Check out my COOL NEW VINYL CD-Rs D00D
 

I don't know if they're pieces of crap or not, but they're so cute :blush:

They look and feel just like a real vinyl record on the top :D

fuck i forgot the picture

yessssssssss

god damn i love these

sick

never heard of those before, they look pretty cool. where can you find those?

I saw those at future shop, but I didn't buy them cause they looked a little too much like a gimmick to me, I thought they might be crappy.
So instead I bought Memorex, which don't work 30% of the time for me. damn.

well i wanted to burn a couple cd's for part of a christmas thing i'm putting together, and i thought they looked better than the normal gold and black or whatever ones we usually get. i got them at futureshop too!

I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT
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I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT I WANT

Are they going to last, though?
Anyone know if they are good quality?

Well they're still digital so they're never going to be the same quality as vinyl. The big thing is they're harder to scuff, they look kinda cool, and they have the ability to be higher quality. I say that meaning your cd is always only able to sound as good as your source. Unless your sample rate is 1.411 mb you cant really touch true analog sound. In general tho if you have a 328kbps MP3 and you burn on the new cd-rs you'll have a noticeable difference.


heres a link

http://www.verbatim.com/products/pro...cfm?pro_id=379

Thanks for the info and link.
That link shows the product.
If anyone actually wants to buy the product, here is a direct link.
http://www.shopverbatim.com/product.asp?sku=2236840

could you clarify please - you are not suggesting in some way that vinyl is of higher quality than CD are you?

I mean it seems a rather implausible thing to say - frequency response of vinyl is not as good as CD, neither is dynamic range

the vinyl thing is obviously a cosmetic gimick - it has no relation/bearing to sound quality (or quantity) of a CD whatsoever - the standard remains the same - 16-bit @ 44.1 kHz

i've seen the verbatim vinyl cd-r's at target. wtf is the difference besides the way they look?

Nothing. It's just the vinyl look on the top, the burnable surface is just like any other CD-R.

They just cost much more than regular CD-R's.

haha!!

desi those are awesome. burn up some Paul Mcleod cds and sell them for lots of loottaiss.

sorry bud but you're wrong wrong wrong.... vinyl is and will always be superior as vinyl is analog and cds are digital. By the simple laws of sound a digital signal cannot completely reproduce an analog signal.

Thus the reason many people who create music release on vinyl as you can hear and feel music you can't (at this point) hear or feel on a cd. While you might not notice it on a smashing pumpkins cd you can hear it on other artists work.

let me link you my friend

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm

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Question

I hear people saying that vinyl records have a better sound quality than CDs or even DVDs. How can this be?

Answer

The answer lies in the difference between analog and digital recordings. A vinyl record is an analog recording, and CDs and DVDs are digital recordings. Take a look at the graph below. Original sound is analog by definition. A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal at a certain rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second) and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy (for CDs it is 16-bit, which means the value must be one of 65,536 possible values).

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/question487.gif

This means that, by definition, a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps. Some sounds that have very quick transitions, such as a drum beat or a trumpet's tone, will be distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate.

In your home stereo the CD or DVD player takes this digital recording and converts it to an analog signal, which is fed to your amplifier. The amplifier then raises the voltage of the signal to a level powerful enough to drive your speaker.

A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost. The output of a record player is analog. It can be fed directly to your amplifier with no conversion.

This means that the waveforms from a vinyl recording can be much more accurate, and that can be heard in the richness of the sound. But there is a downside, any specks of dust or damage to the disc can be heard as noise or static. During quiet spots in songs this noise may be heard over the music. Digital recordings don't degrade over time, and if the digital recording contains silence, then there will be no noise.

From the graph above you can see that CD quality audio does not do a very good job of replicating the original signal. The main ways to improve the quality of a digital recording are to increase the sampling rate and to increase the accuracy of the sampling.

