Boxed sets are so much more than just the music that they contain. They are testaments of passion and respect reserved for historically important topics. The 240 page book contains many exclusive photos and interviews. Warner Bros. has released two versions of this collection. One version of the boxed set contains a USB drive in the shape of the Warner Bros. logo and contains 320 songs. It is not immediately obvious what file format or resolution has been used to encode these files. The other version contains 10 CDs which have 199 songs. Would it have killed them to have shoe-horned in one more song?
Showing posts with label CD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CD. Show all posts
Friday, December 12, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Compromise worthy of a politician
It seems that there is no end in sight when it comes to the battle of which sounds better, the CD or the record. There are those who feel that CD’s will never be able to sound like a record. There are others who ask why would anyone want them to. Then there’s Aleks Kolkowski, with an idea worthy of a politician. He offered attendees of Manchester Futuresonic 2008 Festival a 45 rpm single that was cut onto a useless CD or DVD. Even going as far as to offer people the chance to bring a WAV file of their choice. Now if only useless old laserdiscs could enjoy the same “treatment” we could have some 33 1/3s as well. Many vinylphiles will enjoy the irony, yet cringe at the thought of what playing one of these would do to an expensive phono cartridge.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Clarifying the situation
I often tell friends and fellow audiophiles that I consider myself to be an open minded skeptic. I approach all new tweaks with a certain amount of skepticism but also with the view that it is possible that they do make a difference. The Bedini Dual Beam Clarifier was no different. Bedini’s contention is that the polymers of the CD hold a static electric charge. These static electric charges on the disc surface make it harder for the laser of a CD player to read the data, forcing the CD player to employ more error correction. Bedini suggests that both sides of the disc be treated for best results.
Before discussing the results a brief discussion on methodology is in order. There are a number of discs in my collection of which I have doubles. I chose discs where both copies had been purchased extremely close together with respect to time and also chose title that had small production runs. Thus minimizing the chance that they came from different production runs, or even entirely different production plants. I listened to them and the better sounding of the two (There always was one.) became the control disc (the one which would not be clarified) this put the Clarifier at a slight disadvantage. Then the worse sounding of the discs would have both sides of the disc clarified. It is well established that when presented with a choice between “A” and “B” people will have a slight natural tendency to chose “B” when things are close. In order to combat this bias I settled on an “A”-”B”-”A” format with “A” being the un clarified disc and “B” being the clarified disc. So that switches could be done as quickly as possible I clarified the “B” disc before starting to play “A.” While “B” was waiting to be played it was set on a ceramic coffee mug data side up, not in the CD case. The reason for this was that I felt that there was a possibility that the plastic in the case might affect the CD adversely, reintroducing the static charge that the Bedini was designed to remove. Ceramic is considered to be a great insulator and was therefore ideal for the task.
The first disc up was Ron Geesin/Roger Waters-”Music From The Body”, a soundtrack for a documentary on the workings of the human body. The last track on the disc, “Give Birth To A Smile” has guest musicians David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason in addition to Roger Waters. This makes it a Pink Floyd track as far as I’m concerned. The clarified CD had more impact to the bass guitar. The sibilance of Roger Waters vocals were also much more natural on the clarified disc. As the song fades out the female back up singers sing the chorus “Give Birth To A Smile.” On the un clarified disc the song ends on the word “birth” whereas on the clarified disc the listener could clearly hear “to.”
Next up was “Candy Coated Valentine” from Robinella and the CC Stringband’s self titled debut. On the non clarified disc the bass sounded thick and congested and the mandolin lacked a certain pluckiness and body. At the end of the number there is also some type of creaking (A chair maybe?) which is completely inaudible on the on the non clarified disc. The clarification process also gave a greater sense of sound staging depth to the performance. In particular the vocals and the instruments had better separation. The clarified disc also had more rhythmic dive in the bass.
The last track on the formal investigation was Robert Plant’s “All The King’s Horses” from his album “Mighty Rearranger” Again sibilance was much more clean on the clarified disc compared to it’s non clarified counterpart. On the non clarified disc an oddity occurs in the chorus when Robert Plant double tracks his vocals in order to sing harmony with himself. For whatever reason his vocals pull very slightly to the left of center. This does not occur on the clarified disc. There were some subtle electric guitar parts that became much easier to follow with the clarified CD. Again on this selection the vocals seem better separated from the instrumentation.
The Bedini consistently increases the separation between the vocals and backing instruments on every CD that I clarified. The Dual Beam also removed unwanted sibilance on all clarified CDs. Cymbals also just sound more metallic and had more shimmer around them, but this was by no means extra brightness. Many CDs that had always sounded a bit bright went through the Clarifier and were better for it. For what ever reason CDs that were from Columbia Record Club benefited disproportionately from being treated. Sheryl Crow’s “Tuesday Night Music Club” is a prime example of the Columbia phenomena . It’s a personal favorite that was sounding a bit flat, compressed, and digital lately. I had been thinking of buying a proper (non record club) copy now that may not be necessary. Whether this was because of some inherent flaw in their manufacturing process or because they are some of the oldest disc in my collection it is impossible to say. Although I may investigate this further in the future.
