I've always used Verbatim CD-R for computer and audio. Never had a data error or write failure reported yet. They just happened to be the cheapest when I bought a 50-disk pack.

haven't done enough trials myself, only to know that they can sound different. Reading on the net, black ones seemed to be preferred, 2 possible dye's, again one is preferred. Some people have taken this subject VERY seriously!

Differences in dye colours totally irrelevant as far as audio OR data discs concerned, all that matters is the uncorrectable error performance. Some people have very vivid imaginations. I have seen some reports that some dye formulations have had poor data retention and have developed problems with time and/or temperature cycling, but I expect these problems have now disappeared with the usual improvements in mass-production methods. Certainly I've got some discs which are now 5 or 6 years old of assorted makes and none have developed any additional uncorrrected errors. They've all been stored in a cupboard which is buried in a 2' thick stone wall so pretty benign environment.

got it in one!

Agreed - but reading the disc isn't the point of conversion. That comes much later, after buffering, error correction, re-clocking to the local reference clock etc. Then the fun starts - but there's nothing in the data stream at this point to have any clues left at all as to the colour of the dye.

Hi Simon,




First, congratulations on your becoming a moderator here. I just noticed the announcement today.

As to CD-Rs (as well as DVD-Rs), I've had good success with Taiyo Yuden blanks over the years and continue to use them.

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

So, data are data ("given", in Latin) after all. Who would've thunk it ...

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Sumer is icumen in!

As far as I am concerned, Barry, you have made things very, very clear - not confusing at all.

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Sumer is icumen in!

Hi kengale,

I have heard this before - "it is the player or the DAC you're using". I've heard of so-called "jitter immune" DACs (and always get a good laugh at this piece of marketing). I've heard that any "good" design will have adequate buffering..., etc., etc., etc.
The thing is, I've never, not a single time, heard any of this from anyone who has directly compared a CD pressing - on their playback setup of choice - with the master from which the pressing was made.

I don't know how many CDs you have compared with the masters from which they were made but if you can tell me you got real-time playback from a pressing that sounded indistinguishable from the master, I'd be very curious as to what you use for playback. I'm sure many of my colleagues who master for a living would be equally curious since all of the experienced ones with which I've spoken, with no exceptions, have experienced exactly the same thing as I have.

My point is, I'm not talking about what sounds "good" to anyone. I'm referring to a direct comparison with the master, played via the same D-A channel, using the same clock, same analog stages, etc.

As to using the PC as a reclocking device, I don't. When I play files from the computer, the only clock involved in the audio is the one that resides in my Firewire interface, a Metric Halo ULN-8, right next to the DAC.

If you are not familiar with this device, I can say it is the single best sounding digital device in my experience and has easily survived blind "shootouts" with all comers of all pedigrees, the latest of which was the highly touted Berkeley Alpha DAC. Like the others (which include converters from Meitner, Weiss, Pacific Microsonics, Lynx, Prism and a dozen others), the ULN-8 showed why the other designers have reason to lose sleep. Comparisons were not simply with DACs but ADCs (some of which I've named), boutique mic preamps, external clocks, analog stages, etc. as the ULN-8 contains 8 channels of all of these. I most highly recommend an audition for anyone who is interested in just how good digital recording/playback can be. (The fact that it is designed primarily for professional sound engineers and does need a Mac computer for its initial setup, should not make anyone think it cannot be used as a standalone DAC -and preamp- in an audiophile playback system.)

For transports, I have listened to devices from Meitner, Burmeister, Wadia, Esoteric, Sony and many others (including the Nova Physics Memory Player but that is another sort of device altogether and more closely resembles playback from a computer). Incidentally, I'll also add that I find further improvements in playback from SSD over standard, spinning hard drives.

So, if you can tell me you've heard indistinguishable playback between a pressing and its master on whatever system you are using, I will have to consider all of the above devices defective, that they have something "desperately, desperately wrong" with them. (I'm not saying they don't. Who knows? They just represent the best I've experienced.)

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

I presume these comparisons were double-blind repeated until statistically-significant ones! Having done some design work for a company which produced studio equipment and high power monitoring equipment and spent some time trying to design out some of these differences (not with CD's, this was when tape at 15ips was state of the art), as well as feeling smug when improvements I had made were complemented, it was disappointing to find that in fact these differences or correlations were almost entirely in the imaginations of the listeners - most of them professional musicians or recording engineers. We did quite a few double blind and occasionally triple blind (the participants didn't even know they were taking part in a trial - can't do this with medicine!) trials, and found that firm differences were reported between things which were identical, typical characteristics of particular design features were confidently identified when they hadn't actually been implemented, typical characteristics of particular products were identified when they actually weren't used in the system under test, but the listener thought they were.
Being a professional in any field does not make one immune from this sort of bias. One only has to look at the medical field for this - Highly trained and professional doctors, surgeons etc for decades or even centuries used techniques and products confident that they produced the desired effects, or rejected techniques because in their experience they didn't work. It's only when properly executed double-blind trials were implemented that much of this (but not all!) was shown to be self-deception. Working in the audio design field I came to realise that without proper blind trialling it was impossible to know whether design improvements worked as intended, or whether there were any genuinely audible differences to bother to approach in the first place. And more worryingly often there was complete failure by professional users to notice changes that blind trialling had shown were very obvious.
So when it is claimed that pressing A sounds different from pressing B, one expects to see that this was a double-blind comparison, the number of comparisons made and the confidence level of the result. Without this, it is merely an anecdote, and has no more validity than any other anecdotal evidence.

Anecdotally you did some tests many years ago before CD was invented and some of the equipment and listeners under test were crap, therefore the dye colour on CDR's (also not invented) can't possibly make a difference. go on.....

Hi zonepress,



While I think the discrepancies you note do indeed exist in a majority of situations, I've seen quite a large number of "audiophile" devices (such as cables, amplifiers and loudspeakers) in professional environments. This includes my own studio where brands like Magnepan and Nordost are among the gear.

My own take on the hobbyist audio magazines and Web sites is there are fewer knowledgeable writers than there were at one time though happily, there are also exceptions. Part of the reason we don't see some of the better pro gear mentioned is, I believe, due to lack of awareness on the part of the magazines (and Web sites) regarding its existence.

For example, how many audiophiles (or magazine writers) have even heard of Metric Halo. I've been using their hardware and software for several years now but only found them based on a lucky question a friend asked me one day ("Have you ever heard of something called SpectraFoo?"). Earlier this summer, Metric Halo released the ULN-8. At $6k, it isn't exactly an economy product and it *is* aimed at professional engineers but it can shame some $50,000 audio jewelry touted in the magazines.

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com