the Marker Trick for CDs. Why does it work?

Yup... I guess he got us. Well, I always go by the motto:

Fool me once, shame on you.... fool me twice, shame on me.

 

I'm not ranting, just read carefully . . . .

Because the cd was created to sell a more consistent, fewer-defective-returns, cheaper to manufacture product, and more portable; it was never ever designed for high fidelity, just convenience. An ad guy came up with the "perfect sound forever" baloney.

The cheaper / more primitive the cd player, the bigger the difference when you ink the perimeter of the disk.

Here it is people:
the laster hit the surfece and illuminates the disc. Delayed interval reflections of the entire disk surfece reflect back to the read point. Well, because the reflections do not have enough dynamic range, they are not interpreted as pits or real data, they are rejected.

The few milliseconds spent figuring out what is "keeper" data and what is not induces clock jitter. Many of you (most it seems) think the marker idea, which subdues or eliminates this reflection-causing-jitter problem, is bogus . . . but most if all of you do believe in clock jitter!

It is scientifically proven that the interval that the data gets to the converter in makes a difference. When you bounce the data thru a ram buffer (1 min skip protection in a portable machine is but one example), or reclock it, or upsample-and-reclock it, you are doing electronically
what the marker does physically. You make it easier for the d/a converter to reconstruct the waveform from the data. Reading the data from the disc using a laser is an ANALOG process. Decoding the captured data is a digital process. Not knowing the difference means that you can't understand the basis for the theory on how the marker trick works.

Reburn the disk to a purple or black cd-r and you further reduce unwanted reflection. The green and black markers work because the laser is red, if you used a red pen it would have no light-blocking properties, it might even make the reflection-causing-jitter problem worse.

Yes, the trick only works on some discs. Some play back so jitter-free that there is little or no room for improvement. Also, pops in the recording, or hiss, etc. are also made clearer when the waveform is reconstructed properly . . .some discs will sound "worse" in this way when inked.
These same discs would also sound worse in the same fashion, in a $3000 two piece, 24-bit, 192k upsampling cd player for the same reason - the flaws in the original recording have been fully revealed.

I feel bad for anyone who can't easily hear the difference between inked and un-inked discs (played back on mass market cd players), the difference is as plain as the nose on your face.
Mebbe you just find the idea too ridiculous to really give it a listen. Maybe you really aren't an audiophile, or can't hear front to back depth in a recording. Maybe you have lousy headphones or speakers, or too reverberant a room, . . . who knows?

I am agog that so many otherwise seemingly inquisitive folks who play here on the forum haven't tried and adopted this incredible trick; the cheapest, most effective upgrade possible; something that makes a cd which sounds cruddy on 90% of stereos before treatment sound obviously better on every sub-$2000 device it is played on after treatment!

 

I'll buy that cd off of you at cost if you were felt decieved that your audiophile disc was altered pre-purchase. If I bought a sealed copy of that same cd, I'd open and then INK the sucker before I listened to one note of it.

I would still buy those stabilizer rings if I could find them. I haven't seen a new package of them in 12 years.

 

See, Ric - if you weren't grinding your finger in your little green ear there, you could hear for yourself how well the ink mod works.

 

I didn't take the bait. I never believed in the green marker theory.

 

There's $1M waiting for you @ randi.org if you truly believe that. Put your mouth where your ears are.

It is utterly hilarious to read posts like yours when you actually understand how a CD player works at the mechanical and electrical level. Rolling howls of laughter at how gullible and misinformed some people can be, yet how viciously they will stand by their perceived enlightenment as though it were a revelation from heaven above.

I guess you'd better write Snopes as well and tell them of your amazing ability... they've listed it -- rightly -- as an urban legend.
http://www.snopes.com/music/media/marker.htm

 

Hilarious or no, you were apparently motivated to step up from a mere threadcrap to a more personal kind of character assasination. Thank heaven there's a big old internet between you and me, or I'd be steamed. Instead, I'm merely amused.

Ever heard the $2000 top-loader cd player that shines a blue LED on the cd while the laser reads the wavelength-unobstructed pits? I cannot remember the brand, (Audio Forest in Atlanta sells them and the store is closed for the evening) but this machine which sounded very laid-back and unmechanical, works on the same principle: make it easier to read the pits.

Are you one of these guys who thinks that all after-market stereo mods are baloney?
If so, that might explain the forcefulness of your dismissal.

 

Yes. you get the same data, but not trickled into the DAC at the same interval. As close as you can get to feeding that data one bit every 2.83 milliseconds, the easier a time the DAC has getting the same amplitude and the same interval. A badly read cd can produce a a waveform with the correct amplitude, but the wave arrives too early or late by a couple milliseconds to sound natural or unmechanical to the listener.

This is also why cd's pressed from different plants, but feature the same data can sound differwent from one another. Also: the label ink, the color the polycarbonate is tinted (black, purple, etc.), or the color of the aluminum or gold reflective layer can all affect playback because it affects the laser's accuracy in seeing the data "in a timely manner".