Before discussing the results a brief discussion on methodology is in order. There are a number of discs in my collection of which I have doubles. I chose discs where both copies had been purchased extremely close together with respect to time and also chose title that had small production runs. Thus minimizing the chance that they came from different production runs, or even entirely different production plants. I listened to them and the better sounding of the two (There always was one.) became the control disc (the one which would not be clarified) this put the Clarifier at a slight disadvantage. Then the worse sounding of the discs would have both sides of the disc clarified. It is well established that when presented with a choice between “A” and “B” people will have a slight natural tendency to chose “B” when things are close. In order to combat this bias I settled on an “A”-”B”-”A” format with “A” being the un clarified disc and “B” being the clarified disc. So that switches could be done as quickly as possible I clarified the “B” disc before starting to play “A.” While “B” was waiting to be played it was set on a ceramic coffee mug data side up, not in the CD case. The reason for this was that I felt that there was a possibility that the plastic in the case might affect the CD adversely, reintroducing the static charge that the Bedini was designed to remove. Ceramic is considered to be a great insulator and was therefore ideal for the task.
The first disc up was Ron Geesin/Roger Waters-”Music From The Body”, a soundtrack for a documentary on the workings of the human body. The last track on the disc, “Give Birth To A Smile” has guest musicians David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason in addition to Roger Waters. This makes it a Pink Floyd track as far as I’m concerned. The clarified CD had more impact to the bass guitar. The sibilance of Roger Waters vocals were also much more natural on the clarified disc. As the song fades out the female back up singers sing the chorus “Give Birth To A Smile.” On the un clarified disc the song ends on the word “birth” whereas on the clarified disc the listener could clearly hear “to.”
Next up was “Candy Coated Valentine” from Robinella and the CC Stringband’s self titled debut. On the non clarified disc the bass sounded thick and congested and the mandolin lacked a certain pluckiness and body. At the end of the number there is also some type of creaking (A chair maybe?) which is completely inaudible on the on the non clarified disc. The clarification process also gave a greater sense of sound staging depth to the performance. In particular the vocals and the instruments had better separation. The clarified disc also had more rhythmic dive in the bass.
The last track on the formal investigation was Robert Plant’s “All The King’s Horses” from his album “Mighty Rearranger” Again sibilance was much more clean on the clarified disc compared to it’s non clarified counterpart. On the non clarified disc an oddity occurs in the chorus when Robert Plant double tracks his vocals in order to sing harmony with himself. For whatever reason his vocals pull very slightly to the left of center. This does not occur on the clarified disc. There were some subtle electric guitar parts that became much easier to follow with the clarified CD. Again on this selection the vocals seem better separated from the instrumentation.
The Bedini consistently increases the separation between the vocals and backing instruments on every CD that I clarified. The Dual Beam also removed unwanted sibilance on all clarified CDs. Cymbals also just sound more metallic and had more shimmer around them, but this was by no means extra brightness. Many CDs that had always sounded a bit bright went through the Clarifier and were better for it. For what ever reason CDs that were from Columbia Record Club benefited disproportionately from being treated. Sheryl Crow’s “Tuesday Night Music Club” is a prime example of the Columbia phenomena . It’s a personal favorite that was sounding a bit flat, compressed, and digital lately. I had been thinking of buying a proper (non record club) copy now that may not be necessary. Whether this was because of some inherent flaw in their manufacturing process or because they are some of the oldest disc in my collection it is impossible to say. Although I may investigate this further in the future.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Perfect Sound?
Originally Written: Sunday, May 29, 2005 and Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Perfect Sound Forever? This was Sony's marketing slogan for CD way back in 1982.
PERFECT SOUND FOREVER MY A$$!
Perfect Sound Forever? This was Sony's marketing slogan for CD way back in 1982.
PERFECT SOUND FOREVER MY A$$!
The Pink Floyd Division Bell that I recently purchaced sounds absolutely FANTASTIC. Much better than the copy that I checked out from the library recently. Neither of them are remasters so there is little reason for this to be the case. But as I have hinted at recently digital isn't perfect as most would have you believe. Here comes a bold statement: Different pressings of the same CD from the SAME digital master sound DIFFERENT.
I believe that it has to do with digital jitter inherent in the CD manufacturing process. As mentioned in an earlier post Robert Harley in his book "The Complete Guide to High-End Audio" defines digital jitter as follows: "Timing variations in the clock that synchronizes events in a digital audio system. The clock could be in an analog-to-digital converter that controls when each audio sample is taken. Of more interest to audiophile is clock jitter in digital audio reproduction; the clock controls the timing of the reconstruction of digital audio samples into an analog signal. Jitter degrades musical fidelity."