The recording industry has a new standard for DVD audio discs that will greatly improve the sound quality. The table below lists the sampling rate and the accuracy for CD recordings, and the maximum sampling rate and accuracy for DVD recordings. DVDs can hold 74 minutes of music at their highest quality level. CDs can also hold 74 minutes of music. By lowering either the sampling rate or the accuracy, DVDs can hold more music. For instance a DVD can hold almost 7 hours of CD quality audio.

DVD audio discs and players are rare right now, but they will become more common, and the difference in sound quality should be noticeable. To take advantage of higher quality DVD audio discs, however, you will need a DVD player with a 192kHz/24-bit digital to analog converter. Most DVD players only have a 96kHz/24-bit digital to analog converter. So if you are planning to take full advantage of DVD audio be sure to look for a 192kHz/24-bit DAC.

vinyl doesnt have a sample rate as its a raw audio signal... only when it is converted to digital (ie to your computer) does it then have a sample rate

That article, of course, ignores the problems of recording in analog -- i.e. that analog recordings contain a good deal more imperfect data than digital media by their very nature, because rather than having a laser copy data bit by bit, they use a needle to cut a groove into a hunk of plastic. I mean, I'm not arguing that analog equipment tends to provide a warmer and more natural sound, but I am saying that it's basically six of one half dozen of the other. . . what you lose in "steps" on a digital recording is probably equivalent to what's lost in small variations in the calibration of record production equipment, dust (which is mentioned in the article), and other non-digital gremlins. Essentially, they're a dead heat, and personal preference rules.

Just make that test:

Put siamese dream on your CD, turn the volume up. Start Disarm. Listen to it.

Put siamese dream Vinyl 1 on your turntable and turn the volume up. Start Disarm. Listen to it.

Now tell me why disarm sounds so better on vinyl.

Not to mention that when you're physically etching a soundwave response into the vinyl master, its accuracy is limited by the mechanism used to create the grooves. There *will* be a latency involved, especially when there are sudden changes in the soundwave. It is only slight, but it's there. Digital formats on the other hand have the *potential* to be more accurate, if the sampling rate was so high that discrepancies in the approximation of the waveform were smaller than those in the vinyl recording. It's all kinda moot anyway, since a lot of music these days passes through at least one digital stage - and DVD audio is going to catch up with studio quality pretty quickly.

That problem was fixed long ago... solution= press one song per side at 45rpm on a 12". The quality is unbelievable. Not to mention vinyl pressing has pretty much been perfected over the past 5 years.

Like I said you might not hear the quality with your next white stripes record as mainstream labels opt not to use this technology to make an extra $1 a record.

Go spend a few bucks and buy a Dillinja or Lemon D record. You'll understand the superiorirty of vinyl

but digital recording always is sourced from analog.... there are easy ways to record in analog and make it high quality..... it's not as easy as recording in digital by plugging into your computer, but for those who think analog matters it's very do-able

as far as degredation of vinyl via dust, etc.... anyone with a pair of technic 1200's and some decent concord needles doesnt have that problem. If you're playing on your parents home stereo system you're gonna encounter that problem.

My "Charlotte Sometimes" 12" single sound a lot better that CD version because of that! :D

Yeah but the physical limitations are still there - we're talking minute ones, but as sampling resolution increases the gap between digital and analog fidelity is going to decrease, and digital will eventually overtake anything that relies on physical movement in the mastering process. Increasing the 'bandwidth' of a vinyl record will obviously help the sound quality, but it isn't going to change the accuracy of the etching process. Actually the same goes for playback - the record player is never going to 'read' the vinyl completely accurately. There will always be little jumps when the needle has a lot of upward momentum, meaning subtle changes might not be caught. We're talking in the micron range here, but when you're going to talk about digital approximating waveforms, it's a relevant inaccuracy. I agree with you that vinyl is probably a better representation of the sound right now, but that's going to change and vinyl will be left behind fairly soon

