I was listening to an album the other day on my Karma hard drive player, and heard a reproduceable error in one of the songs. You could call it a pop, blip, or skip, I'm not exactly sure which description is the most accurate. At first I thought it was an encoding error, problem with the file, etc, so I listened to the source FLAC file. The blip was still there. Then I figured it might have been an error in the rip, so I re-ripped it with EAC, EAC displayed no errors, and I binary compared the decompressed FLAC to the new rip, and they were exactly the same, with the blip still there. I played back the CD in a regular CD player, and could still hear the blip. I looked at the Wave form itself, and I see no error or jump at the place where it blips. I am guessing it is an error that occurred at the recording or mastering stage, but I am not positive here. I am wondering if anyone here has experience with problems like this?

BTW, to be specific, the album is the re-release of Masters of Reality - Sunrise on the Sufferbus, track 3, around the 1:52 mark.

You will probably have better luck seeing this blip in the frequency domain. Take a look at that waveform with a signal analyser of some sort. I like Baudline.

There are a couple of places an error like this could creep in. The mastering and recording stages are possible, but most studios wouldn't let this get through. In my opinion the most likely cause is that you have a bad copy of the CD. You might be able to return it to the place you bought it and get a new copy.

But sometimes this po(o)p/blip is really introduced during the recording / mastering stage and you have it on every CD released. One bad example of this is "Anne Clark - Best of" where you get the same reproducable pop on Track #1 at 1:53. After finding another copy in a different corner of the world I was surprised to find the same pop in the same place. It might not be scientifically correct, but I assume that all CD's have this problem. However, it seems that the sound engineer did a bad job, because one song is twice on the CD, where according to the cover should have been a different song (don't remember the titles).

regards,

Sven

Happened to me more than once ... I got some remastered albums (Steely Dan - Aja is a good example) that show mastering flaws (whereas the original doesn't) ...

Additionally, I would rip the file several times with two different drives to be sure it is not a rip problem since EAC sometimes can be fooled (there have been cases with repeated faulty results) ...

Another one might be Mambo Sinuedo by Ry Cooder and Manuel Galban. Three copies I have heard all have the same blip. (Track one at ~4:00)

You sweet innocent boy! (or girl!). Thinking that mastering engineers actually care about their product. You'll soon grow out of this. It's just a phase we all go through.

Listen to more pop CDs critically - you'll soon learn that no one* gives a damn anymore.

Cheers,
David.

* - well, nearly.

EDIT: This post is an attempt at humour - I'm not trying to be offensive cabbagerat

You are damn right ... RMS-to-the-max with no dynamics but 3 dB is the official way to go these days ...