On Tue, 7 Sep 2004 07:40:15 +1200, "Geoff Wood"
-nospam wrote:

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Geoff Wood" -nospam wrote in message

Arny Krueger wrote:


In the case of extracting audio data from CDs, when you record the
analog output of the CDROM. Not good practice, but its done. In the
case of some copy-protected discs, recording the analog output of a
disc player may be the only available option.

Um ,"ripping" implies digital extraction.

I would agree with implies, but not necessitates.

The word ripping as meaning transcribing digitally is now part of the
vernacular, and is widely used for many other things.

The term "ripping" in my understanding relates to the crass, fast, and
undignified rapid bulk extraction of music from a CD that involved little
skill on the part of the doer.

But that's the whole point of the exercise! Unlike transcribing vinyl
to a more robust storage medium, digital doesn't *need* skill on the
part of the user, to obtain a functionally perfect result. I see
nothing crass or undignified (what bizarre expressions!) in the
existence of a quick and simple means of transferring music with zero
degradation.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

On Tue, 7 Sep 2004 07:40:15 +1200, "Geoff Wood"
-nospam wrote:

The term "ripping" in my understanding relates to the crass, fast, and
undignified rapid bulk extraction of music from a CD that involved little
skill on the part of the doer.

Why the attitude? It takes no skill because it requires no skill.
That isn't good or bad. It's just an efficient system.

I have another problem copying CD's. My children have destroyed a
couple of my favorite disks, mainly by badly scratching them. Is there
a technique for polishing out the scratches? Granted, I don't expect
anything to work on tooth marks.

Metal polish. Or the stuff sold for "cutting back" car paintwork.
Toothpaste for the final polish. Or I'm sure hi-fi stores offer tiny
jars of similar at triple price :-)

My suggestion is to skip the polishs & spend $20 on some
MicroMesh... that is depending on just how many scratched
discs one may have.

It's marketed for the scientific/medical community, but does
wonders on cds/dvds.

The DiskDr uses MicroMesh afaik on it's resurfacing wheel,
but only uses a very very fine grit size. For the same
price you can get a whole pack of MM pads that will
resurface any disc (well, not top-side scratches). You
could skip a disc across pavement, mar it up pretty badly,
and still be able to restore it with MM with a lil work.

Jeff,

How many times has someone made a major purchase only to find sometime
later that it just wasn't "right" ...

Excellent points. I was thinking more along the lines of simple comparisons
like the CD extraction/burning being discussed here. But I agree that
getting input from someone with more experience is always useful when making
a major purchase.

Long cables laying on concrete slab floors in certain specific
environments can contribute to ground loop noise on signal shields
throughout the rest of the system.

I don't see how if the cables are shielded properly.

In the more typical context where someone adds cable elevators and proclaims
their system has been transformed and the improvement is very obvious,
they're just kidding themselves.

--Ethan

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:


But that's the whole point of the exercise! Unlike transcribing vinyl
to a more robust storage medium, digital doesn't *need* skill on the
part of the user, to obtain a functionally perfect result. I see
nothing crass or undignified (what bizarre expressions!) in the
existence of a quick and simple means of transferring music with zero
degradation.

Discussion wasn't about skill-level - the point was relating to the term
"ripping" and it's connotation of "fast and bulk"..

geoff

Ethan Winer wrote:

Jeff,

How many times has someone made a major purchase only to find sometime
later that it just wasn't "right" ...

Excellent points. I was thinking more along the lines of simple comparisons
like the CD extraction/burning being discussed here. But I agree that
getting input from someone with more experience is always useful when making
a major purchase.


Yea, a lot of these isses come from stuff passed down from the
"exreme high end" a.k.a. very expensive systems :-) I do know
that on several very highly resolving systems that I've listened
to, things that would make a noticable difference on them had no
significant effect on my own systems. Highly resoving systems
just seem to be more sensitive to things.


Long cables laying on concrete slab floors in certain specific
environments can contribute to ground loop noise on signal shields
throughout the rest of the system.

I don't see how if the cables are shielded properly.


Actually, for speaker cables shielding would make no difference.
The problem is that the RF runs along the shield to the
components, thru their chassis, then along the IC shields, to
other chassis, then to ground, etc. where it can couple back to
the speaker cables laid along the ground. The problem comes when
you get a large "loop" in this path since the level of noise
signal on the loop elements is proportional to the area inside
the loop. Putting a ferrite core on a power cord, an IC, or even
a speaker cord (if it's a loop element) can effectively open the
loop to RF passage. If the loop has a return path through the
concrete slab via the speaker cables, moving the cables away from
the floor will also reduce the loop currents.

Obviously if there is not a high level of emi or rf noise in the
vicinity these "fixes" don't have anything to "fix". A lot of
higher resolution type audio amplifying circuits can have
problems when even tiny amounts of rf get in them


In the more typical context where someone adds cable elevators and proclaims
their system has been transformed and the improvement is very obvious,
they're just kidding themselves.


