http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f133/yes-virgina-there-difference-usb-cables-417785/
Somebody should help these people.
Somebody should help these people.
All I've got to say on that is:
As for long term data backup files and for music, don't put CD blanks into a DVD writer. Use a CD writer.
This hardware:
External enclosure and Sony 52 CD writer
Newegg.com - SYBA SD-U2PLA-525 Rugged aluminum 5.25" USB2.0 B External Enclosure, NEC Chipset
Add big rubber stick-on feet to enhance tolerances.
In our application, you may unplug the fan.
Sony CRX220A 52x 24x 52x Internal IDE CD-RW Drive Beige - eBay (item 200509793781 end time Dec-16-10 09:28:42 PST)
Can make CDs that are more hardy and more compatible, so that should play back with a lot less noise, on a wider variety of discs with a wider variety of players.
Marginal CDs have poor tolerances and either make noise or engage correction means in CD players. The simple fix is. . . just don't make marginal CDs. 🙂
Although the problem is much worse with DVD players, it does exist with CD players. Trying a real CD-Only Writer and/or different brands of blank CD's is the simple solution.
I wonder how many people with CD noise had used a Lite-On manufactured DVD writer? Those will make tiny little flippy sounds on all your music, make your car player skip, and make correcting CD players muffle to the same rhythm as the noise.
If you put a CD like that into an analytical-purpose sort of audiophile system that's designed to be "on the verge" (not pleasant lies, not coddling, not comfort) so that it makes any differences as noticeable as possible, then yes, I'm sure there would be an extra-noticeable unpleasant racket.
As for long term data backup files and for music, don't put CD blanks into a DVD writer. Use a CD writer.
This hardware:
External enclosure and Sony 52 CD writer
Newegg.com - SYBA SD-U2PLA-525 Rugged aluminum 5.25" USB2.0 B External Enclosure, NEC Chipset
Add big rubber stick-on feet to enhance tolerances.
In our application, you may unplug the fan.
Sony CRX220A 52x 24x 52x Internal IDE CD-RW Drive Beige - eBay (item 200509793781 end time Dec-16-10 09:28:42 PST)
Can make CDs that are more hardy and more compatible, so that should play back with a lot less noise, on a wider variety of discs with a wider variety of players.
Marginal CDs have poor tolerances and either make noise or engage correction means in CD players. The simple fix is. . . just don't make marginal CDs. 🙂
Although the problem is much worse with DVD players, it does exist with CD players. Trying a real CD-Only Writer and/or different brands of blank CD's is the simple solution.
I wonder how many people with CD noise had used a Lite-On manufactured DVD writer? Those will make tiny little flippy sounds on all your music, make your car player skip, and make correcting CD players muffle to the same rhythm as the noise.
If you put a CD like that into an analytical-purpose sort of audiophile system that's designed to be "on the verge" (not pleasant lies, not coddling, not comfort) so that it makes any differences as noticeable as possible, then yes, I'm sure there would be an extra-noticeable unpleasant racket.
the usb cable one is hilarious to me. so if they used an usb connected hard drive and stored a word file on it, they would expect the file to get corrupted or its data mis spelled (a certain brightness in the mid spelling of a word file anyone?)....
ok, i know this isnt apples to apples since audio uses the isochronous mode without retransmits but i doubt you will see many fully dropped packets unless you are in an very, very noisy electrical environment.
this is hogwash. there is plenty of crc protection in the usb standard and a cable for usb wont alter the data for a single or multiple bit error and ony completely lost packets can be heard.
if cables could alter digital data content wouldnt it be altered for all data? you would have your error console in windows or mac full about errors in usb leading to reduced transfer speeds if you had that much noise in your electrical environment, not to mention all that induced energy would probably alter the sound in your speakers to....
btw. i am an expert in this field. ive been part of drafting this standard as well as many other digital signalling standards. if the reader dont believe that usb implements crc to perform error correction, or that the cable somehow could convince the hardware tranciever that its crc logic should not apply then id suggest that reader believes in magic.
cable companies are of course preying on these people and tries their best to take their brand values from the analog realm to the digital realm. but the rules are very, very different in the digital world and one of the tings we dont allow in the digital world is that transmission systems cant alter digital payloads (content). sure we may drop a packet if there is too much noise on the line but for a human to hear that there has to be plenty of losses wich the reciever couldnt correct and you would see other problems in your usb system. good cables are useful but the standard is pretty dictating for what a good cable must be able to do.
