In Quest of Absolute Fidelity: The Saga of the Black CD [PDF - 1,01 MB]

This guy claims that recording music onto a black CD-R disc, yields the following:


:x

"Foot-tappity-ness". That's a new one.

But wait. It get's worse:


I am at a loss for words.


It goes on like this.

I don't claim to know everything about everything, but I can smell bullshit a mile away, and the smell of this is overpowering.

muhahaha lol i laughed my ass off when read that thing with the USB mouse.

Its great you can laugh. This shit just makes me weary lately.

Getting old and crabby I guess.

Actually it's not... I believe it originated with the Linn LP-12 turntable and something the marketing people called "PRaT" (Pacing, Rhythm and Timing) -- aka "foot tappety-ness." Marketers of high-end audio gear really have to use emotional arguments to sell equipment -- technical specs are not very appealing, interesting or meaningful to most people (and how accurate such specs are is another thing, too).

Note that I don't disagree with you on the topic itself... ridiculous, laughable.

Edit -- I wonder about the USB mouse thing tho. I used to have a USB NIC, and would get a crackling sound whenever a sound file was playing and the NIC was transferring data at the same time. USB implementations are so often buggy that I wonder if the guy might have something there... perhaps erroneous data is getting written to the CD-R.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that some sort of interference could occur between the USB CD-R drive and the USB mouse.


That just sounds like something he pulled out of his ass.

A USB mouse transfers like 1/1.000.000 the amount of data (just pulled that out of my ass) of a NIC. No way I belive that that could somehow cause a CD-R recorder to misbehave. Anyways, the recorder has a huge buffer that should have no problem keeping up with the "bandwidth steal" of the USB mouse.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!11111111

lmfao

The guy who wrote this is such an idiot it's not even funny...
This just sucks. I wonder how much bullshit info such as this there is compared to SANE info, my bet is much, much more... (i don't like to bet, then why do i bet all the time?? )

Any divorce lawyer would have an easy case with this guy.

I think there's a huge disconnect between logical, rational types, and emotional-intuitive types. Sometimes I wonder if this gap can be bridged, or if each side will keep on wondering what the hell's wrong with the other...

(sorry, just rambling/musing... pay me no attention )

Well, these claims are probably BS, but technically, it could be possible.

Say your mouse would cause power instability in the cdrw drive (that would mean its a crappy designed drive, with bad separation of usb signal and power line. Jerking it around would cause more instability in the writer.

If you'd have such a crappy writer, probably it would be writing discs that are hardly within spec, with varying bit lengths and all that. Even without the mouse moving. (Edit:) I forgot to say, this cd-writer must be really bad, needing all this extra weight on top. My writer even finishes discs when I jump around on my skippyball-chair on the same wooden floor. (end of edit)

If you have one of those highly sensitive "audiophile" cd-players (you know, those that need concrete blocks on top for stability and all), it would probably get very jittery and doing lots of interpolation on such badly written discs.

Enter the black disc. I've read before many people are claiming that black discs work on old cd-players, whereas other cdrs are not accepted on those. Better reflection or something.

So, since the highly sensitive overly expensive show-off cd-player can more easily read the black discs, there is less jitter and read errors. Hence, better image stability (sounds like a timing problem).

But, when the mouse is moving, bit lengths are varying more, and hence unnatural harsness.



... uhm, guys, don't look at me like that. Really, I mean, I'm only saying it could be so, technically. Guys?



... ok, never mind. I never said it.

ROFLMAO indeed....

Since when do burners create pits? ROFL some more....

But it seems black cd's do have better reflectivity. Sorry, that was ofcourse BS...

I've tried Memorex black (ATIP unknown manufacturer), and HiSpace black (ATIP MPO).
HiSpace showed several C2 errors at both 24x and 16x, Yamaha CRW3200, and Memorex a lot of them at Yamaha CRW3200@24x and Yamaha 6416S @6x.

Back on topic, a friend of mine has the same problem with the mouse.

When his screen saver kiks in, the burning crashes, so he must constantly move the mouse while burning a CD !




"What are you doing ?
(shaking the mouse like a madman) -I'm burning a CD !
-By hand ?"...

Reminds me of a novice friend whose writer died, but he didn't realize it at first because (and I quote) "I assumed smoke was natural when burning a CD."

- M.

I've ABX'd the following disk colors against the plain silvered variety by recording identical tracks on each.

This is what I found....

Black disks: More soulful (good for R&B)
Red disks: More anger, energy, frenzied (acid & hard rock, punk, heavy metal)
Blue disks: More meditative, transient, mellow (trance, electronic, ambient)
Green disks: More commercial w/ repetitive beats (pop)
Yellow disks: More earthy, minimalistic, muted percussion (folk, bluegrass)
Purple disks: Had a hard time with this one - had the same qualities as the Blue & Red...only merged! No matter what was recorded on it I would fall to sleep and wake up dancing! (avoid this color at all costs!)