Analog will always be relevant to the high end audio market, no matter how high you can get the resolution of a digital source, because of the sweetness, spaciousness and sense of presence that analog offers over digital. I have heard a SACD at my local high end audio dealer, and I have to admit it sounded DAMN good. But he was demoing it on a $3000 player, through a preamp and amp that was over $5000. My $1200 Rega P25 table with a $600 Rega Exact cartridge sounds nearly as good through my shitty $500 Sony A/V home theatre amp that I bought at Sears, even though I have serious issues in my apartment with room resonances and speaker placement.It just has that warmth that can't be felt via digital. Cymbals ring clear and true, you can hear all the subtle vibrations in the snare drum, and subtle details are revealed in vocals that make you feel like "You are there". I'll be the first to admit that keeping your LP's clean is a major pain in the ass though. I think that SACD's are excellent competition for analog and a great choice, in fact I would buy one except for the fact there is hardly any software available for SACD right now. And BTW, DVD audio sucks ass. Who the fuck wants to listen to music in 5 channel surround? Ive got some DVD audio tracks that came with some CD's (i.e. Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, etc) as bonus DVD's, and I cannot stand them. They sound so unnatural and have this "WOW LOOK AT ME IM NEW AND HIGH TECH" B.S. sound that is so distracting it takes all the enjoyment out of listening. Just give me 2 clear channels and I'll be happy.

End of rant.


P.S. I'll showw off my table here:

What are you talking about? That's like saying all CDs use 4-channel surround, just because they can.

DVD Audio Specifications 4U

The point I'm making is that they are pushing the 5-channel surround feature because they think it will sell software,and the DVD audio discs that I have heard sounded like dogshit. Some of the recordings I have read about actually make different instruments come from all differt directions, like you are sitting in an orchestra pit, which is totally unnatural. The pure audio specs of a 2-channel DVD-Audio would be great. I think SACDs are better because
1) they will have a similar audio fidelity as DVD audio (I think its range is 10-100,000k)
2) many SACD's will be dual layer, with a regular CD layer (for plauying in your car or walkman) and an SACD layer for your home system, which makes them more convenient.

Unfortunately the lack of software and the fact that DVD players are in many many homes already and SACD players are not will probably make DVD audio the winner of the format wars.(grumble)

Yeah well surround sound is pretty much a pointless gimmick when it comes to music - there has to be a stereo option. You'd need a really good setup to appreciate it properly (most people's rear speakers are lower quality than their front ones, etc). I think you'll find that most DVD audio discs will focus on high quality 2-channel audio. I mean, I doubt albums are necessarily going to become longer just because the discs can hold more music. The SACD thing does sound pretty cool, and it would be a nice evolutionary step. But DVD's so well established... I have a feeling I know which one's going to win out. But in any case, vinyl is going to get left behind in terms of accuracy by the next major audio format, but people will still love it for years to come

but thats just it.... the general idea that vinyl is imperfect or that you cant get an absolute read of the vinyl has long since passed. CD's were built to combat the negative side of vinyl in the 60's and 70's.... since cds became the norm the vinyl industry has had to respond to it... they've done this by making everything involved higher quality.... that being records, turntables, and needles. Records are given better fidelity my being pressed more accurately and a beter mastering process for tunes to be put on vinyl. Turntables have been given higher quality tonearms, wiring, and now with straight arm technology records can now be completely skipless (see the new vestax and new numark turntables). The main difference has been needles. With concord needles and reworked styli people like Stanton and Ortofon have accomplished s + n/n ratio that you used to have to pay thousands for in the past for a mere $100 per set.

For the general consumer cd will always be better... because its cheap and "good enough" but if you really want a full out delivery of the music you buy analog owns your soul.

on another topic... there are turntables now with optical outputs.... for anyone wanting the BEST sounding digital representation you can buy these tables and source your tunes from vinyl and record them in an audio program at the samplerate of your choice. Still burining on a cd will limit that but it will vastly increase your pleasure.

i think that's pretty cool, and i'll definately try and find those, next time i have to shop for CD-R's(question for PkPhuoko, do you know if these can only be bought online? or what...).

Those are the same CDR's as the thread was started about. They're just regular CD-R's with a gimmick vinyl look on top, they won't change the quality of the music.

edit : You can buy them at Staples.