In short all the ones and zeros are right but the clock that tells the digital to analog converter in a CD player WHEN to decode them is wrong. An interesting side effect is that if you choose good CD-R media and burn at the right speed your copy will have lower jitter because the CD burner in computers doesn't copy the original flawed word clock. The pits on the CD will also be more uniform in size than a mass manufactured CD, further reducing digital jitter. All of this can be measured, so I'm not NUTS. Well maybe I am but not because any of this, although all of this maybe driving me in that direction. One could make the argument that none of this is audible, but I can hear it easily on my system. Stand alone burners for music have none of these benefits because they copy this flawed clock information. In short the burned copy will sound BETTER than the original. FUCK time to burn my entire collection of CDs. I'm going to be very busy. Talk to all of you in a decade or so.
I should probably just watch "Austin Powers: Goldmember" and try to forget about all of this for a while. WAIT! From which pressing plant did this copy come? What is the plot of E1, E2, and E3 errors. What does the jitter spectrum analysis look like?
Below are four graphs that address my favorite topic of digital jitter and the possibility of a digital copy being either better or worse than the original. Four record speeds were checked 4x, 10x, and 16x. 24x was not tested as this speed introduces audible distortion. For the sake of the sanity of everyone involved I only posted the jitter and error rate graphs for the original and 10x. 10x had significantly lower jitter and a lower error rate as well. Why are errors on the original NOT present on the copy? Simple a CD-Rom in a computer will read data many more times than a CD player. On one of those passes it will most likely recover the data, a CD player will simply give up and resort to it's error correction algorithm. Tomorrow Chris will bring me all four copies and I will listen to see what audible effect all of this has. I know that in a true scientific test I would have done the listening before Chris did his analysis but time simply didn't allow this to occur. You can click on each graph to see it in more detail. Please do not take these results as universal. The results are dependent on the CD-ROM drive and the way that it interacts with the media chosen.
10X Error Graph
Here is the 10x speed graph. The C1 average errors per second average to 0.4 per second with a maximum of 10 per second. Total errors of 1656
Original Error Graph
Here is the error rate of the original. The average error rate per second is 1.4 with a maximum error rate of 25.0 per second for a total of 5736.
Jitter of 10X
This is a copy done at 10x speed. Notice how much closer the line tracks the 0.0 line and how much less jagged it is.
Jitter of Original
This is the jitter of the original CD. The Closer to the 0.0 the red line is the better. The flatter the red line is the better. This CD red line is closer to the 0.01 line than the 0.00 line and is pretty jagged.
I believe that it has to do with digital jitter inherent in the CD manufacturing process. As mentioned in an earlier post Robert Harley in his book "The Complete Guide to High-End Audio" defines digital jitter as follows: "Timing variations in the clock that synchronizes events in a digital audio system. The clock could be in an analog-to-digital converter that controls when each audio sample is taken. Of more interest to audiophile is clock jitter in digital audio reproduction; the clock controls the timing of the reconstruction of digital audio samples into an analog signal. Jitter degrades musical fidelity."
In short all the ones and zeros are right but the clock that tells the digital to analog converter in a CD player WHEN to decode them is wrong. An interesting side effect is that if you choose good CD-R media and burn at the right speed your copy will have lower jitter because the CD burner in computers doesn't copy the original flawed word clock. The pits on the CD will also be more uniform in size than a mass manufactured CD, further reducing digital jitter. All of this can be measured, so I'm not NUTS. Well maybe I am but not because any of this, although all of this maybe driving me in that direction. One could make the argument that none of this is audible, but I can hear it easily on my system. Stand alone burners for music have none of these benefits because they copy this flawed clock information. In short the burned copy will sound BETTER than the original. FUCK time to burn my entire collection of CDs. I'm going to be very busy. Talk to all of you in a decade or so.
I should probably just watch "Austin Powers: Goldmember" and try to forget about all of this for a while. WAIT! From which pressing plant did this copy come? What is the plot of E1, E2, and E3 errors. What does the jitter spectrum analysis look like?
Below are four graphs that address my favorite topic of digital jitter and the possibility of a digital copy being either better or worse than the original. Four record speeds were checked 4x, 10x, and 16x. 24x was not tested as this speed introduces audible distortion. For the sake of the sanity of everyone involved I only posted the jitter and error rate graphs for the original and 10x. 10x had significantly lower jitter and a lower error rate as well. Why are errors on the original NOT present on the copy? Simple a CD-Rom in a computer will read data many more times than a CD player. On one of those passes it will most likely recover the data, a CD player will simply give up and resort to it's error correction algorithm. Tomorrow Chris will bring me all four copies and I will listen to see what audible effect all of this has. I know that in a true scientific test I would have done the listening before Chris did his analysis but time simply didn't allow this to occur. You can click on each graph to see it in more detail. Please do not take these results as universal. The results are dependent on the CD-ROM drive and the way that it interacts with the media chosen.
10X Error Graph
Original Error Graph
Jitter of 10X
Jitter of Original
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