Differences in optical out

[Sony_Fan]

Another question, I have 3 devices with optical output: CD player, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. My question is, which would be the best one (best sound quality) to use for optical recordings. The CD player is old, from 2000-2001, Xbox 360 is from 2008 and Playstation 3 is 2009 model. Or are all optical output signals the same?

[Abby Normal]

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[netmduser]

I rank them this way in terms of optical sound quality

1) CD player

2) Playstation 3

3) Xbox 360

Edited July 15, 2009 by netmduser

[Abby Normal]

Seriously though, they are all just CD players (regardless of age) reading the same data from the same disc and sending it as ones and zeros over a digital cable. Translation: if none of them are defective, the result is identical.

I rank them this way in terms of optical sound quality

1)) CD player

2) Playstation 3

3) Xbox 360

[netmduser]

Wrong.

Seriously though, they are all just CD players (regardless of age) reading the same data from the same disc and sending it as ones and zeros over a digital cable. Translation: if none of them are defective, the result is identical.

[Abby Normal]

No, I'm afraid you are mistaken. There is no such thing as "optical sound quality". Differences in sound quality do not occur in an optical transfer of digital data. Differences in sound quality occur in the amplification stage. His question wasn't which unit sounds better by attaching speakers to different units. His question is whether there's a difference if he transfers the music (as data) over the digital cable from each of these units. The answer is there is no difference.

Seriously though, they are all just CD players (regardless of age) reading the same data from the same disc and sending it as ones and zeros over a digital cable. Translation: if none of them are defective, the result is identical.

Wrong.

P.S. Moderators: Starting with Chris G's new question--can you split off this discussion to a new topic, please? Thanks.

[bobt]

Chris, rather than all the questions, record the same song from all three, put your player on random play and see if you can tell the difference, you will not hear a difference, any more than if you made a decent upload from sonic stage. The days of tape speeds and different tape formulations are pretty well over, believe me I have tried all the methods and variations, in the end on a sound system, the speakers are what make the final difference, nothing else

Bob

[Sony_Fan]

Wrong.

Just curious as to why you think he's wrong?

Also, my Playstation 3 has Dynamic Normalizer (DN), which would be great if I could use it during optical output recordings, instead of changing the recording levels manually for each song, but I'm guessing the DN does not affect optical output. I will experiment with this.

Another question, if my Playstation 3 picks up the CD information (artist, album name, and track names), will this information be transferred through optical cable?

[pata2001]

Digital means 1s and 0s. Assuming there are no other factors (scratched CDs, error correction, etc), the same 1s and 0s are being transferred under all above situations, so how would they differ? Answer, no, they're the same.

Now, on the other hand, the way the optical drive and the software handles errors might differ. In the end, ripping on a PC with EAC is the surest way to get bit perfect copy.

[Abby Normal]

Correct--data is data. Normalization is for output to the speakers (going through D/A and amplification).

As far as CD information goes--I don't think this information is stored on the CD at all (at least with the CDs I own). Devices that "pick up the information" use the volume name (often a seemingly random string of letters and numbers) from the CD and check databases such as CDDB and pull down the information from there.

This is one of the things I like about MD--titling, album, artist, etc are stored on the disc.

Also, my Playstation 3 has Dynamic Normalizer (DN), which would be great if I could use it during optical output recordings, instead of changing the recording levels manually for each song, but I'm guessing the DN does not affect optical output. I will experiment with this.

Another question, if my Playstation 3 picks up the CD information (artist, album name, and track names), will this information be transferred through optical cable?

[bluecrab]

Seriously though, they are all just CD players (regardless of age) reading the same data from the same disc and sending it as ones and zeros over a digital cable. Translation: if none of them are defective, the result is identical.

Absolutely. A bitstream is a bitstream is a bitstream.

This reminded me, though, of the guy who, back some years ago, posted a rather detailed review of the different audio characteristics of various brands of MD blanks. I wish I could find that article, it was unintentionally very funny. Wait...actually it is right here!

http://www.minidisc.org/hifi_world_blank_review.html

WHAT in the heck was HiFi World thinking!

