Tag: Audiophile

Why I Ripped The Same CD 300 Times

CDs store digital data, but the interface between CDs, lasers, and optical diodes is very analog. Read errors can be caused by anything from dirty media, to scratches on the protective polycarbonate layer, to vibration from the optical drive itself. The primitive error correction codes in the CDDA standard, designed to minimize audible distortions on lightly used disks, are not capable of fully recovering the bitstream on CDs with a significant error rate. Contemporary CD ripping software works around this with two important error detection techniques: redundant reads and AccurateRip.

Source: Why I Ripped The Same CD 300 Times

Found via: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33499646

There’s an enormous latent anxiety about this subject with “audiophiles.” It cracks me up. On the one hand, sure, you want to get exactly what’s on the CD to the hard drive. But when you get an encoding error, we’re talking about one bad value for one channel of stream encoded at 44.1 KHz. Are these guys really telling me that they think they can hear a defect in an audio stream that occurs within 23 nanoseconds? And if they’re really telling me that, do they really expect me to believe it?

Demagnetizing CDs?! – YouTube

Follow up to this.

It’s just a scam. Everything in the marketing copy is a lie. Nothing about it will do anything to the sound produced by the disc. Yet there are still articles at the top of Goole search results, talking about how much better CD’s and DVD’s are heard and seen after using this… device.

Let’s break this down.

The layer of metal that CD’s use to reflect the laser light is aluminum oxide.

We could stop right here, because the entire idea of “demagnetizing” a CD is a farce, since, as everyone understands, aluminum isn’t magnetic. But let’s set that aside for a moment, and continue. There’s an even-more ridiculous reason this whole idea is patently stupid.

A molecule of aluminum oxide, consisting of Al2O3, would be approximately 478.5 picometers across.

CD lasers run at 780 nanometers.

Even if the molecules of aluminum were somehow “inverted” from their original, stamped orientation, due to “magnetism” induced by the label printing process, first, it could have no effect on the signal produced because there’s no part of the laser decoding that depends on molecular orientation, and second, any material in the disc substrate that has been “flipped” would be invisible to the CD laser, as the molecules themselves are 1,500 times smaller than the laser can distinguish.

But, yeah, someone made this, and people have bought it, and I’m certain that they “heard things they’d never heard before” in their music. Further, I’ll bet it’s still being offered for sale in “audiophile” magazines.

It’s time for some hard truth – YouTube

OMG. How many times can the universe scream at me that I’m in the wrong business?

“Ultra-fast capacitors.” Sigh. I’m no electrical engineer. In fact, I’ll admit that circuits were the worst part of my mechanical engineering studies. However, I do know that capacitors — selected for their specs — can only go at the “speed” constrained by the voltage and amperage of the entire circuit. You don’t get to select the “speed” at which they store and release charge. You can’t just swap out capacitors with different specs, and expect that the circuit will still perform the function it was designed to do. None of the usual, audiophile-type nonsense, like “oxygen-free, demagnetized, free-range, gluten-free, organic dielectric compounds” could even possibly be rationalized here.

The best part of these things, as always, is the slavish commentary claiming to be able to “hear” vast improvements. Now, normally, I’d “tap the sign” about all ratings and review systems being gamed — and I would (no doubt) be right in predicting it here — but I’ve seen enough “audiophile” commentary that I’m absolutely sure that more of it than I would like to admit is, in fact, genuine. Linus addresses this as well, though he much more generous than I would be.

Audiophile Snake Oil

Shaving CD’s for Fun and Audio Improvement

This video reviews an “audiophile” “tool” from back in the day to “improve” CD audio quality by cutting the edge of the CD at an angle, and marking it with a black marker, to prevent “light scattering” of the laser that degrades audio quality. This guy treats a disc, and feeds the “before” and “after” recordings into software, mathematically subtracts one file from the other, and shows that there is no difference. Literally zero. There cannot be an improvement, no matter how good your hearing, because nothing has changed.

He notes in the video that this didn’t stop many “audiophile” publications from printing reviews about the device, saying that it improved everything about the sound, from “clarity” to “noise floor” to “bass response.”

I’ll never forget the first time I read an “audiophile” catalog, and seeing a replacement knob for your receiver. According to the description, what you probably don’t know is that the plastic one that came with it is adding “harmonic distortion” to your audio. Their “tuned” replacement would fix this, and improve your system’s sound. What was it, you ask? Wood! It was a 3″ wooden hockey puck. And how much, you ask, for such an upgrade? $300, in 1991, or $650, today, for a little, wooden disc.

I’ve often thought about doing exactly what this guy has done, and proving that these kinds of “audiophile” things are snake oil. The thing that drives me the craziest are overpriced digital cables. There is no difference between the output of this cable and some Amazon Basics piece of junk. As long as it meets the spec, there CAN be no difference, and I can prove it with math.

I Need This for My Printer so my Pages Will Print Better

What has kept me from doing it is knowing that the people who believe such copy will never be persuaded. I’ve had conversations with actual people about these kinds of cables, and they don’t believe me. They will hear and see a difference, and pity me for not having the ears to hear or eyes to see what they clearly can.

I wish I could shirk all ethics and character, and invent some of my own snake oil to sell in this market.