MP3 Players I believe could deliver an even bigger death blow to the music industry I believe. Someday bands might not even release albums, but one or two songs per year. Something to ponder, eh?

Plus, CD's are much more satisfying to get for me. I like putting it in and then it coming to an end and there's silence.

I might buy CD's and then later burn them onto an MP3 player, though, but I have to get the CD first.

FishyMonkey wrote: MP3 player or CD player? Yes, this relates to prog songs because I find some quality is lost in an MP3 player. Plus that, there's nothing like lying down, popping in a new CD, and listening to it straight through. CDs seem more special than just a bunch of osngs on your MP3 player. Lastly, you get the best listening experience with a CD player for the reasons above, and that's what I find as important with prog. So what do you prefer, CD player or MP3 player? Or no real preference?

CD player can give the best quality, but when i'm not at home i thank God for my MP3 player with more than 300 cd's inside....

...and it's still half empty    

oliverstoned wrote: FishyMonkey wrote: MP3 player or CD player? Yes, this relates to prog songs because I find some quality is lost in an MP3 player. Plus that, there's nothing like lying down, popping in a new CD, and listening to it straight through. CDs seem more special than just a bunch of osngs on your MP3 player. Lastly, you get the best listening experience with a CD player for the reasons above, and that's what I find as important with prog. So what do you prefer, CD player or MP3 player? Or no real preference? Numeric is crap. But among numeric, MP3 (and others compressed formats) is the worst thing ever invented. So CD!

CD is also a compressed format compared to Vinyl and vinyl is a compromise compared to rael tape wich is a compromise compared to studio-tapes....

....but of course, you have to draw the line somewhere

maidenrulez wrote: Heh lets not forget SACD or DVD audio wich delivers excellent sound quailty at 192khz 24 bits but i use a portable cd player instead of a mp3 player because the mp3 quailty even at 192kbps is dreadfull. I also uses the great B&W nautilus 805 at home matched with som excellent thule amp's dvd player. Great stuff!

You need to encode your files using a better encoder-the difference is not that great-just equivalent to the difference between listening to a cd on a mini hifi compared to listening on a decent seperates system.

There is too much snobbery when it comes to HIFI.
If the original recording is rubbish then a top of the range hifi seperates system will make it sound worse -not better, vinyl,cd or whatever!

Tony R wrote: maidenrulez wrote: Heh lets not forget SACD or DVD audio wich delivers excellent sound quailty at 192khz 24 bits but i use a portable cd player instead of a mp3 player because the mp3 quailty even at 192kbps is dreadfull. I also uses the great B&W nautilus 805 at home matched with som excellent thule amp's dvd player. Great stuff! You need to encode your files using a better encoder-the difference is not that great-just equivalent to the difference between listening to a cd on a mini hifi compared to listening on a decent seperates system. There is too much snobbery when it comes to HIFI. If the original recording is rubbish then a top of the range hifi seperates system will make it sound worse -not better, vinyl,cd or whatever!

How come, one got the feeling you were going to say just that...hmmmm...???

This only to drive my turntable MC head

My girlfriend and my sister helping me to set a playlist

My Pre-Amplifier

Nieghbourhood while i'm listening to music on my hi-fi equipment at 5,5% volume

oliverstoned wrote: Because actually it's more complex that just 0 and 1. Sound is much more complex. And when you hear the difference between a computer-burned Cd and an original on a transparent system, you cry!!

But a CD isn't more complex than 0 and 1, that's exactly how the data is stored! Any perfect digital copy is bit identical to the original, regardless of how it's done! How can it be more complex than 0 and 1 when only 0s and 1s are recorded? This has nothing to do with analogue vs. digital - I'm talking about when the music is already in a digital form.

oliverstoned wrote: ...it's at the point it runs off the line in the highs

A copied CD literally doesn't do that, unless it's been converted to MP3 between ripping and copying.

On any decent drive the actual data on the CD will be exactly the same - the only issue is that because the tracks aren't done the same way it's harder to read for the CD player so some mistakes might be made. However, there aren't any mistakes on the CDR (if it's done properly), just in the reading. Plus CDR, especially cheap CDR, degrades rather quickly.

If an original CD has the data 10001011110100100011 (etc. etc.), the copied CD will also have the data 10001011110100100011 (etc. etc.). Where's the distortion introduced?

The explanation is in the software.