[sfbp]

Just a second.

Isn't it the case that what you get off the CD player is dependent on the reading circuitry? There's not 100% digital perfection IIRC. This is why I had such trouble with PCM ripping with SonicStage, and why some CD players actually work better than others at playing "bad" disks.

[Abby Normal]

Just a second.

Isn't it the case that what you get off the CD player is dependent on the reading circuitry? There's not 100% digital perfection IIRC. This is why I had such trouble with PCM ripping with SonicStage, and why some CD players actually work better than others at playing "bad" disks.

I was making the assumption that we are starting with discs that have no defects. pata2001 makes the point above about error correction being the exception.

[sfbp]

The "errors" I saw from SonicStage's poor (very fast, low quality) ripping were way worse than errors. More like failure to do any of the clever things described in the article about oversampling. These defects happened on disks that every player and every other piece of software regarded as "perfect"

Remember, the digital stream on a CD requires quite a lot of tweaking before it can be considered 100% perfect.

[Abby Normal]

The "errors" I saw from SonicStage's poor (very fast, low quality) ripping were way worse than errors. More like failure to do any of the clever things described in the article about oversampling. These defects happened on disks that every player and every other piece of software regarded as "perfect"

Remember, the digital stream on a CD requires quite a lot of tweaking before it can be considered 100% perfect.

I'm not convinced what you experienced could be considered definitive (i.e. a hopefully rare exception rather than a rule). I'd be more inclined to believe the CD player in your computer or the driver it was using was to blame. This was the promise of digital and if it really fell short in the way you described there would be an uproar.

[sfbp]

Well, you explain to me why Sony offers different ripping speeds for its formats (not WAV)?

And I feel obliged to add that I have seen (heard) this same phenomenon on a wide variety of CD drives. So much so that I believed that the LP2 format was to blame, whereas it was the original rip that was the problem.

[netmduser]

An interesting result from another forum you will all find interesting.

I had to backup a CDR that was beginning to be unreadable. Especially the last track.

I used three methods to recover the track :

-Ripping with EAC, secure mode C2 (Sony DDU 1621 drive), then applying deglitch.exe

-Playing in the Sony DDU1621 and recording the SPDIF output with the Marian Soundcard slaved to the digital input

-Playing in the external hifi Yamaha CDX860 CD player and recording the SPDIF output with the Marian soundcard slaved to the digital input.

Summary: CD player recovered with no glitches

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofive....php/t2181.html

Hopefully someone here can shed some technical info why this was so in this case. My personal experience with dvd optical out for cd da is scratches end up as silence ie. dropped.

I'm not convinced what you experienced could be considered definitive (i.e. a hopefully rare exception rather than a rule). I'd be more inclined to believe the CD player in your computer or the driver it was using was to blame. This was the promise of digital and if it really fell short in the way you described there would be an uproar.

[Abby Normal]

Well, you explain to me why Sony offers different ripping speeds for its formats (not WAV)?

And I feel obliged to add that I have seen (heard) this same phenomenon on a wide variety of CD drives. So much so that I believed that the LP2 format was to blame, whereas it was the original rip that was the problem.

You'll have to define "ripping" here for me. If you mean taking an Audio CD and "ripping" it to ATRAC, ATRAC3, ATRAC3Plus, etc--that's all processing time on the computer itself. The audio cd data gets read at the same rate regardless of what format it is being converted to.

As far as the rest of your experience goes, I can't say. If I'm understanding you correctly, you say "the original rip was the problem". This suggests to me a single point of failure--the drive that the original rip was done on. Please pardon me if I'm missing something. I'm not trying to be dense, but I feel like I am being dense in this case.

[sfbp]

I'm simply saying that Sony's settings (to produce maximum speed of ripping AFAIK, probably a marketing thing but could always be something more sinister like protectionism) don't produce a good result on any drive I tried. So it's a lot more than just reading the stream, more like error correcting and interpolation.