for those scientifically inclined i put forth the usb error correction part of the standard for the usb signalling chip to the usb recieving chip:
Cyclic redundancy checks (CRCs) are used to protect all non-PID fields in token and data packets. In this context, these fields are considered to be protected fields. The PID is not included in the CRC check of a packet containing a CRC. All CRCs are generated over their respective fields in the transmitter before bit stuffing is performed. Similarly, CRCs are decoded in the receiver after stuffed bits have been removed. Token and data packet CRCs provide 100% coverage for all single- and double-bit errors. A failed CRC is considered to indicate that one or more of the protected fields is corrupted and causes the receiver to ignore those fields and, in most cases, the entire packet. For CRC generation and checking, the shift registers in the generator and checker are seeded with an allones pattern. For each data bit sent or received, the high order bit of the current remainder is XORed with the data bit and then the remainder is shifted left one bit and the low-order bit set to zero. If the result of that XOR is one, then the remainder is XORed with the generator polynomial. When the last bit of the checked field is sent, the CRC in the generator is inverted and sent to the checker MSb first. When the last bit of the CRC is received by the checker and no errors have occurred, the remainder will be equal to the polynomial residual. A CRC error exists if the computed checksum remainder at the end of a packet reception does not match the residual. Bit stuffing requirements must be met for the CRC, and this includes the need to insert a zero at the end of a CRC if the preceding six bits were all ones
ok, i know this isnt apples to apples since audio uses the isochronous mode without retransmits but i doubt you will see many fully dropped packets unless you are in an very, very noisy electrical environment.
this is hogwash. there is plenty of crc protection in the usb standard and a cable for usb wont alter the data for a single or multiple bit error and ony completely lost packets can be heard.
if cables could alter digital data content wouldnt it be altered for all data? you would have your error console in windows or mac full about errors in usb leading to reduced transfer speeds if you had that much noise in your electrical environment, not to mention all that induced energy would probably alter the sound in your speakers to....
btw. i am an expert in this field. ive been part of drafting this standard as well as many other digital signalling standards. if the reader dont believe that usb implements crc to perform error correction, or that the cable somehow could convince the hardware tranciever that its crc logic should not apply then id suggest that reader believes in magic.
cable companies are of course preying on these people and tries their best to take their brand values from the analog realm to the digital realm. but the rules are very, very different in the digital world and one of the tings we dont allow in the digital world is that transmission systems cant alter digital payloads (content). sure we may drop a packet if there is too much noise on the line but for a human to hear that there has to be plenty of losses wich the reciever couldnt correct and you would see other problems in your usb system. good cables are useful but the standard is pretty dictating for what a good cable must be able to do.
for those scientifically inclined i put forth the usb error correction part of the standard for the usb signalling chip to the usb recieving chip:
Cyclic redundancy checks (CRCs) are used to protect all non-PID fields in token and data packets. In this context, these fields are considered to be protected fields. The PID is not included in the CRC check of a packet containing a CRC. All CRCs are generated over their respective fields in the transmitter before bit stuffing is performed. Similarly, CRCs are decoded in the receiver after stuffed bits have been removed. Token and data packet CRCs provide 100% coverage for all single- and double-bit errors. A failed CRC is considered to indicate that one or more of the protected fields is corrupted and causes the receiver to ignore those fields and, in most cases, the entire packet. For CRC generation and checking, the shift registers in the generator and checker are seeded with an allones pattern. For each data bit sent or received, the high order bit of the current remainder is XORed with the data bit and then the remainder is shifted left one bit and the low-order bit set to zero. If the result of that XOR is one, then the remainder is XORed with the generator polynomial. When the last bit of the checked field is sent, the CRC in the generator is inverted and sent to the checker MSb first. When the last bit of the CRC is received by the checker and no errors have occurred, the remainder will be equal to the polynomial residual. A CRC error exists if the computed checksum remainder at the end of a packet reception does not match the residual. Bit stuffing requirements must be met for the CRC, and this includes the need to insert a zero at the end of a CRC if the preceding six bits were all ones
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Why? In case that you didn't know, any DVD-Writer has a separate laser for writting the CD's (different wavelenght, different optical aperture). Also, the rotational stability and tracking required for DVD are better than the ones required to write a CD. So the optical/mechanical assamby is at lest as good.
OK, we might get all the bits that we need. But do we get them IN TIME? I mean jitter, compared with SPDIF, IEEE1394 or the original I2S signal.
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Track record, history, and physical evidence.
