Shaving Compact Discs to improve the sound (?!)

Рет қаралды 1,706,496

Жыл бұрын

Today I'm using a special lathe that cuts a 36º edge into a CD to improve the sound quality. Is this madness...I aim to find out. You might also like this video about demagnetising CDs • Demagnetizing CDs?!
V.FAQ… Q) Why didn’t you just rip the CDs into the computer?
A) Because I wanted to use a regular Audio CD player. Since the improvements claimed related to audio produced during CD playback (at 1x), this is what I chose to concentrate on.
Snopes has an entry regarding the use of green edge markers to prevent ‘light scatter’ www.snopes.com/fact-check/bew...
ONE SLIGHT CORRECTION to this video…
The Dave Brubeck Hybrid SACDs I bought cost me £5.69 each - not the £8.50 I mentioned in the video. So that’s a bit of a bargain. If anyone is interested here’s an AFFILIATED LINK to the discs I ordered. amzn.to/3e7N3DS However I can’t guarantee you’ll receive SACDs like I did. Note - my discs were ‘Sold by: Amazon EU S.a.r.L.’ -
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Пікірлер: 15 000

@harfharfful Жыл бұрын

And if you have a book stored on that CD, it'll make the plot clearer, the characters more compelling, and expand the intrigue of the mysteries.

@Segasocks Жыл бұрын

🤣🤣🤣

@okhouri Жыл бұрын

🤣🤣😂😂

@thatpersonwithamlpiconwhos2861 Жыл бұрын

If you also have a video game stored on the CD, the graphics will have a noticeable improvement, better frame rates, and improved gameplay

@csciacchitano Жыл бұрын

Well done

@OldSchoolRT Жыл бұрын

If you use it to store school files, you will be getting greater amount of information, wider perspective and more interesting topics. I started using it 3 years ago and I had only straight A+'s since.

@seanschraidt3985 Жыл бұрын

the 36° angle was probably determined by the off the shelf cutting blade having a 36° angle to the blade.

@endcapitalism5274 Жыл бұрын

In my audiophile experience, the best way to improve the quality of a CD or LP is to get it autographed by the band. Then the sound quality skyrockets.

@pandoraisadog Жыл бұрын

@@TD75 what is this even supposed to mean

@RanEncounter Жыл бұрын

@@pandoraisadog Read OPs name.

@F_I_J_I_W_A_T_E_R Жыл бұрын

@@TD75 If you want to tell people about something, you have to go where there are people to tell in the first place

@bsanchez3563 Жыл бұрын

XD at op

@olivercharles2930 7 ай бұрын

no @@F_I_J_I_W_A_T_E_R

@lordeverybody872 Жыл бұрын

The optimal angle of 36° is the same as an exacto blade. What a coincidence

@m.cigledy6769 Жыл бұрын

I used to work at a CD manufacturing plant, owned by Québecor Media. We had an engineer there who was on the original team designing the CD format. One of the smartest people I've ever known. He got one of these things, and he went through dozens of CDs, testing on manufacturing and validating equipment that costs more than a nice house. He used known good discs, as well as discs that had failed quality checks for bad data printing, off center data tracks, off center or out of round discs, warped discs, etc. The results? There was NO difference in a bit-by-bit comparison between a treated and non treated disc. None. And NO disc was ever improved to the point it wasn't scrap. Think about this: A CD is ones and zeros, and it can only hold data. If there really are so many output errors, you would NEVER get a computer program to run off of a disc. One error would crash the whole thing. At best, the machine is a waste of money. At worst, you can damage the disc. When testing, several discs cracked when being cut. If the plastic is cooled off incorrectly after being injected, it can induce stress points which will open into fractures if disturbed, similar to a Prince Rupert's drop. Normally, the testing of a disc focuses mostly on the recorded inner section, but you are cutting on the outside edge, so there may be an unknown stress spot. You can also chip off the lacquer coating that protects the aluminum from oxidation. If the disc is a dual layer disc, you can chip into the seam between the layers and cause it to seperate. The best use for these things is transferring money from an unsuspecting consumer to an unscrupulous manufacturer.

@gordonshumway7465 Жыл бұрын

Even funnier is now audiophiles believe in audiophile ethernet cables. When people don't understand the underlying technology you can sell them anything.