The above tests were all done on new disks

On heavily scratched, nearly unusable (but still recordable) disks I found that color didn't matter (with all the dropouts & bad spots & playback errors)...but don't throw them away! I found these disks to actually improve the sound of certain genres (rap & new country) and of certain artists (Britney Spears and Tiffany).

I hope my test helps (in some small way) to clarify the CD color issue.

xen-uno

Very funny. But I think it's usually like this: Only if it's coming out of a bong at the same time.

A little while ago on HardForums maintained by HardOCP.. a guy argued that he used a RAID-0 setup for the sole reason that his music sounded better and he could definitively tell identical mp3s being played.. whether or not the HDD setup was RAID-0 or not..

Pure idiocy... here's the link for some laughs: http://www.hardforums.com/showthread.php?s...threadid=476911

omg guys, wtf is this sh*t with colors and mouse interference or crap, its all BS!!! CDs are digital media, just plain 1s and 0s FFS!!! theres no way cd color may change quality or stuff... i dont even think the crappiest of the cd players would...

These are the most extreme cases of placebo effect ive ever seen...

It's all your fault Xenno.

I don't understand this dichotomy. I use both all the time. I use logic where I can, and intuition where I can't use logic. I can even mix the two with some level of consistency. It makes writing papers hella easy.

So people actually believed what Xenno posted?

Of course. I'd been searching ages for that snooze-to-funky-music-and-wake-up-in-a-boogie-mood effect, and it turned out purple discs were the asnwer all along!

- M.

This has got to be the funniest post of the month!
LOL

Not quite on topic (hmm, but the topic is kinda about stupidity) I had a friend who would not use a cd if he could see through it (specially for PSX games) because he said the laser could go through and burn a hole through the lid of the playstation! I swear to God!

I'm going to laugh about that playstation thing for days.

Won't get me out on the dance floor unless you got BLACK discs!

*rotfl*

thanks for the entertainment guys!

Regards, fileman.

And what about label the manufacturer puts on his disc? It interferes with recorded music as hell!

I swear I can hear low voice saying (kind of low level modulation): "tdk d-view cd-recordable 700 MB" in the track which is physically burned in the same place where this writing exists...

Actually, I found that the purple discs worked great for ACID JAZZ. This is some funny sh*t!

The author of he original article says his copies can sound better than the original, which is pretty remarkable in itself. Pretty soon he will be making gold out of lead. Many of you folks may not remember, but in the mid-80's the "cure" for jitter was to use a green felt tip marker to color the outside egde of the CD, the thin vertical part. Hmm. This kind of idiocy is spread by folks who would normally know better. I wonder if this article's author ABX'ed these CD's? Notice that he never says he did this.

If it weren't so damned funny I would feel sorry for the guy. But, you can be sure he has some adherents. The same ones who believe that speaker wire must be broken in for it to sound right. For real laughs, read rec.audio.high-end.

I'm outta here.

The chances are, the author of that article thinks that ABX killed Jesus.

In the end everything works out as it should - ignorance takes its toll, and these ill-informed people get brutally ripped off buying power cords and interconnects for thousands of bucks.

It should be noted that they do perceive a difference, which may or may not be purely psychological, and if a few feet of insanely expensive wire can buy them a peace of mind, then perhaps they should be left alone in their blissful little oxygen-free world.

I received a magazine in the mail today about high end music products. Probably because of some cookies after visiting site after site about music software and hardware. Anyway they claimed that wires must be burned in, gold disc cd's sound better, wires must be burned in and that your record player will only sound good if placed on top of steel cones. This one magazine compiled all the bullshit about audio and placed in once magazine. I imagine next month they will be selling black cdr's and usb mice.

Now wait a minute.... 1) Better reflectance 2) Better absorption. Now these two kinda override each other, don't you think?

Not with quantic black cds. The light is both absorbed and reflected at the same time....

The Last word on this is about half way down this: http://www.cdfreaks.com/document.php3?Doc=51

Who the hell could find this article excellent?

My personal finding is that Tall people can not sense the improvements which Darker coloured (Blue or Black) discs portray.

I myself know this (P<0.001), as I was once tall, but have shrunk, and... lo, soundstages of ungodly proportions are now obtained when burning to a Black CDR.

Previously, I was walking blindfolded (and I bumped my head on lights)

Hmmm. I can't hear crackling on either Winamp or CD-burns I did while doing highspeed file transfers from one partition to another on my RAID0 array, while moving my USB mouse and/or burning files from one of the non-RAID disks to my CD-burner.

The scientitifical dael with blake cdrs ist that of tsee-C2 error coerrechoun. Da C2 mak misthak sometim, and bubbl-deform tha audio waV. Than glitch gaoes througg loudspaker, da air iST mov'd wrongie and nah goad pssykoachoustic effaekt is issued foar thA consumaer. ThUs tha C2 ahware material 1st deAth ! Tak no advanc audio-file playAr. Bea carrruful wit da binarry dihgit correcheun ! Was tha biT wrong, obviuUs bettar let it wrongie. Euthorwise da haeven worse aftyar tha CHICKSUM fixed ist ! Thy 1/100000000 proehbablty was tha dicission wrong, uND kihl dha butiffful audio-file binarhy daTTa !

