file degradation

  • Thread starter Thread starter sandro perri
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sandro perri

New member
hi,

wondering if anyone can tell me about the possible dangers of continually burning your digital audio to cd-r for backup (as DATA), and then re-loading it onto your hard drive for further work. does this degrade the audio data in any way? i know an audio cd is 16 bit, but when burning data instead of .wav, does the same type of degradation occur?

thanks,
sandro
 
Sandro,

> i know an audio cd is 16 bit, but when burning data instead of .wav, does the same type of degradation occur? <

There should be no degradation whether you burn the audio as Wave files on a data CD or as audio on an audio CD. Data CDRs have slightly more error checking built in - 16 bits of redundancy for every 16 bits of data, versus 14 bits of redundancy. But unless the CD is outright damaged, either format should come back as an exact bit for bit copy.

Data CDs are guaranteed to come back bit for bit, and you'll get a read error if it can't be recovered exactly. With an audio CD it's possible that the player's error correction will kick in and make small changes without you knowing it. But this is rare, and probably not audible anyway.

--Ethan
 
thanks Ethan...

i work in 24-bit though...so my question now would be: is burning the data as data going to bring it down to 16-bit, the way burning data to audio would?

thanks...
 
No, if you burn it down as data, it is the 24 bit file. It is an exact duplicate of what is on your hard drive. If you burn it so you can listen to it on your stereo, then it is 16 bit.
Don't confuse the media with the format.
 
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