 

RicP:

A quote from Urban Legend's quoted debunker David Ranada's article on the green pen:

"I haven't heard of any cults growing around the sonic quality of the pressings of a specific CD manufacturer, as there used to be with the LP, and there shouldn't be any."

Well, this is obviously false,
I guess he's not as well informed as he thought he was. There are several articles on this very matter - the designer at Genesis Loudspeakers Gary Leonard Koh wrote a white paper on the black cd a couple years ago and he also named some sonically desireable (standard color) cd pressing plants in his findings. I've read other accounts too on cd pressing plants that make better sounding discs, but no other specific authors spring to mind.

This page has Koh's link to his white paper on the "pitfalls" of cd technology:
http://www.genesisloudspeakers.com/profile_absolutefidelity.html

 

I'm still putting my money on this:


http://www.snopes.com/music/media/marker.htm#add


A black cd is a far cry from coloring the edge of a regular cd green. Apples and oranges.

 

Jay, I read everything Snopes had to say on the matter and it sounded remarkably like the line fed to us by Hirsch-Houck labs (Stereo Review) in the early 90's. You know, the same guys who said (before 1 bit technology and all the other advancements of the last 15 years of cd playback) that all cd players sounded essentially the same.

The same sort of folks are also prone to making fun of vaccuum tube technology, incl. single ended- and triode- circuit equipment, make fun of power line conditioners and esoteric audio cables, and think digital is "perfect sound forever" . . . vastly superior to analog playback in every conceivable way. Why real audio enthusiasts would listen to cloth-eared, dogmatic preachers like these is beyond me.

RicP has nice stereo equipment, I read his profile. We both own Macintosh computers, and even have the same birthday oddly enough! I am honestly amazed that he disagrees with me on this matter.

 

Actually, it's one apple vs. a whole bushel. Both mods work on the same principle, the laser reads only the pit it is focused on, and it sees the leading and trailing edges of the pits with absolute clarity.

JVC audio engineers found that digital playback sounded better when the source media was from a 1" videotape machine rather than a 3/4" tape (they used to store test data in this manner) because the leading and trailing edge of these (should be) square waves, ones and zeroes, were better defined (squarer) on the 1" tape. Again, crisply defined on/off binary commands were more easily read by the DAC. TAS magazine reported on this finding some 14 years ago.

 

I just read all 24 pages of Gary Leonard Koh's article. He discusses in great detail that jitter can affect the quality of data read from a cd. He also discusses several ways to minimize jitter. Many of these have already been discussed on this forum, and most are sound recommendations based in repeatable science.

However...

Mr. Koh does NOT in any way address any issue even remotely close to coloring the edge of a cd with anything. The one thing missing in his 24 pages of "data" is a double blind listening test. He suggests on page 8 that he "must have driven my wife mad at that time playing the same piece of music over and over again for almost two months, and insisting that she help me distinguish between the various copies". That sounds like a very subjective (a word he uses several times in the report) test to me. Subjective testing is not scientific at all, and should be considered opinion rather than fact.

While the link you provided DOES show that better quality media and less jitter can improve the quality of the data that is read from a disc, it does NOT add any credibility to the argument that "coloring the edge(s) of a cd improves the sound".

The link to the Snopes article DOES provide double blind listening test results, as well as documented repeatable electronic measurements showing that coloring the edge of a disc has no effect on the quality of the data stream as it is read from the disc. Obviously, what happens to the data after it goes throught different DACs is a whole different story. I don't think anyone here will disagree that different DACs could "color" the sound.

I fail to see the correlation between magnetic tape size and coloring the edge of a cd green. I don't have any problem believing 1" media provides better results than 3/4" media. I am having a problem figuring out what that has to do with the original discussion.

 

I think David Ranada was referring to factory pressed cds, not the various incarnations of cdrs. When the search function was available, you could find many discussions regarding the quality of various cdrs. I don't think anyone here would even think of saying that all cdrs are equal. I know I don't believe all cdrs are equal. I also know that no one here has provided any credible evidence that a green magic marker applied to the outer edge of a pressed cd improves or degrades the quality of the audio. I have provided credible evidence to the contrary, though.

 

A friend marketed the green pens, and he had a very-high-end audiophile shop. He also distributed various tweaks, some of which he felt had minimal improvement but were devoured by Absolute Sound-obsessed audiophiles (the clients that bought the Krells and electrostatics) [no offence meant to any high-end owners here, I would dealy love to have that equipment at home]. This is what I meant by the 'blind' comparison:

He would demonstrate the effect of the pens by sitting the client in the 'sweet-spot' chair in front of the system they were auditioning. He would use one CD player, and alternate between playing the same track on idential pressings of a CD at the same volume, one with the green pen and the other without. He would not tell which one he would play, and at times would re-insert the same CD to 'randomise' the playings between the disks. At all times he would be obscuring which CD was changed in the player.

