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Topic: Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher (Read 8476 times) previous topic - next topic
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Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

how about 32 or 40, (and on some songs possibly anything lower than 128) I'd say that would qualify as low and easily discernible, especially when listened to through a good PA. That part of the remark was meant to be facetious but, since I refuse to use emoticons and the term L.O.L. seems a little to gay for me to use it may not have been readily apparent. I also claim (on some songs) to be able to hear the difference on audio tracks burned @ 8x speed vs being burned @ 16x or higher speeds, once again listening to it through a clean amp and good speakers.

michael clyde

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #1 –
Please, remember that on this board, you need proofs to back such claims. Like a ABX blind test in Foobar2000 for example.

Also, watch out for the ''gay'' word, might offend someone.

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #2 –
Quote from: michaelclyde on
I also claim (on some songs) to be able to hear the difference on audio tracks burned @ 8x speed vs being burned @ 16x or higher speeds

Congratulations! You have managed to come up with a totally unsubstantiated "golden ears" claim that I've never seen before.  That is no small feat!

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #3 –
not a new concept by any means. you have to understand that while the data is digital, the physical process of burning a CD is an analogue one, (since it is analogue, the faster the burn the greater chance for "noise", white, pink or whatever being recorded with the wanted audio) and also that the error protection embedded in audio CDs is much inferior to that of data CDs. The CD burner creates small bumps in the playing surface of the CD-R that the CD player can then detect. The spacing between each bump is critical to being able to detect and decode the data signal. But more importantly, the rising and falling edge (the beginning and end) of each bump is also critical, and this is the aspect that is most affected by different combinations of burn speed, disc media and the state of the laser. Red Book-standard audio CDs have a much lower error protection capability and rely on the spacing between the bumps and the angle of their edges to retrieve and decode the data properly. High-speed burning makes the problem much harder to resolve, and hence most experienced mastering engineers prefer to copy discs at relatively low speeds.
Just because someone has not heard of something does not mean it does not exist or happen to be true. A bass player I know doesn't believe that south of the Equator water spins in the opposite direction going down a drain than it does in the northern hemisphere or that rivers flow the opposite direction than in the N hemisphere.  Those type of people usually think star trek was filmed on location.

michael clyde

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #4 –
Quote from: michaelclyde on
or that rivers flow the opposite direction than in the N hemisphere.

Huh?

This entire posting is so full of misconceptions that I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #6 –
@michaelclyde: Your last comments are offtopic, but due to the nature or these boards (and if the moderators don't throw it to the recycle bin), i would like to remark that the errors that can happen when burning an audio CD are present on the physical layer, and the data read passes through several transformations before being audio again.
It is important to understand that this is not a tape or a vinyl and errors are not "noise" on the audio stream, but "noise" on the audio "data" (in fact, not even there, because there's first the CIRC coding). Reading  10001000 instead of 00001000, even though it is just a single erroneous bit, can cause very loud audio distortions.

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #8 –
Quote
@ DVDdoug,
I would need something B/R capable in my system to use this or no?
Yes.  You need a Blu-Ray disc with DTS-HD Master Audio and a Home Theater Receiver with the proper decoder.  My receiver doesn't support it, and I only have a couple of BR discs and I doubt they have that format.

Quote
I see no reason to [not] use (even with my limited money for storage) FLAC or even an uncompressed format.
FLAC is fine.  But FLAC is not part of the DVD or  Blu-Ray standards, and DTS-HD Master Audio is backward compatible with regular DTS.    (I'm not "pushing" the DTS format, I'm just mentioning that it does what you were asking about to restore the "lost" information for a lossless result.)   

Quote
...or even an uncompressed format.
These are "shiny disc" formats.  Uncompressed multi-channel audio can take-up half the space on a DVD which means the video has to be over-compressed.  Stereo LPCM (uncompressed) is common on DVDs, but I've never seen a commercial DVD with multi-channel LPCM.  Blu-Ray discs have more capacity, so file size is less of a concern.

Quote
you have to understand that while the data is digital, the physical process of burning a CD is an analogue one
CDs are digital.  Philosophers can argue all day that "everything is analog", or at the quantum level "everything is digital".  But, every bit written to a disc is either 1 or zero, and every bit read from the disc is 1 or zero.  It is impossible to read 1.3, 0.8 or 1/2.  Now, it IS POSSIBLE to get an error where a value written as a 1 is read as a zero or you can get an undefined or poorly defined value that sometimes is read as a 1 and sometimes read as a zero.  And, with some discs and/or some burners you may get better results at slower burning speeds.