@SkylerLinux Жыл бұрын

This is the best comment hands down.

@knietiefimdispo2458 Жыл бұрын

Don't confuse the audiophiles with facts 🤣

@nacabaro3737 Жыл бұрын

@@electrictroy2010 those kind of people are the ones who use gold plated Ethernet cables thinking the music in their Minecraft game will sound crispier when connecting to a server.

@greggv8 Жыл бұрын

@@electrictroy2010 One way to spot the ignorant audiophile is to ask them "Why are audio CDs 44.1Khz sampling rate?" If the answer is anything other than "Because that's what fit perfectly onto PAL U-Matic video tape." you know you're dealing with a clueless audiophile, one who probably believes in "oxygen free copper" speaker cables, has a disc shaver, and who knows what other audio snake oils. Probably even owns TOSLINK cables with gold plated connectors.

@bigclivedotcom Жыл бұрын

Ah, but did you put a special error absorbing audiophile energy crystal on your CD players? And was your house wiring made of mono directional oxygen free copper?

@Jstklskns Жыл бұрын

Indeed. And, of course, everything should be grounded directly to a leyline.

@welshgit Жыл бұрын

Sigh... amateurs, right?

@johno9507 Жыл бұрын

Maybe carbonation will help improve the sound? 🤔 😋

@jabezhane Жыл бұрын

A Peter Belt special foil sticker or digital timing clock too?

@gordonmcmillan4709 Жыл бұрын

He needs you to send him a BigClive x-Ray machine, maybe Ralph has a spare?

@YoutubePizzer Жыл бұрын

And if you have photos on the disc, it makes the image clearer, increases the resolution, improves the colour grading, decreases the file size, improves the framing of the shot, adds post-processing and makes the subjects more attractive

@tomaszk2242 11 ай бұрын

In extreme cases it changes the weather you had on holiday.

@ARockyRock 11 ай бұрын

shaving a cd with precious family photos now, I'll never have to edit them again!

@shu93129 7 ай бұрын

Critically, it also improves the script.

@espressomatic 2 ай бұрын

You should see what happens when you shave a photo CD using a 69 degree angle.

@crispy9175 Жыл бұрын

I'm an audio engineer and you tested this exactly the way I would've. So glad you inverted one and compared, perfect way to do that.

@arpeemac Жыл бұрын

as a professional, do you provide special attention on ear health and hygiene? years of reading audiophile discussions, I rarely encounter this topic.

@crispy9175 Жыл бұрын

@@arpeemac oh yeah. I'm paranoid about it. I'm sure you're aware of most of this based on your question, but it takes way lower sound pressure levels to damage your hearing than realize, especially for low frequencies. Anyone interested in protecting their hearing would research Equal Loudness contours. You'll find that basically something that's low frequency requires higher db SPL (Sound pressure levels) to sound equally as loud as a 1khz sound. So all these idiots with insane car bass systems where the bass sounds louder than the mids/his are doing way more damage than they realize. At least hearing aids and cochlear implants are easier than ever to get?

@crispy9175 Жыл бұрын

@@arpeemac oh, on the hygiene part, I do what people recommend you don't do, and that's is q-tips to clean my ears. I've done this nearly everyday for a decade and had no problems but I think part of that is due to earwax composition (everyone has different earwax and mine is that nice non chunky kind) Oooh no, now I'm thinking about chunky earwax 🤢 🤮🤮 😩 🤮

@bertram-raven Жыл бұрын

@@arpeemac Sorry, all I heard was "eeeeeeeeee.prrrrwppepppppppp." I guess I left it too late!

@djericdiesel Жыл бұрын

I am a broadcast engineer. What is being stated was a true problem. People who are not trained to hear distortion via quantization error can make all the difference. It's not a criticism towards anyone it becomes a problem in radio when audio processing for louder sound to overcome road noise in a car on any road or noise in a house. The problem is that a lot of players do not do great error correction. Most machines don't even have the ability to slow the drive down to read the bit stream more carefully. Machines that do employ not only error correction but active error correction. Reading the CD with active error correction also includes a second even slower pass to compare both. Basically they are trying to reduce jitter that can be 25% of the distortion. If they are using a real time playback mode there is less incorrect data or bits in the buffer. The thing that may have been lost with time are two things. You can introduce huge amounts of jitter over plastic optical cable as well as coaxial and ABS/EBU. Thing's like not using Belden 75 Ohm cable can cause significant jitter affecting stereo separation and presence or mid highs! Most don't remember tri laser and tri color laser cd rom drives that were 50x to cut jitter. Some came to the Idea of just reading the bits and spitting them out and adding the clock at the end to stop the phenomenal ways jitter could trash digital signals.