He deomonstrated in this way to me on several occaisions, and I also was in the room when he demonstated to clients. The systems he demonstrated varied between money-is-no-object to modest but 'good' quality (the range above cheap-and-nasty). In these comparisons, as well as my own before-and-after green-penning disks, it was my perception that the green pen made a difference. I'm not pretending all his clients could tell the differrence, but then again not all of them could tell the difference between components of different qualities selling for thousands of dollars more.

There is the element of individual differences that must be considered as we are dealing with subtle differences. It may be that some people can tell actual differences the green pen makes and other individuals can't, in the same way that some individauls firmly believe that there is no difference in sound quality between vinyl/CD/mp3. I am open to be proven wrong.

 

Your logic there is flawed. It is you that needs to prove the validity of the "green tweak," the skeptics do not need to prove anything, you cannot prove a negative. The burden of proof is on the claimant, after all, I could easily claim that I tested 200 people and not one could pick out the marked CD with any statistical relevance, would that be "proof" enough?

Plain & simple....

If the folks that claim it's so "night & day" that you can pick out the marked CD on "mass market CD players" everytime, then prove it. There are quite a few arenas for you to do so, and one will even pay you $1M, so what's the hold up? Think of it, you'd be the first person in history to be able to pick out the marked CD!! You'd be famous!! You could stick it back in the faces of all the skeptics!!! All you have to do is what you claim is so simple, sounds like a good deal to me, what's holding you back?

Making grandiose claims and doing nothing to back them up except saying "I can hear it! really does nothing but cause folks to label you as another victim of Audiophilia Nervosa. I've said all I need to here, have fun.

 

I did that with the The Matrix on VHS.......it still sucked!

 

Keith, why is it that you seem to have the same logic as Mr Spock!!

Are you part Vulcan???

 

I'll believe the green marker theory the day I walk into my local Tower Records and I see a bunch of green markers in every aisle. And the day I see the following sticker in every audophile CD in the market : "Green marker used on the edges for better sound!!!"

 

Ric,
The part of my post you quote is where i speak of individual differences. I was not using that as an arguement that the pen works. It was a statement that there are differences in individual's ability or willingness to discriminate differences sound, just as some individuals have differences in the ability to discriminate by vision - ask anyone who wears glasses! These differences can be a combination of genetics and/or training and/or the interest to discriminate sound. Another analogy to vision - a photographic retoucher has great sensitivity to colour differences, being able to differentiate and accurately match, say, 100's of shades of blue. To my father, who has little aesthetic appreciation, either a colour is "blue" or it is not blue - there are no subtle shades.
Similarily, I have met many individuals who can't appreciate or it is not important enough for them to be able to appreciate differences in music quality. They can't tell the difference between vinyl and CD, or analogue or digital sound, or the degredation of an mp3 file, or the difference between redbook and hi-res - all of which most SH members would have no difficulty in appreciating the differences.
My point is that it may be possible that some who have written that there is no difference made by a green pen may be indicating that they do not have the ability to differentiate the difference. I have also read respected writers/reviewers say that there is no difference between redbook and hi-res, there is no difference between bell wire and esoteric speaker cable (I even recall seeing that being writen up as an urban myth in an audio article in a newspaper). It's not proof that the pen makes a difference, but it's not proof that there is no difference either.

 

Doubtful. What's interesting to me is that all of the folks that supposedly have the "ability" to discern these differences never seem to want to display their amazing talent to anyone. If I could hear a difference in 2 CDs that differ only by a ring of marker as easily as some claim to, I'd be demonstrating it everywhere, at parties, in best buy, in a van down by the river, anywhere I could.

And any time that one of them has agreed to be tested, they have fared no better than sheer chance would have. For an audiophile myth that's been going on almost 20 years, you'd think there would be one person who would step up and be able to reliably determine differences, that is, if in fact there actually were any.

I can claim to be able to hear a cricket fart 2 miles away, but until I demonstrate that ability, I'm simply blowing the same thing that the cricket is.

 

Doubtful. One of the audio mags did a scientific test with those little rubber slip on rings that were supposed to "stabilize" your CD, and decrease jitter. The outcome? The da*n things INCREASED jittter!!!

Derek

 

I remember an article about this myth in CD Review magazine. One engineer said something like "digital sound is all about ones and zeroes and there is no such a thing as a strong one or a strong zero." True. But considering the large amount of "ones and zeroes" involved in creating the digital sound of a CD, if some bits ("ones and zeroes") can get lost in the decoding process and if this results in an imperfect image of the original sound even with (or maybe because of) error-correction, then it is possible for a CD to sound better or worse depending on how accurately the bits are read. This would be the logic behind the green marker theory. I'm not saying it is true. In fact, I'm not even saying it is possible for a CD to sound better or worse. I just said... if! But if that possibility is true, then the green marker theory can't be dismissed on the grounds that it is impossible to improve a one or a zero. It is impossible... but there would still be the question of not losing bits during playback.