RM/X + CD-R, a caustic chemical reaction

ted_b · « **on:** 23 May 2004, 04:03 pm »

I'm showing my extreme ignorance here, but I'm coming to the "duh" conclusion that:
1) RM/X ribbons are extremely revealing;
2) Digititis is evident in even marginally decent mastered cd's; My SCD-XA777ES may not be the best redbook player out there, either. That's a subject for another thread in another forum.
3) CD-R's burned at 24x sound HORRIBLE on the RM/X's, at least my Radiohead and Nillson stuff on TDK CD-R's.

I now use the originals for the RM/X's and leave the cd-r stuff for the car, etc. (Like I said, conclusions that are not rocket science, but simply point out that my previous speakers were more forgiving and less accurate).

Does anyone have a brand/model of CD-R's and a burn speed that lessens the harshness. I would occassionally like to listen to some traded material. My ribbons would love you for it. Thanks,

P.S. I use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) as my burner.
Ted_B

lonewolfny42 · « **Reply #1 on:** 23 May 2004, 04:26 pm »

Well, I don't have VMPS speakers, but I use the Black cdr's by Memorex, and burn at a slow 4x speed. I've never had a problem with them , nor have others I've made copies for. Might give it a try.

Brian Cheney · « **Reply #2 on:** 23 May 2004, 04:46 pm »

I play copies burned on the Denon 550 dual tray CD recorder at 2x all the time with good results. There is a lot of signal degredation at 4x and above so avoid high speeds when copying good CD's.

ted_b · « **Reply #3 on:** 23 May 2004, 05:35 pm »

Thanks folks. I've been meaning to get black Memorex cd-r's for some time now; and the 2X advice is well taken. Thanks,

Wayne1 · « **Reply #4 on:** 23 May 2004, 07:22 pm »

The Black Memorex CD/Rs are very good for most machines. The Sony XA-777ES sometimes has trouble reading the TOC on these discs.

If you really want to have good copies, try to find a Yamaha CD burner that uses the Audio Master system. This will burn bigger pits in the CD/Rs.

There are many comments here and on AA about a copy made with the Yamaha burner may actually sound BETTER than the original.

pjchappy · « **Reply #5 on:** 23 May 2004, 07:33 pm »

I'm surprised you are having problems w/ EAC making bad copies. . .I haven't heard that before. I guess just take the suggestion of others. . .higher quality CD-Rs and lower burn speed. . .

p

ted_b · « **Reply #6 on:** 23 May 2004, 09:26 pm »

Quote from: pjchappy

I'm surprised you are having problems w/ EAC making bad copies. . .I haven't heard that before. I guess just take the suggestion of others. . .higher quality CD-Rs and lower burn speed. . .

p

The copies are error-free, and sound just fine on any one of my other sources (pc, car, family room stereo, portable cdp). I conclude that the RM/X-based system in the home theater/high-end room is now at a level where it shows off little nuances....and not subtly. The orginal of Radiohead's Hail To The Thief won a Grammy this year for best engineering, sounds great on the RM/X's (although I'd love to hear it in sacd or dvd-a) but takes on a fatiguing harsh quality when burned at 24x on the TDK cd-r's. I will experiment with slower burn speeds, different media, and report back. I will also try burning on the fly. These wav files are actuallly ones that were ripped months ago and converted losslessly to FLAC for archiving, then decoded back to wav for the purpose of burning them for the car, etc. (Sorry this is quickly becoming a non-VMPS issue. However, it's the nature of the ribbons that brought this to my attention.)

Ted

pjchappy · « **Reply #7 on:** 23 May 2004, 09:28 pm »

I have a solution: just use the original

p

Bob Wilcox · « **Reply #8 on:** 23 May 2004, 11:11 pm »

It would be hard to make a copy that sounded identical to the original but you can do some things to make good copies.

I experimented with my Yamaha drive burning the Black memorex blanks as well as some Imations burning the same Nero compilation from the hardrive at speeds from 8X down to 1X. The Imation copies had a brighter sound and the Memorex a darker sound.The differences between adjacent speeds were subtle but the copies burned at the slower speed always sounder better. I also burned some with the special Yahama mode and could not conclude that it made things better - just different.

For a given disc, you might prefer the audiophile burning mode or the tonal character of the particular blank brand. Again, the only constant was slower burn speed is better. Unfortunately, 1X copies take forever.

I use EAC and Nero. I always burn to the hard drive first. I only find an advantage with EAC if the source disc has scratches. The neat thing with Nero is that you can re-eq if you wish. I do this a lot to counteract the thud/squawk eq curve of the factory deck in my car - so I can stand to turn it up at highway speed and have it sound fairly neutral. Sometimes I re-eq an annoying disc to stand to play it on the big rig.