It's the same with digital electronics.  With 5 Volt logic, 5V is defined as '1'  and 0V is is defined as '0'.  The real voltages are rarely zero volts and 5V, so there are defined thresholds.  Everything above 4V might be defined as a '1', and guaranteed to always read as '1' and everything below 1V might be defined as '0'.  Anything in-between is invalid and undefined and might read either way.    (The actual threshold voltages are defined by the specs for the particular logic family, and the write voltages are "tighter" than the read voltages so there are no "borderline" cases.)  Yes, we can measure the analog voltages, but the logic is digital.  You computer reads & writes billions of bits every day and the analog voltages will vary.  But it never gets a bit wrong (unless there is a hardware failure).

A simpler analogy is eggs.  Eggs are digital.  They are sold by the dozen.  You can't buy 11.8 eggs or 12.1 eggs.    You can have a broken egg, or a missing egg, or maybe a egg that's too small so you don't want to count it.    But if you ask someone how may eggs are in the refrigerator you should get a dead-on accurate count.  You could weigh the eggs or measure the dimensions to get an "analog" (real number) value, but that's not how we count eggs.

 

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #9 –
Quote
A simpler analogy is eggs.  Eggs are digital.  They are sold by the dozen.  You can't buy 11.8 eggs or 12.1 eggs.    You can have a broken egg, or a missing egg, or maybe a egg that's too small so you don't want to count it.    But if you ask someone how may eggs are in the refrigerator you should get a dead-on accurate count.  You could weigh the eggs or measure the dimensions to get an "analog" (real number) value, but that's not how we count eggs.

[audophile mode]Of course, that doesn't account for double-yolkers.[/audophile mode]

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #10 –
The proof, for those who don't understand the science, is that you can burn a CD-R in a $20 drive, rip the audio back from that CD*, and get a bit-for-bit perfect identical copy back in the PC. It works at any writing speed and any ripping speed (unless you exceed the specs of the drive or disc). No subtle differences are introduced. It's a perfect (mathematically identical and lossless) copy.

* - if you want you can play it back in an old school CD player with a digital output, and record that digital output into your PC. It still works. I've done it. Many people have. The result is absolutely perfect. Exactly the same numbers. Nothing changes.

If you try it, make sure you time-align the files. Most CD drives add or subtract a few samples at the start and end of the disc, so even if you rip it directly you need to correct for that to get a perfect match. That's one reason why all CDs start with (typically) a second of silence.

Cheers,
David.

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #11 –
Quote from: JabbaThePrawn on
[audophile mode]Of course, that doesn't account for double-yolkers.[/audophile mode]

Kind of an irrelevant point, since we're counting the eggs, not the yolks. Double-yolks would be anomalies that do not indicate trend.

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #12 –
Quote from: michaelclyde on
(since it is analogue, the faster the burn the greater chance for "noise", white, pink or whatever being recorded with the wanted audio)

I especially liked this part. 

This would be equivalent to recording a DVDR at high speed and getting a snowy picture. 

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #13 –
If burning at a higher rate results in a less perfect digital copy, then error correction on playback could cause audible differences (yes, it's a stretch).
Kevin Graf :: aka Speedskater

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #14 –
Quote from: michaelclyde on
the faster the burn the greater chance for "noise", white, pink or whatever being recorded with the wanted audio)

It is a violation of the forum's Terms Of Service item #8 ("TOS8") to make an unsupported claim that you can hear a difference between CD-Rs burned at different speeds. But before engaging in an ABX test, you should first do as 2bdecided implied: simply compare the audio data as ripped directly from the discs in WAV or FLAC format (no lossy conversion steps in between). If the data is the same, sample-for-sample after being aligned in time, then you know you have completely imagined the differences. If it is different, it is almost certainly problems in isolated samples, not broadband noise. Post short clips for us of those raw rips if you need help.

Regardless, you can have confidence that in digital systems, irregularities in the analog physical processes are very well controlled for in this regard. There are tremendous tolerances built-in to every component as well as the design of the CD, greater tolerances than are even needed nowadays. This applies even to the lowest-level pits and lands on a pressed CD, or their equivalent on CD-Rs. Things have to go majorly wrong for errors to creep into the audio. What errors do occur are often corrected without incident, and those that aren't are few and far-between.

If a drive can't do a burn at high speed without error, it is defective. It does happen, and a drive may wear out as its cheaply sourced electronic components fail to stay within their stated tolerances, but this is another way of saying defective, in my opinion. The type of errors that would be introduced in such a drive ultimately fall into three categories: errors that prevent the disc from being readable at all, errors that are completely corrected when the CD is read or played (all CDs have such errors, actually), and errors that can't be corrected and thus may result in skips (the drive/player loses sync) or incorrect samples, some of which may be smartly replaced by the drive/player's error concealment firmware.

