"Sander deWaal" wrote in message
(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,
That should be no surprise. Interpolated data has less resolution.
and most people liked it better than a CD with less errors.
Perhaps the listening panel were Vinyl Bigots or Tube Bigots?
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.
It is consistent with some people's ideas that some people prefer the sound
of music with added noise and distortion.
Thanks for showing the similarity between preferring tubes and vinyl and
preferring hopelessly damaged CDs.