How come there is no thread on the RealityCheck?

I met Gary Koh at RMAF in October in Denver. Nice guy. He even gave me some black CD's to try. I am purchasing a CD writer that he recommended and I'm planning to mod it with Superclock3 and battery power, as well as digital mods. CD's written with this machine should be almost as good as Computer-Driven Audio. In fact, I'm considering rewriting CD's as a service. The first time I heard this effect was at CES in January on generic CDROM media that was CD's rewritten by Mark Harmon of Zcable. Really outstanding results.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
manufacturer/modder

Based upon the rewritten CD's that I have tried, I believe it is just jitter in the pits of the original. If the data is transferred to a computer hard disk and then rewritten by a burner with a precision low-jitter clock and clean power, such as batteries, and the copy is made at low speed to get more accurate pit shapes, then the copy should be significantly better than the original. Makes perfect technical sense to me.

Onhwy61 wrote:
"He doesn't explain why storing the data on a hard drive degrades the sound which leads to question along the line of whether just storing the data in a memory buffer also degrades the sound?"

This makes no sense to me either. Copies from the hard-disk should be every bit as good or better than ones from the original CD.

Tvad wrote:
"If one burns a black CD on a laptop computer running on battery power, and the copy is made at a low speed, would it then follow that this burned CD would conceivably be better than the original, notwithstanding the inferior clock on the computer?"

Could be better, but no guarantees. Depends on the power and grounding in PC and the clock jitter, as well as the quality of the burner CDROM or DVDROM.

Herman wrote:
"why, given the low cost of memory and computing power, doesn't every player above the entry level read and re-clock the data to the dac thereby eliminating this variable from the equation?"

This is understandable. To make a system like this behave just like a normal CD player is a HUGE undertaking. There is a lot of software development because of things like: what happens when you decide to skip ahead on the current playing track or skip back to the last track? This is simple for a regular CD player, but if the data is cached in memory, there may be a large latency to flush the memory cache and refill it with new data and then begin playing it. The system must actually "look-ahead" and predict what the user will likely do with the remote buttons, otherwise, there is a big latency penalty. There is also the issue of DVD-A and SACD. The computer model wil not work for these, so the player must revert back to a standard-type player. It's really a can of worms to make is behave like a standard universal player.

TBG - I have no idea what has been done to the RC burner. I may not be much better than some standard CD-R or DVD-R burners. The one that I am modding should be substantially better than anything that can be purchased because it wil have Superclock3, digital and power mods and battery power.

MikeLavigne - I was involved in the shootout at CES. The RC provides a real improvement, but so does my rewriting system, which I call the CD Tune-up. I am using a modified Yamaha writer that has low-jitter modified Superclock and battery power. I rip using EAC on the computer to insure a good read.

At least half of the improvement is by using the right treatment before writing the CD-R. I have tried a lot of them, and so has my partner, highdeftapetransfers.com. I have my own magic fluid now, Spectra and we both like it. The advantage is that these treatments benefit BOTH the write and the readback with these CD-R copies. I do not plan to offer modded writers like the RC and I have not added a rewriting service to my website yet, but I'm considering it. The media is extremely important and I have found that the Mitsui Audio Master is every bit as good as the black Melody disks, which vary a lot in quality, and the Mitsui's will last a LOT longer.

Another important feature of the writer is that it "stretch" or otherwise slow the writing speed in order to get well-defined pits. I write a 1X speed and my writer has a special algorithm to get well-formed pits.

As for the difference in the data, I found that the trailing info is different when using different writers and writing software. The beginnings are all the same. I conclude that the difference that you hear is the lower jitter.

I equate the magnitude of improvement to about $1K-1.5K in mods to a typical transport, so it is a really good value IMO. I performed a number of jitter demonstrations at CES that showed that the improvement was about the same magnitude as a typical digital/power/clock mod on a transport. Of course, if you mod the transport and ALSO rewrite properly treated disks, the results can be amazing, albeit not quite as good as a high-end computer-driven audio source. This will always be lowest in jitter.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer/Modder

TBG - The Mitsui's are designed for archiving.

The cleaner/treatment will be reviewed in the near future when I am ready to start selling it. I will be providing the reviewers multiple CD-R disks rewritten and treated with all products currently available on the market, including Spectra.

BTW - I looked at the Cool Copy. I cannot believe that you will get decent copies at 52X write speed. All of the copiers that sound good IMO use much lower speed, usually 1X.

Splaskin wrote:
"Burning on the fly results in better copies than burning from a hard drive."

Not a valid conclusion IMO. You said yourself that it is dependent on the hardware. I have found just the opposite to be true. With an external battery-powered burner, the computer makes superior copies to anything I have heard.