@AtonyB Жыл бұрын

Talking as someone with a PhD specialising in signal processing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with your methodology, aside from it being difficult to line them up, so even for known identical, but differently timed files it's a challenge to get that zeroed out audio, but you did a great job and managed it. For the record, error correction on CDs isn't 'making it up', there is redundancy in the data and CD players are able to figure out precisely what the audio should have been even for very long runs of corrupted bits. The device is predicated on both a misunderstanding of the optics of CDs and the digital nature of the data on them. There is not even a suggestion of how this one bevel in this one place solves any optical problem that somehow Sony and Philips both missed with their armies of world-leading engineers. Instead it encourages people to damage their precious optical media for the sake of total woo. I commend your open-mindedness and patience for it.

@xiaoka Жыл бұрын

It really jumped the shark when it said that dvd videos would get more vivid colors. 🤣

@Mostlyharmless1985 Жыл бұрын

@ContradictoryCrow they are a PHD in signal processing, not English. Shoo, prescriptivist. We all understand what they are saying.

@coryc9040 Жыл бұрын

@ContradictoryCrow pedant

@darrell20741 Жыл бұрын

@ContradictoryCrow Is there a method of removing noise from signal in the reply section? 🙃

@OhioDave1345 Жыл бұрын

@@Mostlyharmless1985 Grammer Nazis are almost as bad as angry audiophiles.

@StevenOBrien Жыл бұрын

The reason it didn't work is because you used a low-end sharpie, instead of the $200 audiophile-grade ink. The sharpie ink tends to add a rosewood tone to the mids and lower-treble, which is not what you want if your goal is getting a clear digital signal with no wow or flutter.

@mgabrysSF Жыл бұрын

I've always told people that the gas laser in my Dragon's Lair machine had a much warmer tone than those newfangled solid state lasers.

@jub8891 Жыл бұрын

unfortubately there is a global shortage of audiophile-grade ink

@jacobsgarage1458 Жыл бұрын

Just what I was thinking

@Araye Жыл бұрын

tone ink

@longnamedude3947 Жыл бұрын

I can only take so much sarcasm per day.... Help!!! /s

@AnthonyvanHamond Жыл бұрын

My friend is a lifetime audiophile with a stereo representing a the value of a modern house. I'm a audio lover with a electronics degree and i stopped having discussions with my friend about the theory's he has about the workings of his stereo set. CD demagnetisers, special cloths for the cd's. Special African woodblocks underneath the feet of every component and even a ff-ing rock (stone) that improves airmolecules and the timbre/ambiance of the room. Double blind doesn't work bla bla bla. if you get more then 2 in a room together and they start talking.. OMG you are going to laugh beyond tears. it used to make me angry to see him getting scammed for allot of money, but the man is so extremely happy with his personal tailored stereo set. I guess thats also worth something.

@martijnvanspaendonck7989 Жыл бұрын

Thank you. That comment was a joy to read!

@SebastianWeinberg Жыл бұрын

At least his money is now in the hands of someone who is clearly a lot smarter than him, and thus probably capable of putting it to better use.

@MattExzy Жыл бұрын

I knew a guy in the mid 2000s that was lecturing me on how much better FLAC was compared to MP3 - problem was, all he was doing was *transcoding* his *existing* MP3s to FLAC - not from an original source. I just sat silently and nodded.

@MaurycyZarzycki Жыл бұрын

A decade ago there used to be a blog making fun of various audiophile gadgets. Does your friend own an authentic Tibetan bell to cleanse the room for better listening? Because between golden cords, stones to remove vibrations and wooden legs this was my absolute personal favorite.

@nathanjamesbaker Жыл бұрын

Anyone who appreciates this story should check out the comedy track "Tom and the Audio Guru" by Scharpling and Wurster (on the album New Hope for the Ape-Eared). It is pure comedy gold.

