Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPod Burned CD vs. Original CD

Thidranki

Thidranki

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 7, 2005
94
0
Virginia
If I burn a CD via iTunes or Toast using a lossless format (FLAC via Toast in this example), will the quality be as good as a store-bought CD? I'd assume hardware and/or the quality of the CD-R has some factor. If it does, what's a good brand of CD-R?

Thanks
 
If you have a good enough Hi-Fi to sqeeze every last bit of detail from a CD, and your hearing is good. Then yes there is a percievable difference.

But how often are you going to do back to back comparisons?
 
I guess this is more so a curiosity than anything else. I do consider myself somewhat of an audiophile though :cool:
 
bartelby said:
If you have a good enough Hi-Fi to sqeeze every last bit of detail from a CD, and your hearing is good. Then yes there is a percievable difference.

But how often are you going to do back to back comparisons?
Click to expand...
Where does the difference come from? Ripping a cd into a lossless format, like Apple Lossless, is going to be a lossless copy of the CD. The output of a lossless rip should be a bit-perfect match with the CD. Burning a bit-perfect copy of the original CD on a new CD should produce a bit-perfect copy, right?

Or am I missing something?
 
MacAnkka said:
Where does the difference come from? Ripping a cd into a lossless format, like Apple Lossless, is going to be a lossless copy of the CD. The output of a lossless rip should be a bit-perfect match with the CD. Burning a bit-perfect copy of the original CD on a new CD should produce a bit-perfect copy, right?

Or am I missing something?
Click to expand...
If you are doing a bit copy then the original and duplicated CD should be the same. That is assuming that you use a decent CD blank so that the CD player in the stereo system can read all the bits.

As for encoding, any time you change formats you will loose something compared to the original. Even with a good Lossless CODEC there will be some difference, although in this case very hard to tell.
 
Ignore some of these comments. There will not be any audio difference, hence the name lossless.
 
I have to agrre what the other guy said. Unless your hearing is very good. (Dog ears maybe) on a very good high fi system, their wont be any precievable differance. Lostless is only lostless if the original media was prestine. Minor errors in the rip cause from dirt, figerprints, scratches and recreated audio caused from error correction. Its the same type of thing a CD player does when it plays. Lostless also doesn't use the exact PCM bit for bit code. Just like AIFF and WAV are both lostless, but hold uncompressed PCM in differnt ways. The audio wave form should be indentical. Their could be minor burning errors that force the newly burned cd to use error correction during playback. Its not the exact bit for bit audio on a burned cd, but a pretty damn close representation. You should have nothing to fear in terms of audio loss thogh. Your just going from one PCM to another PCM format that reproduce the same wave file. As for the error correction, you ever hear it when playing back cds?
 
sushi said:
As for encoding, any time you change formats you will loose something compared to the original. Even with a good Lossless CODEC there will be some difference, although in this case very hard to tell.
Click to expand...

No, there will not be. A lossless audio codec will spit out the exact same bits as went into it. Think of lossless like a ZIP file. When you ZIP up files, do you think anything gets lost in the compression? Of course not, or your files wouldn't work anymore. Similarly, lossless is like a ZIP file, but with a compression algorithm specially tuned to try to be more adept at compressing digital audio.
 
While the data is exactly the same the media is different. Hence the CD-R/Pressed CD comment.
CD-Rs use coloured dyes which affects the amount of light that is reflected back. This changes the way the data is interpreted.

Myself, my father and a few friends have done blind tests and can tell which media is being used. CD-Rs give a flatter sound more lifeless sound and the sound stage is less open.

People can say that's rubbish if they like, but if your system and hearing are both good enough and you know what you are listening for you can tell the difference.
 
bartelby said:
While the data is exactly the same the media is different. Hence the CD-R/Pressed CD comment.
CD-Rs use coloured dyes which affects the amount of light that is reflected back. This changes the way the data is interpreted.

Myself, my father and a few friends have done blind tests and can tell which media is being used. CD-Rs give a flatter sound more lifeless sound and the sound stage is less open.

People can say that's rubbish if they like, but if your system and hearing are both good enough and you know what you are listening for you can tell the difference.
Click to expand...

I think you're full of crap, and this is why: the only way the light can be interpreted is as a 1, or a 0. If it's randomly different all the time, that will manifest as noise, not impart some imaginary wholescale difference in soundscape quality. If it's wrong only occasionally, it will be inaudible (thanks to error correction).

If this was really a problem with all recordable media, then other, more easily ****ed-up data (such as, say, video on a DVD-R) would be impossible. However, if you have the space on a disc to copy, bit for bit, an MPEG-2 encoded video from a commercial DVD to a burned one, it will look... *gasp* exactly the same.

There's nothing different between that and an audio CD. It's just digital data, and in digital-land, it's on, or it's off. It's right, or it's wrong. This isn't analog world. So yes, I take your comments with a grain of salt the size of my apartment complex. It's psychosomatic.
 
bartelby said:
While the data is exactly the same the media is different. Hence the CD-R/Pressed CD comment.
CD-Rs use coloured dyes which affects the amount of light that is reflected back. This changes the way the data is interpreted.

Myself, my father and a few friends have done blind tests and can tell which media is being used. CD-Rs give a flatter sound more lifeless sound and the sound stage is less open.

People can say that's rubbish if they like, but if your system and hearing are both good enough and you know what you are listening for you can tell the difference.
Click to expand...

It could be, as I addressed earlier, that you burned the CD from lossy compressions.
 