At least as good??? Quality varies extremely, much for the purpose of profit margin. If it works even slightly, its probably for sale.
Most DVD writer technologies have more trouble with compatibilities between various discs and various players. This also applies to some CD discs written with some brands of DVD writers. This problem is less likely to happen with a CD writer. Actually, the problem is unlikely to happen to a CD writer.
So, better odds of success would have to be the answer to that one.
In additional a well written disc can stand up to abuse better, such as car use. That is my own purpose for the Sony 52 sitting on my desk. It also serves long term backup needs, since its output Has Shown greater durability beyond any question. CDfreaks website has more information on the topic.
In the efforts from most manufactures to make a substantial looking product for the least money, you'll find many somewhat defective but still marginally working USB cables. The exact same is true for internal drive cables like SATA and IDE.
Better USB cables are easy to spot. If the manufacturer actually cares about data integrity, the USB cable will have a ferrite. This clamps some of your signal but it clamps more noise than signal in theory. Its probably unnecessary, but I tested it.
Using a simple hard drive speed test to an external hard drive, I got 27 megabytes per second with the ferrite cable and somewhat less performance with other cables. The CD won't need that performance; however, I'm just guessing that you'd probably prefer a good cable. 🙂 The difference is a few cents.
So, on my messages for this thread, I'm thinking "audiophile" and what will match with that, and what won't. In a system symmetry approach, you just want to try to do a little better. . . on every piece so that there's not a weak link.
The majority of this concern is manufacturing variance and muntzing. Muntzing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But its also a concern that CD discs are deprecated and supporting them as well as possible isn't a goal for the majority of manufacturers today, in 2010.
However, during the timeframe that the Sony 52x writer was manufactured, supporting CD writing was a primary goal. That is a major difference.
Sorry about the wordy.
More simply put:
I'm sure they are many known good combination of DVD writer with a CD disc; however, if you're taking a shot in the dark then. . . please don't expect that random dvd writers burning random cd blanks played in random players is going to work even reasonably. If you open up to that much variety, some of it will fail.
Somehow, its necessary to use "known good" to put the odds in your favor.
More simply put:
I'm sure they are many known good combination of DVD writer with a CD disc; however, if you're taking a shot in the dark then. . . please don't expect that random dvd writers burning random cd blanks played in random players is going to work even reasonably. If you open up to that much variety, some of it will fail.
Somehow, its necessary to use "known good" to put the odds in your favor.
this is the isochronous modes entire purpose.mpackets are delivered on time through time based domain reservations for bandwidth. you will always get packages on time, its one of the true guarantees in this protocol.
yeah right.... 😀
im far more of a cynic than you aer. i am fairly convinced that mfgs who put beads on their cables are far more afraid of emissions from the cable than shielding. in fact i think this has far more to do with fcc part 15 compliance than signal integrity.... and im sure vendors wouldlove for you to pay for this compliqnce as a benefit... 😉
also,you have some seriously impressive hard drives. generally its hard to squeeze much more than eight to ten megs per sec out of a consumer class diskdrive, even when doing full on sequential io's. you not only managed that, you got twentyseven mb reading and twentyseven writing! that is seriously impressive and borders on the impossible, unless you where bursting small amounts into disk buffers. either way its a bit of pointless test on usb since you entered a special usb signalling mode called high speed mode which relies on reduced signal amplitudes in exchange for higher signal to signal transmissions rates.
but your audio stream will rarely or should i say never enter highspeed signalling, you will sit in the isochronous protocol and need maybe four words worth of bandwidth at two hundred khz or so ~ maybe one megqbyte worth of datatransfer (24 bits of data sent at 192khz rate worst case)... hardly high speed signalling even if you quadrupled that bandwidth. isochronous mode will at best use up 60% of the bandwidth in the cable. but typical is a few percent, and here im assuming usb 2.0 is what you are using.
if youreallyvwoory about performance, just use shorter cables.... it will give you much better signal transfer characteristics and reduce retransmits from errors etc...
usb signalling isnt somewhat sophisticated and employs different transfer modes depending on usage and speeds requested, i think youll be fine with regular cables certified to the standard.