Any bad samples that are audible are going to be transient sounds like ticks, pops, or other "gritty" glitches, not anything resembling constant white/pink noise. To add that kind of broadband noise, every sample would have to be a little bit off. That's not going to happen. No part of the normal burning process is capable of adding such noise, even when the drive's components are out of spec.

Quote
The CD burner creates small bumps in the playing surface of the CD-R

There are no bumps. Unlike the aluminum platter in a "real" CD which is pressed from a mold, a CD-R's inner platter has no pits, but rather just has chemicals that are transformed by the burner's laser to have different levels of reflectivity. The end result is basically the same, from a playback perspective.

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The spacing between each bump is critical to being able to detect and decode the data signal.

The spacing between the pits on a pressed CD or their equivalent on a burned CD-R is important, yes, but this is very tightly controlled and isn't an issue in a properly functioning burner, regardless of burning speed. The technology has been very well thought out and is very well implemented. These things you think are problems are not issues at all.

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most experienced mastering engineers prefer to copy discs at relatively low speeds.

If that's true ("most" prefer to), and I'm not convinced that it is, it is because they believe the discs come out with few errors that way, with the burners and discs they use, or because they trust the folklore and don't have the time or desire or even the technical know-how to empirically test it themselves. Even if true for particular pieces of hardware, the wild speculation as to the reasons why are not grounded in science. Mastering engineers aren't electrical engineers, as demonstrated when the vocal ones try and fail to correctly explain anything related to digital audio.

Quote
Just because someone has not heard of something does not mean it does not exist or happen to be true. A bass player I know doesn't believe that south of the Equator water spins in the opposite direction going down a drain


But see, that's something that's easily tested, and the results are the opposite of what you think:

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/coriolis.html
http://www.snopes.com/science/coriolis.asp

Now, given that your bass player friend is right and you are wrong, how many other baseless explanations do you think you might be clinging to?

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #15 –
Quote from: michaelclyde on
how about 32 or 40, (and on some songs possibly anything lower than 128) I'd say that would qualify as low and easily discernible, especially when listened to through a good PA. That part of the remark was meant to be facetious but, since I refuse to use emoticons and the term L.O.L. seems a little to gay for me to use it may not have been readily apparent. I also claim (on some songs) to be able to hear the difference on audio tracks burned @ 8x speed vs being burned @ 16x or higher speeds, once again listening to it through a clean amp and good speakers.


You still burn CDs? Talking about dinosaurs roaming the earth... and I thought I was the last dinosaur.

Listen, I used to believe the same stuff you believe. Let me tell you: it´s all bullshit. What is on CD-R is a perfect (read: perfect) digital copy. Some years ago I talked about the green marker tweak, claiming to hear differences. Two years ago I revisited it for an article on my blog. Some time after that article was finished I found that I had stopped using it. Out of three players (vintage portables) only one player reacted with differences found by Audio DiffMaker. It was the oldest of the three (it´s now 23 years old). Before the article, I tested it with other players (portables and stationary) - none of them produced audible or measurable differences. Meaning: if 1% of all the CD players ever released to the market might react to it (it´s likely that the sole player reacting to it has a severe design flaw regarding its drive), is there a point to it?

No, it isn´t. You should stop passing your time with useless exercises. I´ve spent hours and hours coating CDs with a green marker. All in vain. And all stupid.

LOL &  &  - which makes me gay obviously. Oh wait, I am!
marlene-d.blogspot.com

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #17 –


...too much?

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #18 –
Quote from: ech3 on
Quote from: michaelclyde on
A bass player I know doesn't believe that south of the Equator water spins in the opposite direction going down a drain than it does in the northern hemisphere

http://www.snopes.com/science/coriolis.asp

Are you sure you know where Star Trek was filmed?

 

Definitely one of the most entertainingly Dunning-Krugeresque posters as of late, this Michael guy.

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #19 –
Quote from: DVDdoug on
Yes.  You need a Blu-Ray disc with DTS-HD Master Audio and a Home Theater Receiver with the proper decoder.  My receiver doesn't support it, and I only have a couple of BR discs and I doubt they have that format.


To add to the "confusion," it's really not like the topic at hand is going anywhere, there are other options.  For example, the PlayStation 4 is fully capable of outputting DTS-HD MA and Dolby TruHD audio directly over HDMI so that it can be decoded by the receiver.  However, some older receivers don't work with lossless DTS or Dolby audio but the do work with multi-channel PCM audio.  The PS4 will then transcode the lossless DTS/Dolby audio on-the-fly and output it as multi-channel PCM audio.  So you don't always need a receiver that is compatible with lossless DTS/Dolby.  The strangest thing is that my home theater system works fine with lossless DTS/Dolby audio, up to 7.1 channels (though I have it output only 5.1 channels, it complete ignores the mid-left and mid-right audio).  However, my PS4 defaulted to outputting everything to multi-channel PCM.  5.1 audio from Netflix is transcoded, DVDs with lossy 5.1 audio, games with lossy Dolby 5.1 audio, etc.  I had to go in and manually instruct the console not to do that.  I haven't noticed a difference between the two playback methods, not visible audio delay when having the PS4 transcode to PCM.  I dug even deeper into the settings of my Samsung player (which I'm now retiring since the PS4 will finally playback 3D Blu-ray titles) and it has that ability too, it just defaults to straight lossless DTS/Dolby output.