@gwapster13 Жыл бұрын

At some point in history, DVD could be shaved to make the video as sharp as BluRay. Insane.

@stijnvandamme76 Жыл бұрын

no bud, you gotta take an old Laserdisc... Shave that to the DVD size... it will blow BLuRay clean out of the water... Be amazed :D

@RT-qd8yl 11 ай бұрын

What about my HD-DVDs?

@user-kg6us4ik6i 11 ай бұрын

If the shaver is powered by a free-energy device, then the sustainabilities become more sustainable. Don't forget that Vitamin O enhances the viewer's audio/video experience.

@neilbarnes3557 Жыл бұрын

Funnily enough, in forty years working with audio, I've never come across any test instrumentation that measures 'transparency', 'clarity', 'cleanliness', 'focus', 'separation', or even 'space'. Dear audiophools: it's DATA. It's readable, or it isn't. It doesn't leak out of the side of the disc. The designers of the CD spent a lot of money coping with the expected errors - even physical holes in the discs - and implementing mechanisms to correct, disguise, or, if bad enough, mute them. A clean new CD should be capable of being read with *no* errors - as demonstrated by Mr Techmoan's excellent A-B comparison. But then, where would we be if couldn't sell snake oil to suckers?

@retrozmachine1189 Жыл бұрын

Wobbly discs, or more accurately the placement of the track being a bit eccentric, is deliberate. Of course this is nothing to do with any visible wobble in the edge metalised area and sure as heck isn't anything to do with the edge of the plastic and absolutely nothing a skimmer will fix. An audiofool and his (her) money will always be easily parted.

@Just.A.T-Rex Жыл бұрын

You could rip it using software that supports accurate rip and compare checksums

@YouTubeSupportTeams Жыл бұрын

100% agree with everything you said. True AudioPhools can hear the error correction though!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@carmatic Жыл бұрын

digital data can be copied and transmitted perfectly... but the analogue conversion step is still beholden to the rules of the analogue domain on less than adequate digital systems, the rate of data transmission might vary, they call this jitter ... the analog converter has no choice but to convert the digital data as it receives them, when it receives them , and when the output is a sound wave, these out-of-time reproductions will result in deviations from the original sound

@carmatic Жыл бұрын

the question, as it relates to this video specifically, is whether an optical medium with less than perfect readability can cause the laser read head to somehow introduce jitter into the system

@jgrimsley2000 Жыл бұрын

I used to be a repair technician at a high-end consumer electronics store. I've worked on McIntosh, Lynn-Sondek, Luxman, Meridian, Denon, B&O and even the occasional Mark Levison amp...equipment of that quality. One day, the owner of the store introduced me to the owner of Kimber Kables (very expensive audiophile cables) He was making outrageous claims about his magic wires using terms like "imaging, sound-stage, acute focus and the like. I asked him if I could run some A/B comparisons against some decent but affordable cables we carried. He told me no, because technicians always want to measure differences with test equipment instead of using our ears. He said that our problem (technicians) is that we believe that if we can't measure the difference, then we assume that there is no difference. Audiophiles can get really defensive when it comes to their religion.

@C.I... Жыл бұрын

You noticed the emperor had no clothes, and he sold those "clothes", so no wonder he said you need to not use a camera but the imagination.

@rickszabo4312 Жыл бұрын

Religion is such a nice term ,I never thought about it that way . I was a little more harsh . Thank you.

@This_is_my_real_name Жыл бұрын

*_Audiophiles can get really defensive when it comes to their religion._* So can their Elmer Gantry profiteers.

@billr3053 Жыл бұрын

Really sad. "technicians always want to measure differences with test equipment instead of using our ears." What? Technicians don't have ears? Believe me, any technicians worth their salt, if they hear a difference, they'd get out their test equipment and quantify it. They'd first understand it. Design circuits to simulate it, correct for it. But most of all they'd show the differences on a scope. Because it would be THERE. Not so much with placebo claims.

