the programs you are using are working properly, then they are all putting identical information onto your hard drive. If you are hearing a difference on playback, it won't have been this part of the chain caused it.

 

Anybody have an opinion on the best ripping software for Mac OS? Another question: I find the biggest degradation of audio quality happens not in ripping, but in burning. The music file on the hard drive sounds great, but the burned CD is noticably inferior. Why? I got me a Plextor SCSI drive and everything.

 

How can you be so sure, and please don't tell me the old bits are bits spiel because that's been proven to be not the truth so many many times here at Steve's? Bottom line: a computer is no where near as accurate as the human ear. If you doubt me, search through the mega-threads on this subject and you'll eventually find the one Steve Hoffman post that confirms this.

 

I'm trying to browse the threads, Dave, but I'm struggling with the search engine. If anyone can link to a thread in question, I'd be much obliged. Thanks.

I mean the above sincerely, because I'm intrigued at this. Right now, my take on this is: I can use EAC with a Plextor, then extract the same song using a Lite-On with CDDAE, then the same track on a Yamaha F1 with Nero, then do a file compare and discover that, apart from a few samples offset, I've fed the same information into the computer 3 times. In this part of the chain (I specifically mean, extracting the audio), when are the bits, not bits?

Jitter is a different matter altogether, but you can rule it out at this part of the chain, as jitter cannot manifest itself in a file on a hard drive - hence the suggestion jitter can be improved (or degraded if you are unlucky ) by copying a suspect pressing to a CDR. It can only occur when the material is played.

Incidently, I've never understood why Nero has a checkbox for dealing with jitter. How can Nero prevent the samples from occuring at different intervals in my wav file?

 

Proven? Not quite. Vague suggestions have been given in that regard and some people come to their own conclusions. Besides, the arena in which "bits are bits" differed was in streaming off of CD. If two programs write the same info to your hard-disk, bits *are* bits, and they're not going to sound different.

I recognize that EAC is far from the only solution. In the days before EAC's wide proliferation, I tended to use AudioCatalyst in buffered burst mode with an extreme crappy, unreliable drive. I found some of the CDs I made from it recently, and compared them digitally to EAC extractions of the originals. Completely identical. Now, when Audiocatalyst found an error, it tended to "skip," so I would always have to check the data after reading.

I use EAC for several reasons. For one, its parsing of compression commands is actually quite decent; it does work as a good frontend to things like FLAC. On laptops, which tend to have drives that only rip securely at 2x or so, EAC's DLL compression tends to be on the fly. For others, I install EAC because it isn't Windows Media Player, which I detest. And I actually like its CD writing engine, which is fairly simple (and can handle multiple nonstandard .cue commands). But towering above the rest is peace of mind. Sure, EAC isn't the only program that does what it does; secure mode isn't even necessary most of the time. But more often than not, it keeps me from having to think about read errors.

 

Of course Steve would agree with me on this. Without him even mentioning it I know this.

By reading Steve's comments all over the place not just here, you know that guy understands that the sound you hear goes something like this:

1) Great talent at writing, 2) A sensitive player with feel 3) a nicely tuned Tele 4) Vintage Fender Twin amp 5) the right mics that are clean 6) nicely alligned recorder with perfect levels going to tape 7) same for mix 8) have access to the right tapes later. That is just one example of course, and knowing that Steve likes vintage guitar sounds, and some Sun stuff, I used this example.

Ok, after all this, the mastering becomes important. Tubes, cables, EQ & Compression sure. But the mastering is the icing on the cake, your statement makes it sound like you believe that the mastering "is" the cake. Like it's all in the mastering! When the truth is, you can't polish off a turd. Without all the other things that go into a great record, you can sprinkle all the fairy dust you like, and you will have nothing. So it gives the other creative talent the short end of the stick to say it's all in the mastering, imho.

 

Well Jeff, I've heard a lot of great artists whose catalogs have been trashed by the mastering process alone. Without the mastering being good none of the rest is important at all. It is the bottom line on sound. If required I can give you hundreds of examples to support this. As an example...Steve took the metal stampers of Josephine Baker's recordings, the only format they were available in as tape hadn't been invented yet, and created a fantastic mastering on CD. Your theory goes bye bye with this one alone being that the quality of these recordings is anything but stellar. Admittedly, it isn't the tubey goodness of the DCC Gold CD's, but still far better than any other Josephine Baker mastering on the planet. Then there's the remix/remastering of The Mamas & Papas as done by Steve...

To directly quote Steve "I don't care what the format is, I can make anything sound the way I do".

 

Check out this thread. I had some luck with the firestarter software but it is sort of glitchy. It may have been updated since then.