Old CD recordings : PCOpticalOut+YourPlayer+DFXAudiEnhancer >> direct optical recording from your CD player

[PhilippeC]

I have re-recorded some of my old CDs directly from my Cyrus Player Dad3 but I notice that the MD sound on my MDS-B5 was dB far far less away compare to the same recording from Flac files with my PC Optical Out + Winamp + DFX Audio Enhancer. 20 of my recording are now on the list of re-re-recording ! I am just listening a computer-MD Eloy (progressive rock) and it is astounding compare to Paranoid Black Sabbath I have listened to 5 minutes ago !

I have read somewhere that Sony JA333ES and perhaps another deck have a function to enhance the level sound, I suppose it is also a solution.

[sfbp]

On my JB980 (and also the JE630 and JE640) there is input level control when recording from Optical. There's no optical out modification, but this is easily achieved by uploading (either via optical or SonicStage) to WAV file and normalizing the wave to make the peaks as close to 100% as you wish.

Is this what you mean? Certainly the larger the dynamic range, the greater the fidelity - i.e. if you can make the waves reach 100% at the peak for a given recording, that recording will be as good as it can be.

Scale Factor Edit may be what you are talking about. It's irreversible (unlike a software wave editor) and only works under certain conditions (doesn't work for LP tracks?), and takes a lot longer than normalizing as mentioned above. This is presumably because the CPU's of PC's are now 10x faster than when the 980 was built? There's an actual button for it on the JE640 (doesn't exist on the JE630), but the feature is available from the Edit menu in other decks including the MXD-D400 and JB980.

[Avrin]

It is always better to record unchanged signal, to avoid rounding errors. I.e., with the original level and no EQ/enhancements. So, there is no way to get a quality recording from a PC, since it always changes the original signal from the CD.

[sfbp]

I think you had better define "quality recording". I use the PC to output all sorts of optical signals from broadcast sources.

However this reminds me of another point that I've been meaning to ask. Is the Type-S reproduction something that happens before or after D->A? If it's after, then optical out (playback) from a deck into a receiver (I recently got one with opti input) should be fine even if the deck doesn't have Type-S.

Or will the Type-S actually affect what goes out the digital output of my MD deck(s)?

[Avrin]

"Quality recording" = a recording as close to the original signal as possible.

Type-S affects ATRAC3 decoding (before DAC), so it has an effect on an optical out.