Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
Posts: 3511
Joined: Dec. 1999 |
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Posted: June 05 2003, 14:37 |
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Quote (Ugo @ June 04 2003, 23:53) | I hear no clicks and no pops on any of them. |
You might not, but some people do - take a look at some of the problems discussed on the Amarok mailing list, there are at least two people there complaining of clicks and pops on TB2003.
Differences in error correction may be subtle, or not there at all - I'm not saying that everyone is going to notice a difference when playing the album in different players, but if people do (and don't notice the same differences between the players when playing other albums) then this may be why. You may also not notice the differences which error correction introduces by listening to the CD on its own, but would do when comparing it to an error-free copy of the audio.
I am indeed referring to those errors introduced as copy protection. The idea of them, for those wondering what good errors will do, is that there are just enough errors as to not cause a problem to most CD players. Copying the CD at high speed introduces errors into the signal by itself, and the idea is that when they are combined with those already present in the disc, the resulting copy will sound terrible and be full of all kinds of audible artefacts because the player's error correction is no longer able to cope. Of course, some unlucky people are finding that the error correction is already unable to cope with the errors present from the start. Worse still is that, even with those players which can cope, there's no guarantee that they'll continue to be able to cope when the disc is damaged (as happens to CDs - I find that even the most carefully handled ones tend to pick up minor scratches with regular playing).
It's a known phenomenon that digital errors can change the sound - whether the listener notices them or not will depend on their equipment. Many recording engineers will favour one brand of digital recording media (i.e. CDR, minidisc or whatever) over others, claiming that it sounds better. This would be seemingly impossible with digital media - the media is just carrying a stream of binary data, and that binary data should sound the same no matter what brand of CDR it's on. The difference is explained by the fact that, because of various differences in manufacture, not every CDR (or whatever kind of media you choose) stores that data as reliably as others, and data recorded to one brand may be less prone to picking up errors than another. The brands which store that data more reliably are likely to be the ones the engineers find sound better (though it may be that they like the sound of error correction and favour a worse brand ).
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