As goose says, a CD burner puts 1s and 0s onto a CD - it doesn't introduce them or remove them; it CAN'T. Sound data is like any other data; just streams of 1s and 0s. It CANNOT change if it is directly copied, but it can if it is in any way manipulated.

When you burn an audio CD, you rely on a variety of algorithms to convert from one format to another in the burning software (e.g. WAV to CDA). If you do a "straight copy", you are still relying on the software to extract the data and put it back together exactly as it found it - which it might not, depending on the algorithm used.

Although I do not know how every CD burning package performs it's tasks, I have noticed that most seem to create a temporary "spool" file on the hard disk. This suggests to me that it writes the audio data to a proprietary encoded file (changes the data) before encoding it to CDA (changing it again).

A high end burner, in all likelihood, uses either a highly efficient algorithm in it's firmware, or none at all (which is best of all, as it would leave the data fully unchanged). I don't know enough about the mechanics of CD Burners, but I do understand software and data to a reasonable extent!

Plausible?

I never listen to MP3. First of all I prefer to have the CD myself (we have a huge collection of CDs and vinyls home), and second I don't like to listen to just one song taken out of context; I either listen to the whole album or not at all. I am not interested in ephemerae.

Certif1ed wrote: When you burn an audio CD, you rely on a variety of algorithms to convert from one format to another in the burning software (e.g. WAV to CDA). If you do a "straight copy", you are still relying on the software to extract the data and put it back together exactly as it found it - which it might not, depending on the algorithm used.

oliverstoned wrote: Absolutely! The audiophile burner has its own converter. In the case of the Pionner shown above, its called "Legato link" and it even "add" informations! (that's why it sounds softer on playback, even when you play bad mp3 cds, it compensate actually, by recalculating miising info). As you see,guys, it's not that simple!!

If it adds information, surely it'll sound more different from the original than a direct copy, which doesn't change any information at all? It might sound better, but if that's the case then it's less authentic.

There are only two ways I can see a computer burnt CDR could possibly sound different from a CD, and neither have anything to do with the data that's originally written on the disc:

firstly, because the data is written less "tidily" than on commercial discs - the player might read the information (which is correct on the disc) incorrectly - I imagine Hi-fi would actually be worse at this than a PC based CD drive, because I don't know how well/much buffering a hifi CD player does and thus how much error correction it has to do in real time.

secondly, degradation of the media. CDR is worse for this than any other used format, excluding wear introduced through playback. I don't know myself, but according to tests done and those folk over on http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/ - www.hydrogenaudio.org the best thing to do is to use Taiyo Yuden discs made in Japan - I don't believe there's any great price difference except compared to the ultra cheap ones, which I would definitely recommend everyone to stay away from except for the shortest term storage, less than a year at the most.

It looks like you're disagreeing, then agreeing with what I was saying there Goosey!

Data is data is data.

It does not change unless software changes it. It doesn't matter if it's audio, video or whatever.

It's all in the algorithms.

I can see how CD-R might affect it though - as all CD players have their own error-correction algorithms to deal with scratched surfaces, etc. CD-R is made from lower-grade compounds so that consumer burner lasers can cut it. If the burn isn't made correctly - say by a really cheap and nasty component in the burner - then that would cause the copy to sound different on any player.

The answer there, as with audio cassettes, is to choose a quality recoder (e.g. Pioneer) and quality media (e.g. TDK). You can currently pick up a Pioneer DVD-RW burner for under £40. I got mine with 20 complimentary DVD-Rs and a 50-pack of generic CD-Rs (I don't always use my burner for music) 

A decent DVD-player will play CD-Rs (or DVD-Rs) with WAV or even MP3 files on. I have found WAV to be superior to CDA in my DVD player as the player firmware handles that format much better.

Certif1ed wrote: It looks like you're disagreeing, then agreeing with what I was saying there Goosey! Data is data is data. It does not change unless software changes it. It doesn't matter if it's audio, video or whatever. It's all in the algorithms. I can see how CD-R might affect it though - as all CD players have their own error-correction algorithms to deal with scratched surfaces, etc. CD-R is made from lower-grade compounds so that consumer burner lasers can cut it. If the burn isn't made correctly - say by a really cheap and nasty component in the burner - then that would cause the copy to sound different on any player. The answer there, as with audio cassettes, is to choose a quality recoder (e.g. Pioneer) and quality media (e.g. TDK). You can currently pick up a Pioneer DVD-RW burner for under £40. I got mine with 20 complimentary DVD-Rs and a 50-pack of generic CD-Rs (I don't always use my burner for music)  A decent DVD-player will play CD-Rs (or DVD-Rs) with WAV or even MP3 files on. I have found WAV to be superior to CDA in my DVD player as the player firmware handles that format much better.