I hamme a professional, avoiD da evhil advancir cd plaher. Wien duhuser good als Elektronknisch mann dA custohmerrs modifih delikatt Odio PCB coPPonents ! Dan witt-out a C2 performur daS zound wirh mirklich Parfekto ! Andh blacck CDArom cann vuhl-khalliti pass dsp oHn evil filtaring not duuUrch kompanenten electrotnik CMOS bypessed was. Hovewer blaKc cdr's daN batter daN originaal ! belieef me ! am hortst das, wirklach ABX weiil trinken bettern no akLkohl toOk miself.

Ddanx.

[edaet] dUs laht exparimmet wass aHne DAC cohhverte wihl an 0V oht GND waay busser than VCC !!?! dAt 0V bruch varry analoog dynamykck rahnge klaget. [/edaet]

jitter....

RoFL!!! Funny! Needed that as well bout time somebody posted something like this on HA again

Cheers for the laugh

Thannk you for appricitiating my smaell tachnologikall exponentation

Reading this I now remember what the deal with black discs was. Sorry for talking BS before.

A black body has no better reflectance. It has good absorption and thus it can't have good reflectance. But absorption is technically the same process as emission. So black has no good reflectance but good emission of light.

What's that got to do with black cd's? Nothing. The explanation that could be valid for the better compatibility, is the good absorption. There is a lot of attenuation of the scattering of the laser beam. For some bad pick-ups, this would help to pick the bits out of the noise, and thus less errors.

If this has been confirmed in practice, I don't know. It seems to me very well possible that this occurs. But I've never really made a study out of it; I rather buy good CD drives than having to fetch exotic discs...

In general this is indeed crap talk. However, I've seen some examples of this really happening (not the gold out of lead ). Some cd's from the mid-eighties were just bad pressings. A CD-player would produce bad sound on them. However, the data is there, and a cd-rom drive can eventually retrieve it. If after that you rewrite to a cdr and do it properly, you get a better readable disc. Simply put, you reclocked the data.



LoL... try to ABX that! If there's no difference, you can claim the cable got broken in after two abx runs

Seriously.. Mr. Gary Leonard Koh, with all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about !


May I first correct your statement: Every >>AUDIO<< bit counts in reproducing good music. The 220 BLER (blocks errors/s, NOT bits !) is accepted within the raw datastream (before C1 correction), NOT in the audio ! Typically, after C1 none of these 220 errors will be left, and that's not even considering C2 error detection and correction !

There's no difference after the C1 and C2 layers. The resulting audio will be pristine, even without C2 intervention. Can't you just read books, and learn ?

... and as if that weren't enough, you contradicts yourself on this very "point":


You just look more ridiculous now. Of course the digital audio is bit-accurate ! You just proved that you were 100% wrong about your moronic "220 errors/s in audio" statement !

It looks like you believe that your player will output the uncorrected raw data, and the Reed-Solomon ECC codes directly to your speakers. I'm happy you weren't involved in the design of my home cd player, then !

Not to trouble you, but my 13-year old brother knows more about digital error protection than you. I find this worrying, for such a specialist wannabe.

Y' frgoten da if iou reep da noiz EAC souckz couze transietn ' sonude wormah guen playah gotz nu accoureit strame nor gleach r3muvah faetoourz and yau got tu ius bleak CD whit no obervourne caus on non blaick CDs lait bunces ane confuses lasah wit dummie lite so it guesswerk ist done ane bitz 'r wron so if yau leek it yur no audipheel.

Oh my god this is scary ...

NumLock, (re)read my post directly above yours.

Really, bit-identical recordings do not have to sound the same. The ones and zeroes are the same, but there is more to playback quality than just that data.

There is?????....

My CD players never produced "bad sound" apparent to me on any CD that was made in the 80's.. And i do have a few..

Umm . . . has your friend considered turning off his screen saver while writing a cd? Would seem to be a logical solution . . . just a thought .

You're mistaken. Any half-decent cd player will produce the exact same sound, regardless of the burning method and media.

The only exceptions are:
1 - too many errors on the media (BLER above 220 errors/s at worst -- barely correctable C2 errors at best) when reading from the media
2 - inability of the player to detect&correct the C1/C2 errors properly
3 - bugs in the player's hardware/firmware/installation, including those which lead to the above two problems.

By the way, any so-called "jitter" issues would be included in exception 3, because the player is responsible for re-clocking the data without altering ANY bits.

Bottom line: Either a given cd player reads a given cd correctly, or it doesn't. Of course, with an analog output it might be difficult to make sure.

well, try to rip badly scratched CD with EAC. quite often you'll be able to get it right, but much slower than real-time. so, the quality of writting does matter, even if you can get your bits back.
(also, most players don't do such accurate error correction as EAC - they just play errors. this means that ripping with EAC and making a good burn will in fact increase "the quality" in cd player)