BTW, I also have a Memorex drive that makes wretched copies at any speed - my son's PC has that drive now.

SWG255 · « **Reply #9 on:** 24 May 2004, 12:25 pm »

When I got my RM-40s I noticed two things right away:

1. My Sony SCD-1 didn't sound as warm and open as I thought it did.
2. Many of the CD-Rs I "burned" in real time on my Marantz CDR-630 were hard and brittle sounding.

The first point has been cured with Allen Wright's Vacuum State Electronics Level 4 mods to the SCD-1.

I believe the second problem is caused by jitter introduced by the CDR-630 when making digital transfers from my old Marantz CD-67 Mk. II. I'm considering re-extracting and re-burning these discs with EAC for the extraction and Wavelab for the re-burning, but it's pretty low on my priority list.

The point here is that even burning at 1x won't guarantee audiophile quality results. I was using gold CD-Rs at the time, they were advertised to offer the best audio recording quality and the longest archival life. I'm not sure those claims were realized.

To bring this thread back to VMPS, I have to concur that Brian's ribbons can certainly change the perceptions one has of the quality of one's gear and media! In the long run this is a very, very good thing!

sbcgroup1 · « **Reply #10 on:** 24 May 2004, 03:20 pm »

I would argue the fact that one of the best CD-R's that I've used would be a Mitsui Gold or made by Mitsui, nonetheless. They are much better than your Maxells, TDKs, Imations, Sonys, etc. I've used my Iomega firewire burner to burn our band's masters in my studio w/great results.

SWG255 · « **Reply #11 on:** 24 May 2004, 08:03 pm »

This is getting way off topic, I believe gold CD-Rs have great potential, I haven't tried recent brands. I believe the problem I cited in my previous post has much more to do with the Marantz CDR-630 than the gold CDs. This is another way of saying the gear used may be more important than the media or the burning speed, since I can burn audio at 24X on my Plextor CD burners with no discernable audio degradation audible on my RM-40s. At higher burn speeds the audio CDs may not playback properly on all CD players I try them in, especially the last tracks on the disc near the outside edge.

As for Mitsui CD-Rs, I think they're the best for audio production and "ripping" gold or not. I've only heard one Maxell black CD-R, and I couldn't say whether it sounded better than a silver or silver-green or silver-blue or gold disc or not.

Quote from: sbcgroup1

I would argue the fact that one of the best CD-R's that I've used would be a Mitsui Gold or made by Mitsui, nonetheless. They are much better than your Maxells, TDKs, Imations, Sonys, etc. I've used my Iomega firewire burner to burn our band's masters in my studio w/great results.

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #12 on:** 24 May 2004, 08:31 pm »

I never burn that fast. I'll use 16X only for stuff I'm gonna leave in the car. But be aware that burning too slowly on a modern computer burner is as bad as going to fast. Most all drives have a "sweet spot" where they burn the best. I tend to stick with 8X.

I also suggest not going to a DVD burner for all your CD-R burning. While it does work for CD-Rs, it doesn't always work perfectly and will produce more coasters & strange errors.

I rip with EAC & burn with NERO @ around 8X. I try to stick w/Mitsui discs, but I use some Prodiscs & Taiyo Yuden's, too. My luck w/Memorex hasn't been great overall, but their black ones seem okay.

Odd- I have the same Denon dual burner that BC mentions, but I've never once burned a disc on it!

sbcgroup1 · « **Reply #13 on:** 25 May 2004, 04:21 pm »

Quote from: SWG255

This is getting way off topic, I believe gold CD-Rs have great potential, I haven't tried recent brands. I believe the problem I cited in my previous post has much more to do with the Marantz CDR-630 than the gold CDs. This is another way of saying the gear used may be more important than the media or the burning speed, since I can burn audio at 24X on my Plextor CD burners with no discernable audio degradation audible on my RM-40s. At higher burn speeds the audio CDs may not playback properly on all CD pl ...

Yeah, i agree. I have done 40x burns in the studio of a masterdisk that sound identical. I haven't really had any problems with different burn speeds sounding different at all. I agree with the "mental" notion that slower speeds offer more stability, theoretical. But then again, if equipment is working the way it's supposed to, without operator error, everything should be golden.

The future of audio is for everything to merge anyways. I mean, damn, we're *finally* on ethernet audio at this point as a control system and file swapping system in the hi-fi environment already.

-Ed