Have you ever studied the Red Book about how CD's are defined? I did a long time ago, and it was clear to me at that time that the way a CD synchs up and the way the digital data stream are read off the disk are very far from perfect.

[netmduser]

There is cd-text stored as data on the cd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-Text besides database lookup. Sonicstage can read cd-text but not md simple burner.

Correct--data is data. Normalization is for output to the speakers (going through D/A and amplification).

As far as CD information goes--I don't think this information is stored on the CD at all (at least with the CDs I own). Devices that "pick up the information" use the volume name (often a seemingly random string of letters and numbers) from the CD and check databases such as CDDB and pull down the information from there.

This is one of the things I like about MD--titling, album, artist, etc are stored on the disc.

[Abby Normal]

There is cd-text stored as data on the cd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-Text besides database lookup. Sonicstage can read cd-text but not md simple burner.

I have a lot of older CDs (pre CD-Text extension)--but that's interesting. Thanks for that. Is this capability what Chris is referring to vis-a-vis his PS3?

Have you ever studied the Red Book about how CD's are defined? I did a long time ago, and it was clear to me at that time that the way a CD synchs up and the way the digital data stream are read off the disk are very far from perfect.

I have to admit I have not. If I can find a way to check this out without spending money on it, I will surely do that. In the meantime, I'll just sit back and wait for Avrin to set us all straight.

[sfbp]

I have to admit I have not. If I can find a way to check this out without spending money on it, I will surely do that. In the meantime, I'll just sit back and wait for Avrin to set us all straight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(audio_CD_standard)

[Abby Normal]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(audio_CD_standard)

Yes, I have read that already--but it doesn't go into enough detail to illustrate your assertions.

Actually, it does help me focus what I'm trying to say and also address something netmduser asked earlier. It is true that the physical representation of the data on the disc is not going to be "perfect". If the length of a particular "pit" is within one range it will be interpreted as a "one", and if within a different range, as a "zero". If it is within neither of these ranges, then I imagine it'll be discarded. Though this doesn't really explain how you get silence from that. Sorry netmduser--premature on my part. A single bit does not equal a note in a melody.

[sfbp]

Note that most CD-music-reading programs (eg Nero and almost anything that copies a music CD) give you options for what to do about music "errors". There are lots of valid red book music CD's that are not perfect from the POV of a digital program. Thats what EAC is all about, I presume.

Anyway the point for Chris is not about the transmission mode but about the reading mode.

[Abby Normal]

Anyway the point for Chris is not about the transmission mode but about the reading mode.

In that case I fall back on bobt's answer--with a slight modification if the intent is to back up your entire CD library. Take a couple of different CDs from your library and perform some tests. If you can hear a difference, use the unit that produced the best result. Some gadgets that look apparently identical on the outside can differ on internal components if they were from different production runs. If this is somehow important to a particular function, it can be well documented in the community and can be distinguished by a serial number difference or a revision number--but that is by no means certain. It's best just to test your own equipment and make your own determination.

[Sony_Fan]

Correct--data is data. Normalization is for output to the speakers (going through D/A and amplification).

As far as CD information goes--I don't think this information is stored on the CD at all (at least with the CDs I own). Devices that "pick up the information" use the volume name (often a seemingly random string of letters and numbers) from the CD and check databases such as CDDB and pull down the information from there.

This is one of the things I like about MD--titling, album, artist, etc are stored on the disc.

My PS3 gets the CD information from the internet. I was just wondering if this information is also transferred through optical output. It's all 0s and 1s, right?

[Abby Normal]

My PS3 gets the CD information from the internet. I was just wondering if this information is also transferred through optical output. It's all 0s and 1s, right?