im far more of a cynic than you aer. i am fairly convinced that mfgs who put beads on their cables are far more afraid of emissions from the cable than shielding. in fact i think this has far more to do with fcc part 15 compliance than signal integrity.... and im sure vendors wouldlove for you to pay for this compliqnce as a benefit... 😉
also,you have some seriously impressive hard drives. generally its hard to squeeze much more than eight to ten megs per sec out of a consumer class diskdrive, even when doing full on sequential io's. you not only managed that, you got twentyseven mb reading and twentyseven writing! that is seriously impressive and borders on the impossible, unless you where bursting small amounts into disk buffers. either way its a bit of pointless test on usb since you entered a special usb signalling mode called high speed mode which relies on reduced signal amplitudes in exchange for higher signal to signal transmissions rates.
but your audio stream will rarely or should i say never enter highspeed signalling, you will sit in the isochronous protocol and need maybe four words worth of bandwidth at two hundred khz or so ~ maybe one megqbyte worth of datatransfer (24 bits of data sent at 192khz rate worst case)... hardly high speed signalling even if you quadrupled that bandwidth. isochronous mode will at best use up 60% of the bandwidth in the cable. but typical is a few percent, and here im assuming usb 2.0 is what you are using.
if youreallyvwoory about performance, just use shorter cables.... it will give you much better signal transfer characteristics and reduce retransmits from errors etc...
usb signalling isnt somewhat sophisticated and employs different transfer modes depending on usage and speeds requested, i think youll be fine with regular cables certified to the standard.
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Well, it does seem odd that muffling some signal with a magnet choke would be beneficial to the speed; however, maybe it removes more unintentional noise than it does signal. One would hope. 🙂
The Rosewill R2 that was used in that 27 megabytes per second over USB example, is "touchy" about its USB cable. Recent production has begun shipping with ferrite choke cables, and that has decreased returns.
The power cord also has a ferrite, and that definitely does work for cleaner power. So does knots in the power cord, but that looks ridiculous. 🙂 Yes, my 5-1/4" CD writer's enclosure has a few evenly spaced knots in the power cord. I wasn't sure if the bargain basement design of the enclosure or its power supply had any effective RF filtering, but there was no need to guess.
When all is said and done, it seems that digital needs a very definite signal in order to make zero or one, not 0.58943923847, which would be a noise (weak bit? weak byte? can't remember the term for that noise).
GRC SpinRite, its a program designed to remove the weak bit (weak byte?) noises from the hard drive, causing it to store only 0 and 1 after its maintenance cycle has run, usually overnight. Well used hard drives get this same problem. Likewise, CD writers, especially DVD writers can occasionally burn a too small hole, causing error correction to either temporarily muffle or emit a little "flip" sound during playback, that's barely noticeable. . . except on audiophile equipment designed to highlight differences, and then that's really an obnoxious standout difference in an otherwise near-perfect presentation.
Single drive speeds while directly connected to SATA may go up to 145 megabytes per second.
Tools:
Advanced Format Alignment Tool for Windows XP era operating systems
Photo showing backwards compatibility jumper for SATA 150 controllers (may not be necessary to use a jumper)
Examples:
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD322GJ/U 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Of course, at some point, you'll be wanting a decent quality cable. Because the data cables are bottom dollar components (no matter what you're charged for it), there's much variety, most of which is not optimal.
P.S.
Back on topic of getting your favorite old CD writer connected. . . since the 40 wire IDE standard is now long since incompatible, then a near optimal choice is an external enclosure capable of both USB and Firewire. Its not actually necessary to use the Firewire, but you'd like the controller better on that sort of enclosure, because its built for speed and thus you'd have a steady buffer when writing discs, surprisingly, even when using USB. 🙂
You'd still have to guess a bit when shopping, but maybe that tip will "improve the odds" much closer to probable. Actually, the whole point of using a dedicated CD-only writer would be to improve the odds. 🙂 Just make sure its capable of the new "700" CD discs. see CDfreaks.com forum for more information and any necessary flash rom updates (that should be done before using an external enclosure). For reference, can't find drive, weird buffer run-out behavior (could make cd noise), and appearing, disappearing, reappearing in "My Computer" is probably a bad USB cable.
P.P.S. (the point)
Also reference CDfreaks.com forum for the common problem of finding a CD blank that is excellently compatible with both writer and player--a very common problem that's laborious to solve. But, solve that problem and you'll stop the playback noises (from error correction muffling, or lacking error correction brashness/flippy sound). That particular problem and the many wild explanations for it, is probably the cause of this thread. Its data integrity whereby half measures are noises, especially on digital. 😉
Ferrite around the cable only affects common mode signals, so common mode noise and interference is attenuated, but the desired signal should be unaffected.
Looping the cable a couple of times through a ferrite ring should be good too.
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