@tiagomarques7149 Жыл бұрын

@@billr3053 when you don't know the science behind the technology it's easier to get scammed most audiophiles don't even know how a cd works and assume it's the same as vinyl only with laser that's why many still claim that vinyl audio quality is superior to cd well if we put them to the test cd never lies all the data in the master before duplication is there

@triode1212 9 ай бұрын

I've been an audiophile for almost 40 years and when this thing came along, my BS sensor told me this thing was snake oil as was the practise of using a green marker to colour in the edge of the CDs (all the rage in the early 90s). Not all audiophiles are audiofools. Those that are, usually don't have basic technical or scientific learning/background.

@oscarwahlstrom5426 5 ай бұрын

I agree it is an unfair argument to bunch up "audiophiles" this way. The reason why the argument might be compelling, as I see it, is that there is a theoretical advantage of the device in that it might be useful if you had a bad CD-player where the error rate was >0 and relatively constant. In that case, the error rate might be reduced or eliminated with a "treated" disc. I think the chance of this case happening in a real life scenario is extremely low probability though, but most people don't reflect about that.

@bricaaron3978 Ай бұрын

@@oscarwahlstrom5426 *"...but most people don't reflect about that"* Possibly because they've had their edges shaved off at a 36° angle.

@tronique5736 Жыл бұрын

There's a very clear misunderstanding here about how error correction on data streams work (which includes digital media, QR codes, computer RAM, and computer storage). For a CD with 25% error correction bits, you can lose 25% of the total bits bits without ANY change in the data read. However, once that 25% limit is exceeded, the data changes VERY DRAMATICALLY. The CD will either play perfectly, or play extremely bad or even completely give up. QR Codes take this process to the extreme - many of those are often 90% error correction and only 10% real data - those can be almost completely destroyed as long as the corner marks are still fine and still work!

@Lord_zeel Жыл бұрын

Yup. You get correct, nothing, or something very completely wrong. You never get "not as good" quality.

@gclip9883 2 ай бұрын

It's always hilarious to read about HiFi equipment that is supposed to improve digital signals. It's the same thing with digital cables that are specially shielded to protect the bits or something.

@maciejstachowski183 8 күн бұрын

Not quite - audio CD players specifically can error correct by interpolating a missing sample, which could in theory result in a stream going to the DAC that does not match what's on the CD. (This is still not going to result in "narrower soundstage" or "less true to life instrumentation" or whatever is giving the audiophiles the vapors, and you can mitigate that by ripping a CD with the proper settings and verifying it against AccurateRip, but there are technically situations where you'll get a subtly wrong output).

@myusualnickwastaken Жыл бұрын

As someone who studied a little bit of error correction in university, I feel like I can add a bit to the picture here. Error correction is an absolutely necessary part of playing back a CD, but when it works, it usually works perfectly, outputting exactly the same audio as if there were no error without any "filling in" or approximation. Only when there are too many errors to correct, the CD player might try to approximate the missing part, but the error-correction is tuned to be pretty darn tolerant of dirt, scratches and even to some extent bumping/moving the CD player (though we've all experienced that that's often enough to overwhelm it and cause skips and pops). You may be wondering HOW it can perfectly restore incorrect data, so I'll give an example of an error correcting code (much simpler and less efficient than the actual cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon code used on CDs). We will simply record every byte of data (8 bits) three times. For example, if our data is 10110001, we'll record 101100011011000110110001 onto the disc. Now if one bit is changed by a speck of dirt, we might get 101100011011000110010001 when reading it back. Splitting it back into the three copies 10110001 10110001 10010001, we can not only DETECT that an error must have occurred since the three don't match, but since two agree with each other, we can throw out the one that doesn't agree to CORRECT the error. This corrects the error PERFECTLY: the output is EXACTLY the same as the data we started with, as long as at most one error occurs within the 24 bits! It *sometimes* even works if there are up to eight errors, as long as no two of them occur at the same position in two copies. This error correcting code adds two bytes to every byte of data and is only guaranteed to correct one error every 24 bits, so it's very inefficient. The cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon code only adds one byte to every three bytes of data (so it uses less space) and by cleverly interleaving multiple samples can apparently correct 3500 erroneous bits in a row.

@kiwi_kirsch Жыл бұрын

this is f***ing amazing to learn!!!

@grahameida7163 Жыл бұрын

Same here, the error correction is so good you can cut a 1cm groove into it and it will still retain all the data. Also this could expose the aluminium reflector and allow it to oxidise.

