Making CD compilations

[frelo]

I have been using Musicmatch or Cooledit to make compilation CDs. I first copy the original tune to a wave file then use Musicmatch to burn the CD. The resulting CD sound quality is slightly inferior to the originals.
Is there a better way to do it?

[Extreme_Boky]

For the past 6 years I've been using SCSI cd rom + cd burner and burning copies "on the fly". The result is excellent.

The similar setup is possible with today's IDE cd roms and cd burners. There is another thing that might help - chose low burning speed. My setup allows only for 4X - being so old. The funny thing is that I had to go SCSI to obtain 4X speed - with IDE I could get only 2X at that time!

Regards,
Extreme_Boky

[pburke]

extract with a better tool than musicmatch. Exact Audio Copy is a free download and there's nothing that works better. Then use any audio burning package that can use WAV files to burn the CD. should sound at least as good as the original if you burn at the lowest possible burn speed of your burner. Try black CDs - on some transports the black media seems to deliver better results than regular CD-Rs.

If Exact Audio Copy is too difficult for you, try Apple's ITunes (for PC as well) - it has a very good extraction engine and a much better user interface.

Peter

[analog_sa]

Exact Audio Copy is a free download and there's nothing that works better.

I agree. Sometime ago i compared several methods of extraction and EAC was audibly and objectively the best. Unfortunately none of the copied CDs sound anything like the originals. I've tried a wide variety of scsi and ide burners and while producing different results none are perfect. It may be the blanks or extra jitter courtesy of the PC environment, i don't know.

[Peter Daniel]

I'm using external Pioneer (for Audio) burner, and with a simple method I can "cheat" the recognition system in that burner, allowing me to use computer CDRs (not for Audio). I compared at least 10 different blanks, and each one sounded different after recording. Some were closer to the original, some were quite different. None sounded exactly the same, but I found a certain brand that was actually quite good (Princo). While slightly different than the original, I'm not shure if worse. The source player also makes a difference.

[Sjef]

When I first installed my CD burner (an old HP one) some years ago the quality of copied CD's was far inferior to the original. After messing around with the order of the IDE connections between Harddrive, CDROM drive and the burner the copies know sound as good as the original. It is worth it to try

[Jean]

Originally posted by Peter Daniel
I'm using external Pioneer (for Audio) burner, and with a simple method I can "cheat" the recognition system in that burner, allowing me to use computer CDRs (not for Audio). I compared at least 10 different blanks, and each one sounded different after recording. Some were closer to the original, some were quite different. None sounded exactly the same, but I found a certain brand that was actually quite good (Princo). While slightly different than the original, I'm not shure if worse. The source player also makes a difference.

Peter, how do you explain the difference in sound between different CDR media ? They are burned exactly the same way, it's either burned w/o errors or not. Have you done some testing, please give us details ...

[pburke]

Originally posted by Peter Daniel
I'm using external Pioneer (for Audio) burner, and with a simple method I can "cheat" the recognition system in that burner, allowing me to use computer CDRs (not for Audio). I compared at least 10 different blanks, and each one sounded different after recording. Some were closer to the original, some were quite different. None sounded exactly the same, but I found a certain brand that was actually quite good (Princo). While slightly different than the original, I'm not shure if worse. The source player also makes a difference.

you are bound to get copies of various quality levels with this real-time process. There's no chance for error correction. The only way to get close to a decent digital dupe unless you have a perfect master and zero jitter in your rig is to do it outside of audio components and treat the CD as digital data. During extraction to WAV file and cue sheet, EAC reads each section of the CD at leat 5 times, and if it finds a read that varies from the previous reads, it repeats this process up to 80+ times to then statistically get right down to the most likely data that may be there on damaged CD surface. As long as CDs are not damaged, EAC usually cruises through the extraction without those extra retires, and each extraction if done many times in a row is binary identical. There is no SPDIF, no buffer issues, nothing happens in real-time. On a good drive this actually goes faster than real-time.

the write then comes from a WAV file in a second step. An external tweaked writer (isloated on roller bearings, sandbox, etc, separate power supply from PC, damped internally with caulk, better power supply capacitors, - you define the limit), written at that writer's most compatible speed with your playback device (in my case 1X was great for my previous transport, now I use 4X and get identical results. Higher than that still degrades quality), to black media will result in most cases to copies that sound better than the original. , especially if the original happens to be a poor pressing late in the run of a particular master. It's quite the same as in the vinyl days. Some master CDs sound as good as the dupe, while in other cases the dupe will amaze you with a dramatic improvement in sound quality.

The effect of how much better CD-Rs can sound again will depend on how good your playback transport is. A crappy master will sound much better on a high-end transport, diminishing the effect of the entire copy process. I used to dupe every new CD right when I got it, but since I upgraded my transport recently, I have not felt the urgent need to do this. Basically, the better your playback transport, the less you need to worry about all this duping for quality gain, at least that's been my experience between $500 players and $2000+ modded transports. At the low end you can get quite some gains from the above process.

If you have never tried the EAC method, you should compare it to your current rig. I'd be interested in hearing what you come up with, because sometimes things aren't as logical as they may seem and who knows, maybe your approach is better than the whole EAC process.

Peter

[pburke]

Originally posted by Jean



Peter, how do you explain the difference in sound between different CDR media ? They are burned exactly the same way, it's either burned w/o errors or not. Have you done some testing, please give us details ...

the CD may be exactly the same, but the issue is how the transport reads the dupe. burn speeds, media reflectivity, media dye colors, all that become an issue on an audio transport (unlike when used as a PC data disc where data structures have much more error correction build in than the redbook format). An audio transport reads the redbook CD in real-time and if there are issues in data retrieval, it can only correct it once, as it must go on.

It is quite an established fact that different CD-R media, even if written to from the same master WAV file on the same burning rig, will produce different playback quality. Check out this link:

http://www.genesisloudspeakers.com/w...0ver%203.1.pdf

caution - they felt like putting a huge logo into the PDF. best saved to disk and then read locally. Around page 20 they are talking about the different media types in their tests.

Peter