Why does the recording sound better?

I have also always found that a copy I have made of a CD sounds better than the original, both being played in the same CD player. One explanation that has been put forward for this is that the quality of the CD's made now are better than the quality of commercial CDs made even just a few years ago.

There is little doubt. What you are hearing is differences in jitter. The master clock, whether in the CD player or the computer or device is the most important part of any audio system. The master clock in the CD transport is affected by the variations in the pits on the media.

The best way to reduce this jitter is to rip your disks using a good tool like dbpoweramp for PC or XLD for Mac and then playback using good software like Amarra or Pure Music.

If you MUST play CD's on a transport, then rewrite them using a Plextor USB drive and use good media like Mitsui gold audio master. Clean and treat the media with a good treatment before writing it. You can use a mat to keep the disks from resonating as it spins. All of these things make the copy sound even better than the original, but it will never be as good as playing the file back on a good computer system from a SS disk.

It's time to come into the 21st century. We dont spin CD's anymore in this century.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

I have seen "green mats" around $35 that you place on top of your CD that are claimed to improve the sound of your CD by allowing the laser in your CD drive to improve the focus of the laser and not shine through the CD, maybe this is why my lightscribe disk backup sounded better. Is this snake oil or is there anyone out there who has used such a tweak with success? Lastly, I inspected my CD collection and some of the disks are black and you could not see through them when held up to the light, I was able to clearly see through the other disks in my collection with the LightScribe copies being less transparent. Thoughts - Thanks! Rpg

i find that the recording sometimes is preferred , sometimes the original sounds better.

also, iy depends upon what "better" means.

The most efficient backup would be hard drive. I also use Tayio Yuden CD-R. They invented CD-R. Another great, but expensive, is Mitsui Gold.

I thank all who responded to this post, I think I now understand why my recordings sound better. Using the gold color back of the lightscribe copy of the original may have helped. I am now wondering, does anyone have a suggestion as to the best media to use for backing up? What manufacturer and what type of CD disk?? Thanks!
Rpg

Rpg, CDP cannot read each sector multiple times since it is operating in real time. Small errors like scratches up to 4mm along the track will be corrected while scratches longer than 8mm will be audible (pops). Between 4 and 8mm player interpolates missing data (thanks to Cross Interleaved Reed-Solomon error correction code).

When you read music CD as data, drive reads each sector multiple times until it gets right checksum. This process will eventually make CD-R or server file copy that plays better (without interpolation) than original CD.

There should be very little difference on brand new CDs without scratches or fingerprints, but it might be audible on older, less than perfect CD. Important is to use ripping program that reads CD as data. I use MAX for Mac with "Do not allow to skip" option set.

Stringreen,

"I found that a burned CD always sounds better than the original....don't know why - perhaps less jitter"

There are a lot of people that have the same opinion. How are you burning your CD's? For example, are you recording from a TT to a CD burner or are you just coping a CD? Depending on how you go about making CD, I may be able to answer your question as to why your burned copies sound better.

You are not comparing apples to apples either. Bad science = bad conclusions.

I found that a burned CD always sounds better than the original....don't know why - perhaps less jitter

"Now here's the kicker, I loaded the CD to my I-Pod (lossless)and played through my Wadia IDock 171I through the Digital inputs on my Cambridge CDP mentioned above. I'm at a bit of a loss as to why a recording may sound better than the original, any thoughts? I should mention I just received my CDP back from repair, which included a new transport, caps and firmware 1.2."

You have your answer right there. There are 2 issues. 1. You may have to break in you CDP again along with any cables attached to it. 2. The fact that you are playing the recording back on completely different equipment is probably the reason it sounds different. I've owned digital equipment from both Wadia and Cambridge. Both companies make great sounding gear. That said, you couldn't have picked 2 brands that sound more different from each other. Overall, like you, I prefer Wadia to Cambridge myself.