If it gets it from the Internet, that's the "CDDB" function I was referring to--it is not stored on the CD. It takes a unique identifier from the CD (like a serial number, but in this case it's actually the name of the disc volume) and then cross references it with the database on the Internet (CDDB) and then CDDB sends all the information to your PS3. Usually this volume information is read directly by a device. So, your PS3 can use it to retrieve the CD info via CDDB and so can your computer's CD reader--but I don't think the volume information is transferred if you're outputting the CD audio over the optical cable.

Does that help?

[pata2001]

There is cd-text stored as data on the cd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-Text besides database lookup. Sonicstage can read cd-text but not md simple burner.

OT, but I don't think Sonicstage can read CD-Text. I know I used to rely on another software (I think it was CD-Text manager or something) to manually copy the CD-Text info into Sonicstage's database since SS cannot read it off directly from the CD.

My PS3 gets the CD information from the internet. I was just wondering if this information is also transferred through optical output. It's all 0s and 1s, right?

No.

Edited July 15, 2009 by pata2001

[Abby Normal]

OT, but I don't think Sonicstage can read CD-Text. I know I used to rely on another software (I think it was CD-Text manager or something) to manually copy the CD-Text info into Sonicstage's database since SS cannot read it off directly from the CD.

To be perfectly honest, I don't see the value of CD-Text right now since not all CDs have it and even fewer devices support it. For playing newer CDs in newer cars? I guess.

[pata2001]

To be perfectly honest, I don't see the value of CD-text right now since not all CDs have it and even fewer devices support it. For playing newer CDs in newer cars? I guess.

Yeah, I used to use it extensively when creating mix audio CDs since my car CD deck can read CD-Text. This is way before MP3 CDs.

An interesting result from another forum you will all find interesting.

Hopefully someone here can shed some technical info why this was so in this case. My personal experience with dvd optical out for cd da is scratches end up as silence ie. dropped.

1. It's from 2002.

2. A person in that forum already have some sort of explanation

I wouldn’t think that a stand-alone CD player would be any better (or worse) than the CD playing section of a CD-ROM drive at error concealment, but there are a couple of possibilities. One is that the read electronics (and laser assembly, etc.) in the Yamaha is better and so it has a more error-free signal to start with. Another is that some of this error correction and concealment stuff might be done in firmware in the Sony, and when a certain threshold of errors occurs in a short burst, it may simply run out of time and have to let some through.

Also, it may be that above a certain threshold of C2 errors it is no longer possible to know even which samples are bad but just that the block has uncorrected errors. In that case, the player (or drive) would have to use an algorithm like DeGlitch's to guess which samples are bad, and there could be a lot of variation there.

[Sony_Fan]

I just figured out something neat about my CD player/recorder deck. It has "DIGITAL RECORDING LEVEL" buttons on it, and although you can not increase the original volume of any CD, you can lower the volume. This volume changing DOES affect optical output volume. I'm recording Madonna's "Hard Candy" CD to my MZ-M200 via optical cable in ATRAC SP, and I lowerd the volume of the CD by 2dB. This is a loud CD (98 - 99dB according to MP3Gain), and lowering the volume will eliminate any distortion when it's compressed to ATRAC SP.

[netmduser]

I like hard candy as well - have it in ATRAC SP myself, just curious what cd player model do you have?

I just figured out something neat about my CD player/recorder deck. It has "DIGITAL RECORDING LEVEL" buttons on it, and although you can not increase the original volume of any CD, you can lower the volume. This volume changing DOES affect optical output volume. I'm recording Madonna's "Hard Candy" CD to my MZ-M200 via optical cable in ATRAC SP, and I lowerd the volume of the CD by 2dB. This is a loud CD (98 - 99dB according to MP3Gain), and lowering the volume will eliminate any distortion when it's compressed to ATRAC SP.

[Sony_Fan]

I like hard candy as well - have it in ATRAC SP myself, just curious what cd player model do you have?

