Sound quality of commercial audio CD

[sianturi]

'bout a year ago, I bought Josh Groban's CD (his first album). I bought the CD in my country (original CD, not pirated one ).

When I listen to my favorite song ("Canto Alla Vita"), I heard some kinda high pitch noise at the end of the song. And this happen only to this one song.

Have you guys had this kinda experience before? I often experience this kinda thing when I write my favorite songs to a CD on a PC. But high pitch noise on commercial audio CD???

I know that a commercial recording is distributed through the authorized/licenced distributor in each country. Could it because the replication error by the distributor?

Btw, how does the CD audio copy works on PC? When I made an audio copy, the result could not be the same as the original. So, I guess audio CD copy on a PC is not writing the original bit information, but writing the bit information of the decoded analog signal played (and this is where the noise comes).

[Mudge]

A PC copy should be as bit perfect as the reading and writing drives can make it, unless something goes horribly wrong there should be no analogue stage at all.

If you get extra noise or artifacts from a CD-R or more likely CD-RW then this is a good sign that the transport of your audio player isn't upto the job. Which is a shame as there are some good sounding transports (yes, you read that right) that cannot read writeable CDs.

[Hybrid fourdoor]

I have owned three copies of The Cure's Disintigration (mainly from me misplacing the disc...now I copy all my discs first and use the copies).

Anyways track 3 Closedown on every single disc has had a high pitched sound from begining to end, it starts up as soon as the song begins, but its not part of the song. Its like in the 10k+ range.

My theory is that its supposed to mess with your head somehow, like maybe make you pay attention more or something. Outlandish? Yes. Succesful? Even more so.

[analog_sa]

When I made an audio copy, the result could not be the same as the original. So, I guess audio CD copy on a PC is not writing the original bit information

The intricacies of making bit-true copies have been discussed here before. It will depend on your CD ROM and the extraction software. Making a bit-true copy is not difficult with a little effort but will not guarantee that the copy will sound the same as the original. The final result will depend on jitter and optical qualty of the CDR.

[Circlotron]

I did a spectral analysis on some Enya track and I was surprised to find a low level spike at 15,750Hz. That's 1/2 VGA scan frequency isn't it? Presumably from in the studio.

[Frank Berry]

"I did a spectral analysis on some Enya track and I was surprised to find a low level spike at 15,750Hz. That's 1/2 VGA scan frequency isn't it? Presumably from in the studio."

15,750 is also the horizontal scan frequency in the U.S.
Someone watching television during the session perhaps?

[dmitriy167]

So that's what annoys me so much when I watch TV. I swore I heard extremely high pitched noise on my TV, but everyone told me it was in my head. In recording, too, I have heard some songs with such artifacts. However, I can't imagine why a producer would want that in there, though. I guess that the industry is aiming at an audience of Average Joes and Janes when it comes to listening, and not people like the kind on this forum. Too bad for us.
-peace