So basically the only difference between a £20 CDR drive and a £120 one is the quality of the components and firmware?
So the extra cost is for the robustness/reliabilty of the hardware and not for any sonic gains....

Tony R wrote: So basically the only difference between a £20 CDR drive and a £120 one is the quality of the components and firmware? So the extra cost is for the robustness/reliabilty of the hardware and not for any sonic gains....

You can't get a better burn however much you spend, but if you get a cheap drive you run the risk of getting worse burns (misburning etc.), as well as burns which are technically correct and contain all the data but can easily be misread.

In listening terms both of these amount to sonic losses but in data terms only the former is an issue, because in the second case if you rip the problematic disc again onto another disc using a quality media and a quality drive, the copy of the copy will be better than the copy. If you're burning lots of discs an expensive drive is probably still a good idea, because at least that way a year down the line you shouldn't find that half your discs are unreadable (as long as you buy quality discs as well... money, money, money!)

The-Bullet wrote: I would love to hear an engineers view on this subject. Someone who knows 1st hand how data is both read and written, and what ,if any, manipulation of this data occurs. It is a tough subject to research on. The only factors I have found is the quality of media.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org - www.hydrogenaudio.org  is the place to look for anything related to digital audio. A lot of the people who've coded CD writing stuff check on it.

I've been building radio stations for over 30 years, and although my forte is rf (dealing with the radio-frequency spectrum), most all of your radio stations in the U.S. are running on computers, live jock or not. Data is data... and no matter how you deliver it, the final sensor (the human ear) is an analog device. The basic music vending package is a standard CD...16 bit...44.1 kHz sampling rate. Assuming the recording and mastering studios did a good job on any given album, the goal is then to deliver the product to the end user with as little deviation from the original recording as possible. That final sensor is subjective, just as musical content is, so it really comes down to whatever "floats your boat." BTW, that final delivery device is analog, too (speakers)!

Professionally, we record the audio onto the hard drives in uncompressed wave format. The advent of larger hard drives several years ago allows us to store massive amounts of uncompressed audio (commercials too!). When this technology first came around (smaller hard drives), we were using a 4:1 storage compression for the music. The only real difference in the computers was multiple, high-end, pro sound cards (for overlap capability)...and now most of the popular systems use the multi i/o cards. After we go through all of that painstaking effort to insure audio integrity, we then thoroughly screw it up by running it through audio processors to make sure "we're the loudest on the dial"!

Personally, I can't tell much difference between a standard CD and a 160kbs mp3. I have noticed some differences over the years in the CD version and the vinyl version of the same stuff. Listen to the bass pedals on Firth of Fifth on CD then vinyl! My audio chain is as follows: source, passive variable attenuator, self-built, tube-type power amp, Klipschorns.

oliverstoned wrote: I'm not much surprised, they degrad the sound at the very beggining by compressing it at the "source". What a shame! "'Personally, I can't tell much difference between a standard CD and a 160kbs mp3" your system is not good enough!!

Dude...don't ever tell an electronics engineer his stuff isn't good enough...I've forgotten more of this stuff than you'll ever know...I'll put my power amp up against anything out there, and I built it myself...don't be an "equipment snob"

tube-type wrote: Dude...don't ever tell an electronics engineer his stuff isn't good enough...I've forgotten more of this stuff than you'll ever know...I'll put my power amp up against anything out there, and I built it myself...don't be an "equipment snob"

Nevertheless, there are people who can tell the difference between 320kbps .mp3 and CD (also 500kbps .ogg and CD) so somebody's got better equipment than you!

Nice stuff, Oliver... But seriously unaffordable. Sadly, the majority of my music listening occurs at my work computer. Secondly, I have a RIO Forge for workouts and bicycling. Maybe a RIO Karma is on the horizon. My third option is my truck. A Chevy S-10 with a factory CD player. Eventually I will get something better, but it works. Lastly, a cheesy double disc player in my bedroom for ******* music. (That starts with an "L" you dirty minded bastids.)  I also use the surround sound systems in either my livingroom or my music room. The music room is a bit cramped and gets dreadfully hot in the summer.