@gern0tk Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the clarification. I just remembered that CDs employ redundant digital information so error correction should always be digitally perfect or the CD is destroyed beyond repair. So hearing about a $500 CD shaver claiming to improve error correction made me suspicious, too, to say the least.

@JoeySchmidt74 Жыл бұрын

Red book is only 16 bit though.

@MikeDS49 Жыл бұрын

Excellent explanation of error correction!

@dangerza Жыл бұрын

It also works with JPEGs copied onto a CD. After shaving the CD, the images are not blurry anymore and text documents are crystal clear. Amazing! :)

@jama211 Жыл бұрын

😂😂😂

@PencilVersusSword Жыл бұрын

ENHANCE!

@capsey_ Жыл бұрын

I copied my GTA 3 to the CD, shaved it using this thing, copied back to the computer and now it's GTA 5! 10/10 would buy ten of these

@Lawls Жыл бұрын

@@capsey_ try it with GTA 5, maybe you'll get GTA 7.

@wmbauer2 Жыл бұрын

This is how they invented HDTV. Look out for the shaved disk inside your TV. 4k however is another story.

@UncleRalphABQ Жыл бұрын

Very interesting. No, there's nothing wrong with your ears or your methodology. We gave up on double-blind tests in the audio business back in the '70s when it was discovered that, on average, when they didn't know what they were listening to, many people preferred the sound of an old Dynaco Mk III tube amp with 0.5% THD to "state of the art" solid state behemoths that excelled at everything we thought mattered: ultra-low distortion of every kind, frequency response of DC-to-light, 120dB headroom, damping factors of 0.001, and on and on. Some musicians claim to be able to hear the color of the cord that connects their guitar to their amp, and if you set up a scientific test to prove that they cannot, YOU become a villain. I was amazed that your comparison of "treated" to "original" CDs was that perfect, but I guarantee you there are people who will be able to "hear" the difference between one silence and another. They can probably even tell you what color the silence is.

@Nakagolas Жыл бұрын

Stradivarius violins are a great example of this, too. Sometimes just knowing there's history or money behind something can make you hear things that aren't there.

@DarkShroom Жыл бұрын

yes but you could argue it's just the frequency response of the amp and therefore if you EQ'ed the signal a different way you might get more people to like the newer one.... people often describe sound as "warmer", this might be missing highs that can sound quite sharp

@UncleRalphABQ Жыл бұрын

@@DarkShroom But if we have to hobble our great new state-of-the-art gear to make it sound as good as our old stuff, maybe we're missing something.

@UncleRalphABQ Жыл бұрын

@@GarrishChristopherRobin777 Tone deaf? Who knows? But I have been playing guitar, in and out of bands, and working on musician's equipment (repair and modification) for a tich over 50 years. I'm VERY familiar with musician's and audiophile's superstitions. Still don't know what to do about them, but I'm retired and it's not my problem anymore. Test tube baby? I was adopted when I was 4 months old, so nobody knows for sure where I came from. IVF was not a very big thing in 1952, but there were swarms of UFOs sighted all over the country that year. We may never know.

@RK-ej1to Жыл бұрын

I always thought the appeal of tube amps is that they introduced a moderate amount of distortion that for some reason people just seem to find more appealing then some of the super accurate newer amps. I remember seeing someone claim morel speakers also utilize distortion to produce their signature warm sound but I’m not informed enough to know how true that is. I definitely know I prefer morel speakers to brands that are marketed as having a flat frequency response.

@Dargonhuman Жыл бұрын

I can think of two likely reasons this product received such rave reviews when it was on the market, despite not doing anything - the manufacturer paid for positive reviews from the professionals and the consumer reviews were the result of a type of audio Placebo Effect where they heard what they wanted to hear based on expectations but there was no actual difference.

@jamesclark6487 Жыл бұрын

Its only use maybe to salvage a disc that was skipping from a physical balance issue. Online reviews are hopeless, a sea of paid articles and youtube clips. I've got some fairly expensive headphones because of that.... and some cheaper ones I prefer.

@WilburJaywright Жыл бұрын

Literally all scam products I think

@ketond3973 Жыл бұрын

Especially after the person paid hundreds of dollars for it, they are guaranteed to hear a ~30% improvement, the average placebo effect.