Unfortunately that's usually the case. Again though, even to the
uninitiated, the differences on very highly resolving systems can
sometimes be easily discerned if it is pointed out by way of
comparison. These aren't changes that you notice in the "tonal"
aspects of the sound but rather in what is sometimes referred to
as the sound stage. Quality systems have the capability of
throwing out a soundfield that has the feel of being very "open"
and can extend beyond the physical placement of the speakers
themselves. If you were to close your eyes and try to figure out
where the speakers are, it is difficult with such a system. Also,
there can be a very acute sense of "focus" for instruments and
voices within that field which adds to to sense of it being very
alive and real. These are the things that I think captivate the
psyche because they seem to involve you more and draw you in to
the experience.

When noise related artifacts get into the soundstream, they can
have the effect of "collapsing" a sound stage and causing the
focus that it had to become more diffuse. This can happen with
very tiny amounts of noise and phase corruption. Even minor RF
contamination in the front end of your analog equipment can cause
this.

If you ever have friends that make claims as you have pointed
out, try and get them to show you the before and after. It's
probably not likely but if they have a significantly good system,
there is always a possibility that something may have changed
that is audible. If you come across such a thing, then you start
scratching your head and asking "why the ?!**! is it doing that?"
:-)

:-)

Jeff,

Quality systems have the capability of throwing out a soundfield that has
the feel of being very "open" and can extend beyond the physical placement
of the speakers themselves.

I know all about this - I have such a system - and it has nothing to do with
cable elevators. Good imaging requires a reflection free listening zone. You
need to absorb (or diffuse) first reflections not only at key places on the
side walls, but also the ceiling. Once you get it right (and it's not at all
difficult!) it's an amazing experience to hear stereo far wider than you'd
expect looking at the loudspeaker spacing. It's not unlike the extra-wide
effect you get with headphones, but it's more natural sounding. And you can
hear the left-right placement of individual instruments much more clearly.

There's no mystery with any of this, and the notion of "highly resolving
systems" simply means that all of the important audio parameters are within
acceptable bounds:

* Distortion - THD, IM, a few others - get these more than 80 dB below the
music and you're all set.

* Frequency response - flat to within half a dB between 20 and 20k and I'm
happy.

* Signal to noise - hiss, hum, crackle and sputter, etc - 90 dB gets you
below the noise floor in a typical room in any home.

* Time based errors - wow, flutter, jitter - aside from turntables and open
reel tape decks, these are irrelevant today.

That's it! Nothing else matters or is relevant.

--Ethan

Jeff Wiseman wrote:


Laurence Payne wrote:

On Sun, 05 Sep 2004 13:32:57 GMT, "Bubba" wrote:

Metal polish. Or the stuff sold for "cutting back" car paintwork.
Toothpaste for the final polish. Or I'm sure hi-fi stores offer tiny
jars of similar at triple price :-)

Please provide some brand names to make it easier
to buy them. Thanks.


In the UK: Brasso. T-Cut. Colgate. But the brands don't matter.
They're all cutting pastes of differing grades.

Those are all pretty abrasive. Novus makes a plastic polish that
is used for finishing surfaces like acrylics and polycarbonates
such as Lexan. It comes in 3 grades from "coarse" (if you can
call it that) to fine and also a plastic cleaner. It is quite
common and many plastic houses use it as well as car repair (e.g.
matting on headlight covers). I had an old AOL disk that was
pretty scraped up. Using the coarse grade by hand it still took a
while to get the scratches down to where they were not noticable.
The finer grades then removed the "haziness" left by the coarser grade.

The coarse grade is finer than toothpaste depending on the brand.
I've seen toothpaste leave a significant haze to the surface so I
wonder if the use of toothpaste is an anecdotal solution repeated
by others who've never really tried it.

I've used it. The haze is real, but it doesn't impede playing
(or ripping) the CD. So in that sense the haze isn't
'significant'. Nowadays, especially if I intend to sell the disc
to a used-CD shop I generally finish the disc with
a finer grade of polish, until it's 'like new'.


as it was originally. However, my personal experience so far
(limited) is that it can take a long time by had to get rid of
even moderate scratches with the coarse Novus by hand. Using a
coarser compnd such as one of those mentioned by the earlier
poster may work well to get the major scratches out quicker and
then use the Novus to finish it.

For bad scratches I start with an auto rubbing compound,, then
proceed through polishing and finishing compounds, all using
a soft buffer wheel on a benchtop buffer. Takes a few minutes
per disc.

I've also noticed that local used CD shops are now featuring
disc-polishing devices; they'll charge a small fee to clean your
disc for you.



--
-S
Your a boring little troll. How does it feel? Go blow your bad breath elsewhere.

Geoff Wood -nospam wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:
"Geoff Wood" -nospam wrote in message

Arny Krueger wrote:


In the case of extracting audio data from CDs, when you record the
analog output of the CDROM. Not good practice, but its done. In the
case of some copy-protected discs, recording the analog output of a
disc player may be the only available option.

Um ,"ripping" implies digital extraction.

I would agree with implies, but not necessitates.

The word ripping as meaning transcribing digitally is now part of the
vernacular, and is widely used for many other things.

The term "ripping" in my understanding relates to the crass, fast, and
undignified rapid bulk extraction of music from a CD that involved little
skill on the part of the doer.


Whereas I've seen it applied to everything from quick-n-dirty
extraction directly to 128 kbps mp3, to the fussiest testing/error-correcting
Exact Audio Copy setup.

I take it to mean, simply, digital extraction of audio data from a
CD to hard drive.



--
-S
Your a boring little troll. How does it feel? Go blow your bad breath elsewhere.