[Sander deWaal]

(paul packer) said:


Exactly. Which leads to another question: Is it possible for different
pressing plants to generate different rates of error in a disc, and
what effect does this have on sound quality even in a new player? IOW,
will a player sound significantly worse when operating at near "full
correction", if that term is valid. Has anyone ever done mass
inspections of discs from different plants to check error rate?


An informal test, done by Jacco Dekkers from NXP (former Philips
science lab) showed that when there are so much errors that the error
correction can't cope anymore and the player has to interpolate, the
result sounded noticeably different to a test panel of listeners, and
most people liked it better than a CD with less errors.

Unfortunately, the test report is in Dutch, and an informal one at
that.

The errors were generated by coloring the edges of the CD with a
Lumicolor green marker, and in a later stadium, to put small dots on
the CD surface with a black marker, small enough to not let the player
skip.


This isn't scientific proof of course, but the result is a bit
surprising, at least to me.

--
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