@nathanielneveryman Жыл бұрын

Placebo effect or just people who wanted to present themselves as having a "better ear" than the average person & are therefore more impressive examples of humanity?

@Dargonhuman Жыл бұрын

@@nathanielneveryman that's also highly likely.

@AustriaColorised Жыл бұрын

now that's some serious cutting-edge technology right there

@AvgDan Жыл бұрын

Underrated comment!

@fredjimbob2962 Жыл бұрын

Cutting edge indeed but the fact that it doesn't work is a black mark against it.

@RennieAsh Жыл бұрын

You guys are real sharpies My head is spinning with these jokes

@briansmith5843 Жыл бұрын

I guess I am not sure I get it. I may need to hone my skills to be able to understand.

@jonnymccormack3159 Жыл бұрын

cutting edge, well done

@techman2553 Жыл бұрын

If you want to improve the sound quality of your disc shaver, they sell $1200 AC power cords for high end audio equipment that have a special copper coating to reduce wave reflections and electron spin. It will make the scraping sound of the blade brighter and clearer, with more depth and fidelity.

@ComradeNags Жыл бұрын

Underrated comment

@glenlarson4933 Жыл бұрын

brilliant! :)

@scottcortez1313 Жыл бұрын

the blade needs to be solid gold to work right

@funkyfender1 Жыл бұрын

The attack angle of the blade should be optimised as well as having a 36 degree cutting edge…. Also, a lubricant would further optimise the finish of the bevelled edge…. Angel tears are recommended…

@mgeorge003 Жыл бұрын

I bought the AC cables that use "cultured copper" which is far superior to "non-cultured copper" with respect to audio purity. The fidelity and sound reproduction is so amazing I am going to have all my copper wires replaced with "cultured copper" wires.

@RenaissancManEng Жыл бұрын

I was in a hi-end audio store once and the salesman was going on about why I needed $500 oxygen free copper wiz bang power cords and how much better they make my amp sound... I asked him, "what type of wire is behind the plug in the wall?"... He is probably still having nightmares over that! ... In any event my guess is you almost NEVER find an "Audiophile Electrical Engineer"... Ha!

@Trondogful Жыл бұрын

Haha! I've been given that pitch before too. Not only what's behind the wall, but also inside the component!

@English_Lessons_Pre-Int_Interm Жыл бұрын

@@Trondogful did you mean "compound'?

@iguanapete3809 Жыл бұрын

Oh, and you need more "Watts".

@bujfvjg7222 Жыл бұрын

wall power is dirty, most clean it up before it gets anywhere near amplification stage.

@thatlinuxguy Жыл бұрын

When you started explaining this I though it was some kind of surface polisher for removing scratches; that would be a lot more useful.

@davesdream Жыл бұрын

Same. I have one with a scratch that loops the song at that point.

@dens3096 Жыл бұрын

Me too

@RenaissancManEng Жыл бұрын

My god, I still can't believe I was ever able to install WORKING Software from a CD!

@RasheedKhan-he6xx Жыл бұрын

Yes I expected that too.

@anton447 Жыл бұрын

Same here

@snufkinmatt162 Жыл бұрын

I'm sure this device must work. I remember when I bought a higher quality tape player for my ZX Spectrum, the games looked so much better once they loaded. The spectral inheritance of the pixels gave a more visual stage focus and the beeps just sounded so much beepier than before.

@liquidusblue Жыл бұрын

Beeps more Beepier than before made me LOL 😂

@Hans-gb4mv Жыл бұрын

@@liquidusblue beeping in high fidelity.

@ChrisBeard Жыл бұрын

@@liquidusblue and the winning comment for KZfaq goes to... This guy!

@smayds Жыл бұрын

Ah, I've heard about this old Speccy trick. What we used to do back in the day on the C64 was shave the edges off our 5¼ floppies and cassettes, but for the cassettes you did have to remember to run the black sharpie around the bevel or it didn't work. It had the same result as for the Speccy. The clarity and sharpness improvement, especially on the sounds, was so remarkable that I couldn't believe it! It even made the power switch seem more crisp and clear when you flicked it.

