I almost exclusively use CDR's in my car. I rip a lot of my own CD's and burn them and also have fallen in love with Apple's iTunes Music Store for downloading.

Is the Sound Quality of these CDR's comparable to a regular CD. I rip songs off my CD's at 192kbs. When I do a side by side, the CDR's don't sound as good. Is this psychological?

 

IMO, I can not tell a difference ... especially with the top down in a noisey car like ours. At 192 kps, the difference should be small assuming the surce recording was good to begin with!

Just a suggestion, use CD-RW's if your player can read them. I keep my music stored on my HD and use / reuse a small number of RWs.

 

I don't understand the problem... CD, CDR are all just bits for the DAC in the CD player. Neither sounds different than the other - provided the material recorded on the disc is the same.

As for MP3's, it is a lossy codec, and you will be able to tell if you listen closely. So it is not your imagination at all. Usually 192k is good enough for just about anyone, but highs can be a bit brash on an MP3 even at this bitrate.

So if you convert a disc to MP3's then burn those MP3's back to an audio CD, then you will get a disc that doesn't sound as good as the original because some of the sound information was lost in the MP3 conversion.

If you want to make a compilation and keep the original quality, rip to AIF format and compile a disc with the ripped AIF tracks, these will sound as good as the original because this is not lossy (but 10x larger than an MP3).

 

I'm a bit buzzed right now from a night of drinking, so take what I write with a grain of salt. However, let it be known that my work involves digital audio and image/video compression...

The fact that it's on CD-R media makes no difference...the fact that you're obviously using some form of compression (most likely MP3) does matter. Normally you should not notice a difference at 192 kbs since 128 kbs should be near CD quality, but it actually depends heavily upon the specific codec used to compress the audio file. The best compressor out there at the moment is LAME, but there are several other decent encoders. If you're hearing a significant difference between the source and the encoded version at 192 kbs then your encoder is crappy.

 

You're forgetting that all recorders are NOT created equal. Unless you have more money than you know what to do with(in that case you could just stop being cheap and go buy the CD), your consumer recorder will not record to a disc as well as a professionally recorded one would have been.

Think of it this way. Why would a $7500 Krell CD player sound better than a $99 Sony? It's because of a number of things. One of those being "construction." A better built CD player is going to outperform a less quality one.

What I'm getting at is your recorder is most likely not as good as the one used to manufacture the CD that you would buy at the store.

Also remember that the MP3 that you download had to of been uploaded at some point. If the person uploading had a poor quality CD player, and he used a disc that had already been a copy, then it doesn't matter what bit rate you are using.

Just some food for thought.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Money2536
[B]You're forgetting that all recorders are NOT created equal.