Like I said I really don't give a **** what other people say. I'd rather trust my own ears than relying on what other people say.
I can tell the difference, if you can't. So be it!


Thidranki said:
It could be, as I addressed earlier, that you burned the CD from lossy compressions.
Click to expand...

Using toast to copy a pressed cd to a CD-r.
No compression what so ever
 
killmoms said:
No, there will not be. A lossless audio codec will spit out the exact same bits as went into it. Think of lossless like a ZIP file. When you ZIP up files, do you think anything gets lost in the compression? Of course not, or your files wouldn't work anymore. Similarly, lossless is like a ZIP file, but with a compression algorithm specially tuned to try to be more adept at compressing digital audio.
Click to expand...

sorry about the late response. Basically I was saying is that when ripping a CD and rerecording, The burned CD isnt a bit for bit identical copy. Lossless is truly lossless, and depending on the ripper, how clean the cd is, minor errors could end up in the ripped aiff. Those errors will end up in the reburned cd. An audio cds error detection isnt as advanced as a data cds. Hence in Itunes, there is an option to use error detection or not, even when ripping to aiff. As far as your zip analagy and lossless goes, I compleatly agree. The resulting waveform (the actual audio) will be indentcal.
As for as burned cds souding worse. Its all subjective. CDrs have a higher chance of read errors during playback than a pressed cd, leaving the player to use error correctionmore than a pressed CD. Ive never heard it, but in therory it could leave a flatter sound. Not saying that cdrs always resort to error correction. Just the chance is higher.
 
ok, i agree with the "there is no differce" camp. however, besides that, couldn't you just rip into WAV which doesn't even compress the data? then burn back from that? i think so.

another thing people keep saying is, if the cd has scratches or is dirty... but if you played that same dirty scratched cd... wouldn't there already be a loss of quality from the original condition the cd was in?

also, quit getting so testy. too often i see very hasty and pissy remarks. [not pointing fingers :rolleyes: ]
 
wyatt23 said:
ok, i agree with the "there is no differce" camp. however, besides that, couldn't you just rip into WAV which doesn't even compress the data? then burn back from that? i think so.

another thing people keep saying is, if the cd has scratches or is dirty... but if you played that same dirty scratched cd... wouldn't there already be a loss of quality from the original condition the cd was in?

also, quit getting so testy. too often i see very hasty and pissy remarks. [not pointing fingers :rolleyes: ]
Click to expand...

LOL, in theory, the quality would be the same if you,ve been listening to a dirty/scratched cd. Other factors could effect the rip, like how good the ripper is, how good your cd rom drive is, ect. For the main purpose of this forum post, the quality loss is not preciveable, or even there if the cd is in good shape and your drive reads perfectly. So yes, in "theory" (I love that word) there would no quality loss. :D
 
bartelby said:
Like I said I really don't give a **** what other people say. I'd rather trust my own ears than relying on what other people say.
I can tell the difference, if you can't. So be it!
Click to expand...

If you really don't give a s**t what other people say why are you getting your knickers in a bind because someone is disagreeing with you?


Lethal
 
So if I take an uncompressed song, burn it to a disk, rip it lossless, burned it again, and repeated, eventually the song would be corrupted beyond recognition?

But... ones and zeros... any corruption in those ones and zeros should result in static (disregarding error correction), not a muffling of sound...
 
killmoms said:
I think you're full of crap, and this is why: the only way the light can be interpreted is as a 1, or a 0. If it's randomly different all the time, that will manifest as noise, not impart some imaginary wholescale difference in soundscape quality. If it's wrong only occasionally, it will be inaudible (thanks to error correction).

If this was really a problem with all recordable media, then other, more easily ****ed-up data (such as, say, video on a DVD-R) would be impossible. However, if you have the space on a disc to copy, bit for bit, an MPEG-2 encoded video from a commercial DVD to a burned one, it will look... *gasp* exactly the same.

There's nothing different between that and an audio CD. It's just digital data, and in digital-land, it's on, or it's off. It's right, or it's wrong. This isn't analog world. So yes, I take your comments with a grain of salt the size of my apartment complex. It's psychosomatic.
Click to expand...

Your CD player does not do error correction. Before shooting your mouth off at someone calling them a load of crap perhaps you should first look in the mirror?

There are also other factors such as jitter and skew that might arise from the fact that your disc is burnt in a CDR drive.

Here is an experiment for you, why not try ripping the same CD multiple times on different Macs using a lossless file format, and then compare to see if they are the same?

People use a superior OS like Windows and EAC to rip for a reason.

CDs store 1s and 0s, what a load of crap. So what if it is digital? GSM is digital too, doesn't mean I get distortion fee sound out of it.
 
iW00t said:
Your CD player does not do error correction. Before shooting your mouth off at someone calling them a load of crap perhaps you should first look in the mirror?
Click to expand...
Go read the Red Book standard for CD audio. Pay attention to the part about Cross-Interleaved Reed-Soloman Coding. It's a form of error correction. Bye!

CDs store 1s and 0s, what a load of crap. So what if it is digital? GSM is digital too, doesn't mean I get distortion fee sound out of it.
Click to expand...
You clearly do not understand even the fundamentals of digital audio, just what you managed to absorb on some techy forum. :rolleyes:
 
You guys are all wrong....The copy will sound better than the original! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:














It will sound the same.

Obviously, the above statement was a joke meant to lighten up the tension found in this thread.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back