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #20 –
Quote from: michaelclyde on
I also claim (on some songs) to be able to hear the difference on audio tracks burned @ 8x speed vs being burned @ 16x or higher speeds, once again listening to it through a clean amp and good speakers.

Then, which was better, 8x or 16x and higher?

There has been quite a lot of discussion about this in the past at communities like Club Myce, where a lot of people with knowledge of CD/DVD/Blu-ray discs and drives post. When looking at error rate, it seems that lower burning speeds are not necessarily better (as is often thought, and which I assume you refer too) because drives and discs are actually tuned for high speeds (as they are most often used at the highest possible speed). From their FAQ on this matter

Quote
Q: Could I improve the quality of my burn by slowing down the burn?
A: That slowing down a burn will always improve quality is a myth. The answer is maybe. Often, burning at a slower speed can help. But sometimes, burning at a slower speed will actually produce worse results. This is because the quality of a burn depends on other factors in addition to the burn speed. The quality of a slower burn would depend on whether or not the disc was designed for lower speeds (16x media, for example, use chemicals optimized for high-speed burning) and whether or not the drive was designed to burn that particular media at lower speeds (i.e., whether or not the drive's hardware is optimized for lower speeds, whether or not the drive's firmware is optimized for lower speeds, and whether or not the drive has a good, optimized low-speed write strategy for that particular media type). All this varies between drive types and different media, so the only way to know for sure would be to try it out.

If you are considering the use of a hacked firmware to force slower burns: If a drive's firmware does not officially support a lower speed for a particular media type, forcing the drive to burn at an otherwise unsupported lower speed through the use of a hacked firmware will likely produce undesirable results.

Music: sounds arranged such that they construct feelings.

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #21 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
Quote from: DVDdoug on
Yes.  You need a Blu-Ray disc with DTS-HD Master Audio and a Home Theater Receiver with the proper decoder.  My receiver doesn't support it, and I only have a couple of BR discs and I doubt they have that format.


To add to the "confusion," it's really not like the topic at hand is going anywhere, there are other options.  For example, the PlayStation 4 is fully capable of outputting DTS-HD MA and Dolby TruHD audio directly over HDMI so that it can be decoded by the receiver.  However, some older receivers don't work with lossless DTS or Dolby audio but the do work with multi-channel PCM audio.  The PS4 will then transcode the lossless DTS/Dolby audio on-the-fly and output it as multi-channel PCM audio.  So you don't always need a receiver that is compatible with lossless DTS/Dolby.  The strangest thing is that my home theater system works fine with lossless DTS/Dolby audio, up to 7.1 channels (though I have it output only 5.1 channels, it complete ignores the mid-left and mid-right audio).  However, my PS4 defaulted to outputting everything to multi-channel PCM.  5.1 audio from Netflix is transcoded, DVDs with lossy 5.1 audio, games with lossy Dolby 5.1 audio, etc.  I had to go in and manually instruct the console not to do that.  I haven't noticed a difference between the two playback methods, not visible audio delay when having the PS4 transcode to PCM.  I dug even deeper into the settings of my Samsung player (which I'm now retiring since the PS4 will finally playback 3D Blu-ray titles) and it has that ability too, it just defaults to straight lossless DTS/Dolby output.

Depending on the player, there are some advantages to it decoding the audio. It can mix, for instance, or fast-forward with audio (e.g. Windows Media Center). There is even the blu-ray feature of mixing a commentary into the main feature, without it being a completely separate track, for which audio needs to be decoded in the player.

Much has been said of course about this on the home theater forums like AVS, for a while "bitstreaming" these lossless formats was the holy grail of movie audio, hence half-assed products like the Xonar HDAV and Auzen HDMI cards, which didn't last long as the graphics cards came out with proper audio support.
 

Difference on audio tracks burned at 8x speed vs 16x or higher

Reply #22 –
Quote from: michaelclyde on
how about 32 or 40 (speed)


Only if the burn is so bad that the CD gives read errors. A CD can fail to burn correctly at any speed due to bad media. So yes you can hear the difference between a CD with read errors and one without, but that's a bit like saying "I'm really good at hearing the difference between different speaker wires - especially between ones that are open circuit and ones that aren't".