I have the TEAC RW-CD22. I finished recording and I'm now listening to "Hard Candy" in good old ATRAC SP on my NetMD MZ-DN430 with the BASS and TREBLE turned all the way up and the music sounds amazing! Even with the cheapy white Sony earphones. Although my M200 has ATRAC Type-R and does an excellent job of recording in ATRAC SP, my $25 NetMD unit continues to put it to shame in terms of BASS!!!!

Edited July 16, 2009 by Chris G

[cornreaper]

Absolutely. A bitstream is a bitstream is a bitstream.

This reminded me, though, of the guy who, back some years ago, posted a rather detailed review of the different audio characteristics of various brands of MD blanks. I wish I could find that article, it was unintentionally very funny. Wait...actually it is right here!

http://www.minidisc.org/hifi_world_blank_review.html

WHAT in the heck was HiFi World thinking!

Didja check the date on that article, namely the month?

[Abby Normal]

Didja check the date on that article, namely the month?

LOL--I didn't notice that because I didn't think my good friend bluecrab would lead me astray. *DOH* Good call, cornreaper. I guess you were wrong, bluecrab--it was intentionally funny.

[sfbp]

Hmm I don't think Eric got the joke to be honest.

[Sony_Fan]

^ What joke?

[Abby Normal]

The review was posted on your birthday, Chris.

If you make a modicum of effort to figure these things out for yourself, you won't make it so easy for me.

[Avrin]

Or are all optical output signals the same?

Wrong.

Differences in sound quality do not occur in an optical transfer of digital data.

Wrong.

Answer, no, they're the same.

Wrong.

Optical outputs do differ. The simplest example is the optical output of a PC. It never outputs the actual signal read from the CD. Before being output, the signal passes through various circuitry, has its level changed, and probably gets resampled a couple of times. Remember that track marks for non-stop albums are always lost when recording via optical from a PC? That's because what is output is not the original CD signal.

Other devices (PS3, Xbox, etc.) may also change the signal before output. Even some CD players actually do that.

In any case, the presence of track mark information in the optical signal reliably indicates that a device outputs the original signal. Luckily for us, any MD recorder can be used to check that.

And CD-TEXT is just an extension of the standard. Previously unused bits are employed to transfer text information from capable devices. This does not change the audio part of the signal at all.

Edited July 16, 2009 by Avrin

[Abby Normal]

There is no such thing as "optical sound quality". Differences in sound quality do not occur in an optical transfer of digital data.

Answer, no, they're the same.

Wrong.

Optical outputs do differ. The simplest example is the optical output of a PC. It never outputs the actual signal read from the CD. Before being output, the signal passes through various circuitry, has its level changed, and probably gets resampled a couple of times. Remember that track marks for non-stop albums are always lost when recording via optical from a PC? That's because what is output is not the original CD signal.

Other devices (PS3, Xbox, etc.) may also change the signal before output. Even some CD players actually do that.

In any case, the presence of track mark information in the optical signal reliably indicates that a device outputs the original signal. Luckily for us, any MD recorder can be used to check that.

And CD-TEXT is just an extension of the standard. Previously unused bits are employed to transfer text information from capable devices. This does not change the audio part of the signal at all.

I'll concede that my statement as written is subject to dispute, but I thought the intent was clear. He wanted a blanket statement about whether one device was superior to another with respect to exact signal reproduction. I didn't answer his question and neither did you. Although you provided the information necessary to do so. The answer is since, by your own definition, none of them are capable of precisely duplicating the original signal then none of them are capable of doing what he was asking. However, if what he meant was "which of these devices transmit better sound quality as a result of superior optics", the answer is still "none". Alternatively, if he meant "which of these devices is best at producing the desired result"?(which I highly doubt--although I'm sure he'll dispute this now)--then the answer is unknowable without a great deal of comparison--which he is capable of doing himself--which SOMEONE suggested he do already.

So who got this right when nobody else did? bobt.... Well, partially. I'd still wager that bobt is right and that he wont hear a difference, barring any defective engineering on the part of any one of the 3 products in question.

In other words, in terms of what your ears are able to discern...there is (probably) no difference.