{"id":4363,"date":"2015-03-27T13:59:21","date_gmt":"2015-03-27T20:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/?p=4363"},"modified":"2015-03-27T13:59:38","modified_gmt":"2015-03-27T20:59:38","slug":"no-change-equals-better-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/?p=4363","title":{"rendered":"No Change Equals Better Sound"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gary Leonard Koh is a principal at Genesis Advanced Technologies and a member of the true believers in the analog merits of digital audio. My recent discussion of replicated CDs vs. duplicated Gold CD-Rs resulted in a link to his 2010 paper titled \u201cThe Black CD White Paper\u201d. You can check it out by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The paper is a tutorial on how to make your own CDs sound better by making a physical copy of it for playback on a CD transport. He acknowledges that the \u201cdigital information on the CD\u201d is not modified but the resulting CD will sound better than the original. Hogwash.<\/p>\n

His conclusions are once again not based on scientific analysis or technical rigor but on the feedback he\u2019s received during demonstrations. \u201cThe vast majority of listeners have regarded this difference as a big improvement in musicality and\/or sonority.\u201d<\/p>\n

I applaud Gary for not hiding behind a curtain of secrets. He lays out the recipe for \u201cbetter sounding\u201d CD copies in the paper.<\/p>\n

First you\u2019re going to need to find and purchase some high quality recordable CDs. Gary originally endorsed a type of CD-R called the \u201cMelody\u201d Black CD. He claimed these \u201csounded the most musical and \u2018analog\u2019. Unfortunately, the only lasted about 3 weeks\u2026not the best investment in media. Perhaps he\u2026and others using the same CD-R blanks should have transferred the \u201canalog\u201d magic produced by those special discs right onto a hard drive or solid state drive before the mojo leaked away.<\/p>\n

Gary was forced to abandon the Black CD-Rs in favor of Gold CD-R \u201cDigital Audio\u201d 74 minute media from a company in Colorado. These will set you back about $125 for 50 discs. But you should feel good that they will last for more than 300 years. Yep, that\u2019s one of the bullet points on the website. I know I won\u2019t be around to check up on this claim, but does any really believe that we\u2019ll still be playing CD in 300 years\u2026or even 30 years. How about 3 years?<\/p>\n

The Colorado company also produces a silver variety of CD-R that is more, \u201caccurate, dynamic and transparent.\u201d <\/p>\n

The second step in the process is to secure the best source. After all you can\u2019t make good copies of crappy sources. The original music CD needs to have the digital information extracted from the replicated disc. exactly copied from the source even if it takes repeated passes over the same section of the CD. This is what Exact Audio Copy does. It\u2019s a free software application that will produce an \u201cerror-free digital copy\u201d. I like the sound of that.<\/p>\n

This step copies the CD to a hard drive or SSD, which is the best format to tuck the WAV files that EAC extracts from the source disc.<\/p>\n

Gary continues with advice on using a dedicated computer with the best burner you can get your hands on and to make sure and clean the discs with plastic cleaner prior to burning your \u201cimproved\u201d copies.<\/p>\n

There you have it. The recipe for creating CD-Rs that Gary claims will be \u201cdramatically\u201d better than your replicated CDs. This paper was written about 5 years ago. Perhaps his recommendations have changed now that you can purchase a 32-gig USB memory stick for less than $25. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gary Leonard Koh is a principal at Genesis Advanced Technologies and a member of the true believers in the analog<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[657,50,40,172,77,57,242,87,1032,70,640,26,639,651,42,298,251,645,638,637,227,643,934,102,205,169,150,347,27,932,659,658,660,661],"class_list":["post-4363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dr_aixs_posts","tag-advanced-resolution","tag-aix-records","tag-analog-vs-digital","tag-audio-resolution","tag-audio-snake-oil","tag-audio-specifications","tag-audiophile-mastering","tag-compact-discs","tag-dvd_audio","tag-hd-downloads","tag-hd-music","tag-hd-audio","tag-hi-res-audio","tag-hi-res-audio-logo","tag-high-resolution-audio","tag-high-res-music","tag-high-resolution","tag-high-resolution-audio-experience","tag-hires-audio","tag-hires-music","tag-hra","tag-hra-listening-experience","tag-itu-775-3","tag-lfe","tag-loudness-wars","tag-mark-waldrep","tag-pcm","tag-spectragram","tag-spectragraphs","tag-uhd-cd","tag-uhd-audio","tag-ultra-hd-audio","tag-ultra-high-definition-audio","tag-ultra-high-resolution-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4363"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4366,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4363\/revisions\/4366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}