"Audio Master Quality Recording". Is it good?

W

webstop

New member
From Yamaha website:

The Yamaha CRW3200E is the first CD-RW ever that supports "AudioMASTER" (Audio Master Quality Recording). It's main purpose is the offering of superior recording quality for disks intended to be used for the seer reproduction of audio on regular home CD and car players. This new recording mode of audio disks is expected to offer reproduction of music with reduced jitter on devises whose power supply subsystem is sensitive to electric current fluctuations due to abrupt motor/pick-up movements in those cases where the reading of a disk is problematic.

Anyone tried this mode? Is audio quality of recorded CD really better?
 
Never heard of it.

Jitter does not get recorded to CD since the actual DAC process corrects it at every step. I am definately no expert but if Jitter was being introduced due to poor analog conversion I dont see how a different format of CD would make a difference since a regular CD has jitter free recordings on it.
 
I didn't know that, but apparently jitter not only occures during disk reading, but also CAN be written onto it.
Read here: http://www.cdrlabs.com/articles/index.php?articleid=16

Here is another interesting quote:

Yamaha CRW2200 series now support "AudioMASTER" technology
Friday, 5 April 2002
Yamaha had announced during the CeBIT 2002 show, the addition
of the Audio master quality recording system to it CRW2200 Series. Today Yamaha Japan released the new firmware (v1.0e) that can be downloaded from our Firmware Section.
In the Audio master quality recording mode, CRW-2200 Series will record perfect audio and data on any blank CD-R by widening the lands and the pits to which data is recorded, significantly reducing jitter created during CD recording. As a result, Audio master quality recording system allows CRW2200 Series to drastically improve upon the standard audio and music recording quality to a level rivaling professionally prepared music CDs.
 
I'm no expert but my BS alarm is going off. What they are saying contradicts what I have learned. My understanding is that Jitter is never written to a CD and will only affect your CD's if you are using a stand alone CD burner that is trying to write in almost real time. When burning from a computer file the jitter is corrected because jitter can't really be written to a CD. Digital audio is 1 or 0. Jitter is what happens when those values are not read properly during DAC.

Check out this site for more than you ever wanted to know about digital audio www.digido.com
 
Jitter is a time based distortion, and I believe that it might be possible that the recording quality of a CD could indeed be part of a jitter issue in a CD player system. The guy at digido even mentions that the recording quality of a CD does have an impact on its sound, but did not decicively say that it was do to read error rates, jitter, or a combination of the two.

It would not of course be an issue if you were to digitally rip the CD.

Assuming that a CD plant copies your master onto some other medium prior to creating the real master, jitter and error rates would not be a problem unless the error rate was excessively high. Of course that may be a bad assumption.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I am not trying to argue with anyone here, I am just trying to understand. Here is a quote from Bob Katz's article at www.digido.com website:

"Can Compact Discs contain jitter?
When I started in this business, I was skeptical that there could be sonic differences between CDs that demonstrably contained the same data. But over time, I have learned to hear the subtle (but important) sonic differences between jittery (and less jittery) CDs. What started me on this quest was that CD pressings often sounded deteriorated (soundstage width, depth, resolution, purity of tone, other symptoms) compared to the CDR master from which they were made. Clients were coming to me, musicians with systems ranging from $1000 to $50,000, complaining about sonic differences that by traditional scientific theory should not exist. But the closer you look at the phenomenon of jitter, the more you realize that even minute amounts of jitter are audible, even through the FIFO (First in, First Out) buffer built into every CD player.
CDRs recorded on different types of machines sound different to my ears. An AES-EBU (stand-alone) CD recorder produces inferior-sounding CDs compared to a SCSI-based (computer) CD recorder. This is understandable when you realize that a SCSI-based recorder uses a crystal oscillator master clock. Whenever its buffer gets low, this type of recorder requests data on the SCSI buss from the source computer and thus is not dependent on the stability of the computer's clock. In contrast, a stand-alone CD recorder works exactly like a DAT machine; it slaves its master clock to the jittery incoming clock imbedded in the AES/EBU signal. No matter how effective the recorder's PLL at removing incoming jitter, it can never be as effective as a well-designed crystal clock.
I've also observed that a 4X-speed SCSI-based CDR copy sounds inferior to a double-speed copy and yet again inferior to a 1X speed copy.
Does a CD copy made from a jittery source sound inferior to one made from a clean source? I don't think so; I think the quality of the copy is solely dependent on clocking and mechanics involved during the transfer. Further research should be done on this question."

In fact, I have noticed that whenever I dub a CD on computer, the resulting copy sounds different, sometimes noticeably inferior to original. Everything matters: ripping speed, recording speed, media...
So, in the digital world of onez and zero things are not that simple.

Therefore my question remains:
Has anyone experienced Yamaha's "Audio Master Quality Recording"? Does it make any audible difference or is it just a marketing trick?
 
dammit, where's Skippy when we need him. Is that even out yet? I read the press release and it seemed like they were just coming out with it.
 
I have the Yamaha CRW3200E burner and I use the Audiomaster function to burn my audio cd's.
This function makes the laser burn longer pits that are easier to read by most cd-players but at the same time this reduces the capacity of a 74mn cdr (down to 63mn!)
Read this if you want the details : http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Articles/Specific.asp?ArticleHeadline=Yamaha+CRW3200E+CD-RW&index=9

Have I noticed any difference?
Frankly, I haven't bothered comparing the same audio cd burned with the 'audiomaster' function to one burned with a regular 'Disc-At-Once' session.
Anyway, the Audiomaster function sure doesn't sound worse, so it's either better or just as good as a regular burn :)
 
db51,
The only reasonable comparison to make would be AudioMaster against 1x speed...
Anyway, I got myself CRW3200E drive and will investigate this issue further.
 
OK here are my first impressions after brief comparison.
Very noticeable diference.
1. Audio Master sounded kinda fuller and smoother, with more low mids.
1. 1x speed gives more definition, bass sounds tighter AND louder (may need to compensate for that). Overall - less low mids, the whole mix sounds more "airy" and balanced.
I will do more comparisons of course. But so far for MY MIXES 1x speed appears to be better. Others may think differently.
One more thing: 1x speed on Yamaha CRW3200E drive sounded MUCH MUCH better then 1x speed on the old Sony burner I had been using before.

db51,
My advice: waste a disk and do comparison yourself. Its worth it.
 
I don't remember the model number, but it was an old internal IDE 2x Sony CDR burner with caddy. I kept it because I only used 1x speed for music CDs anyway. Apparently, not all 1x burners are same. Turns out that all this blurb about Yamaha using such and such improved technology has some validity to it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top