Copying CDs with Toast.

I made a rough mix and a friend copied the CD on his Mac using Toast. I was curious if it sounded different so I played it and immediately noticed a difference. I didn't even compare it to the original when I heard the differences.

The top end wasn't as open, the image was much narrower and the bottom end seemed like it was an octave higher. I had another friend copy a CD using Toast and we noticed the same things. He's done some experiments and found that if he copied the CD straight through, from one drive to another, things sounded okay. the problems started as soon as he loaded the audio on his computer and burned it with Toast.

He's an engineer also and shows up here sometimes. Maybe I can get him to post some comments.

Where are you Ray Gun?

 

hey yesman,

I'm a Macintosh nut and use Toast extensively. I've never ever come across what you describe!

 

Jamie--I wouldn't know a Mac from a Whopper, but it sounds to me like the program is set to do some kind of processing. The fact that you can do a good drive-to-drive copy sure points a finger! Have you dug around in any of the options to see if there's anything different? Any filters activated? Or...do you have a version number to compare it with AudioEnz?

When I built my main PC, I ran into something similar with my Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum sound card. Digital input from DAT deck...I was using the DAT as an A/D converter, and playing with the level control. Noticed the meters hitting 0dB, but SoundForge was a few dB lower. OK, maybe there was a discrepancy. (Although the meters are always dead nuts with each other.) Cranked up the input knob, and I'm slammin' 0dB...meters in SoundForge are still below 0dB. Crank it all the way up to maximum distortion...SoundForge still registers -5dB. Crap!! $98 wasted on a card that can't even input straight digital audio!! Switch to my other computer with the *real* digital input card, and things were back to normal.

In my case it was processing in the hardware. Hmmm...a sound card with built-in compression. I think the record company is behind it.

 

Aye, It is true what the Yesman says. We popped in a CD with a rough mix and extracted (ripped) to my hard drive. I used Toast Audio Extractor and Apple's iTunes (which uses Quicktime to extract) and they both sounded identically the same but different from the original CD.



I noticed that both program rip the audio as fast as possible and I am sure that errors must happen.
I also noticed that if you go from one CD directly to another without ripping to a hard drive that I do get a good copy.

All I wanna do is hear some good vinyl transfers!!! HELP!!! Discuss...

My .02 and your plastic prize,


"Ray Gun"

 

There's the man... Thanks Ray Gun.

It happened on another friend's Mac too.

 

Jamie,

When copying CD's to Toast, I have found that adding Butter makes the sound a bit too fat!

Bob

 

My experience with Toast is that it inverts polarity, so I make a second burn from the copy. Try it and see if it works for you - it only risks one blank.

Be sure to report back on your results.

 

But if you "toast" it for too long, the sound can become dry and brittle...

 

Naw, it's just that SoundBlasters are consumer products, and -- despite what some of Creative's ads imply -- they are not designed for serious audio work. For Joe Consumer who doesn't understand how to set his input levels, a SoundBlaster would sound "better" because it wouldn't give that horrible digital clipping noise that a proper sound card would. A lot of consumer gear (especially VCRs) behave this way.

 

What version of Toast was he using ?

 

Version 5.12 and 3.5 at work. Same problem.

Ray Gun

 

What AudioEnz said goes for me too. Where's Luke when we need him?

 

Isn't he on vacation for a while?

 

I've been using Toast for more than five years in various versions on various Macs, and I've never thought to listen that closely for differences from the original discs before. Maybe that's because I mostly use CD-Rs strictly for car use ... I generally don't sit and listen to them on my "hi-fi" setup.

I now use the Toast (version 5.2) with Jam package ... I'll have to do some listening tests. I guess if it turns out Toast does invert polarity I can burn to a CD-RW first, then to a CD-R ... it would be lame to have to add such an extraneous step to the process, though.

 

I made a copy at the studio on our G4 with Toast and it sounded different on it too. There were four of us listening (two were skeptics and refused to concede there would be a difference) and ALL of us heard the drastic changes on the copy.

 

Count me among those skeptics - although having seen your friend mention iTunes in his post (which I've NEVER used) might be the problem.

I've been burning CDRs with various versions of toast (currently 4.13) and have never had anything but a perfect clone of the original pop out of the drawer.

 

I've been using Toast Audio Extractor and Jam for years and I've never come across this problem, and believe me, I know my mixes like the back of my hand - I wouldn't let one little thing go by. They sound exactly the same to me. Maybe it's a problem with the Mac that you're using.

 

I thought that may have been a problem too... but I've had the same results on three different Macs.

Maybe it's a problem somewhere else, like iTunes. More investigating needed.

 

With iTunes, are you sure that you have it set to import as AIFF? If not, I think the default is mp3. The resulting CDR would of course sound wonky since it'd be created by converting the mp3 back into AIFF format.

Not sure if Toast has similiar import settings.

 

iTunes is set to the AIFF Encoder.

Ray Gun

 

You have the "Sound Enhancer" off in iTunes? And the EQ off as well?

 

I don't think iTunes puts audio that is being encoded through the Sound Enhancer or the EQ. It would take iTunes longer than it does to write the file to disk since a DSP function is being performed.
Jamie and I listened by comparing a bruned CD then the original.

Ray Gun

 

Sorry, I meant when you are playing it back, not importing/burning.

I didn't catch what Jamie was doing the playback comparison on - the mac, or did he grab the original and CDR and play them on an outboard cd player?

 

He and I have done it off of the Mac and on other CD players. Jamie uses a Masterlink for his CD Player of choice. I even noticed the difference in the car.

Ray Gun

 

Yesman, I misread your original post (for some reason I thought you said that Toast changed the pitch of everything).

I've heard differences between the original CD and a copy many times. In my experience it has to do with the CD media used.

An example: I digitised a favourite LP using a stereo CD-recorder and took the files in to my Mac. I burnt two copies, using differing CD brands (one was blue, the other gold). The resulting CDs sounded different - one sounded like the original LP; the other sounded hard and - for want of a better word - "digital".

Shortly afterwards Gramophone magazine (UK classical music and hi-fi mag) examined audio on computers. They discovered that the CD writer made no difference to the sound, but the CDR media made a difference.

yesman, try a few different CDRs and report back.