TAS Recommended CD Tweak….

Does George offer a trial sample?

It seems that if one were to send him identical burned CDs of the same recording, one labeled "A" and one labeled "B", and asked him to treat one but not the other without saying which was treated, then the effectiveness could be tested. Even better would be to do this to two or three recordings.

Then, after listening, if one believes they heard a difference between the discs, a call to George to learn which disc, "A" or "B" was treated, would confirm the listening test (or not).

Shadorne...Yes. If the error correction can't hack it data is interpolated. Not the greatest, but preferable to aborting the disc if it happens once or twice. I didn't mention that because it clouds the issue, and it ain't supposed to happen unless the CD disc is badly damaged. The RS code is configured to reliably correct errors to the extent they are expected from the hardware, and to handle most kinds of disc damage.

So why do people bother with EAC and CD Paranoia and whatnot? Is there any reason to use those products over ripping via iTunes, for example?

Shadorne, there are many audiophiles, even some with credibility, who claim that copies of CDs actually sound better than the originals. How can this be?

Shadorne, there are many audiophiles, even some with credibility, who claim that copies of CDs actually sound better than the originals. How can this be?

If I trust in science then I can only assume it is mostly the placebo effect. In some rare cases, no doubt there may be an explantion. (For example, a wobbly CD might cause the laser tracking to draw power in an oscillatory manner and cause jitter in the DAC via a feedback mechanism from the shared power supply.) As a generality, burned copies of CD's should be the same and indistinguishable from the original. The error correction that Eldartford mentions practically ensures the bit stream read from the disc will be perfect and identical. As I mentioned above, if this were not true then PC's would not work and our whole computing industry and internet would be on its knees.

Shadorne, there are many audiophiles, even some with credibility, who claim that copies of CDs actually sound better than the originals. How can this be?

Another explanation might be that some users CD playback equipment might simply be faulty - to the point where even the disc type has a bearing on the sound. Or that the burning program is not actually making an identical copy (some programs will re-dither re-sample when converting redbook CD data to a PC file on the computer and the then back to a CD redbook file. Some programs may even have bugs.)

I use this SeedeClip and it certainly does alter the sound as it tries to reduce the tens of thousands of flat top clipping on your average modern crap hpercompressed CD track.

BTW - When CD data flat tops then it is possible that the actual waveform it represents is actually BIGGER than CD redbook format specifies and exceeds what D to A converters can handle - at this point a CD is illegal or out of spec (most rock/pop CD's today are out of spec) and it may sound different from one CD player to another (depending on how the D to A converter behaves when trying to reconstruct an illegal signal - one that exceeds the redbook format itself...)