@Chompchompyerded Жыл бұрын

Masterful! This is easily the funniest comment of the lot. You've got a great sense of humour. Keep on giving people smiles and laughs, and don't get your tongue so deeply embedded in your cheek that you can't get it out!

@horsesavy4570 Жыл бұрын

I have been a sound engineer for over 40 years, The company who invented this CD lathe, has a background in Vinyl, which is analog. Taking analog techniques to digital media is pointless. Your Tests were not flawed. You are 100% correct. I remember when these were hitting the magazines 18 or so years ago.

@Ralnon Жыл бұрын

Never doubt (and I am SURE you have heard some doozies) the amount of utter bollocks spoken about where audiophiles are concerned: and the amount of stuff sold contrary to basic science is equally unending.

@grzmil1 Жыл бұрын

Post-purchase rationalization People would have to admit that they've wasted money. That i think applies to all audiophiles toys and pseudoscience mambo-jambo.

@ryanmcgowan3061 Жыл бұрын

If the CD was sufficiently scratched that the error correction failed, there would be skips. I think it's unlikely this technique would help much, but repairing the scratch with some sort of near-equal refractive index fluid would be an "analog" fix to the digital failure.

@Ralnon Жыл бұрын

@@ryanmcgowan3061 there are indeed repair kits that do just that: though as CDs fall out of use the amount of cheap replacements might make that pointless

@Thepiecat Жыл бұрын

Even digital is analog on the physical layer. But yeah, it would skip, not degrade...

@karenl.9234 Жыл бұрын

It's truly amazing how much snake oil is in the high end audio scene.....and how many people truly believe it makes a difference. Placebo effect is a hell of a drug

@bigblueassbaby9074 Жыл бұрын

yup. digital music quality just depends on the resolution of the file and how good your dac is

@bujfvjg7222 Жыл бұрын

Placebo must have been Rick James' choice of drug.

@themissinfowar6629 11 ай бұрын

It didn’t work because he used a black sharpie. It’s supposed to be green to absorb the red laser light 😂

@itschar8872 Жыл бұрын

you know the whole "the CD is irregularly shaped causing reading errors" is really funny because I'm supposed ti believe the industrially tuned disc formers and assorted quality tests are not capable of making an adequately shaped disc but the dinky little shaving box is

@5nowChain5 6 ай бұрын

Yet they could still press, print and sell miss printed CD's with the wrong Music stamped on them. Not all were recalled and destroyed.

@pkaulf Жыл бұрын

40 years after the introduction of the CD, audiophiles still don't understand digital audio.

@TekWhizz Жыл бұрын

Yeah amazing, you'd think it's simple enough a baby could understand, just ones and zeros!

@emiloguechoons9030 Жыл бұрын

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't early compact discs contain analogue audio? So for a small moment I thought that *maybe* the CD lathe could possibly have an effect on an analogue audio CD, but then they said that "shaving your DVD will improve the sharpness of your movie", how could anyone fall for that? Too much disposable income and too little sense?

@TheRealInscrutable Жыл бұрын

@@emiloguechoons9030 Nope, CDs were always digital. You'd see things like AAD or DDD showing the stages of analog or digital. The CD was always a D. The standard CD format is WAV

@jswashburn Жыл бұрын

@@TheRealInscrutable Technically, CD-DA is in the Red Book audio format where the audio stream is LPCM. The WAV file is also LPCM, but can also be encoded using RIFF as a wrapper. So to avoid confusion, it's more proper to just call CD audio as being LPCM.

@emiloguechoons9030 Жыл бұрын

@@TheRealInscrutable Ah ok thanks for the info, I must have been confused with analogue laserdisc audio or something similar, I could have sworn that in a previous techmoan video mat talked about analogue CD audio being a standard in the late 80 or early 90s, though that definitely doesn't exist based on my searches

@VengeanceSound Жыл бұрын

I am professionally working in the audio industry for over 20 years, and I can confirm, the test you did was absolutely correct (however I would have digitally read the CDs in a PC-drive to save the time of the alignment). I also expected the result of a inversed cancellation. Making the sound on a DIGITAL media "brighter, better, deeper, clearer, more 3D" etc. is just ridiculous. You cant alter the information on the CD - of course you can lose data / have dropouts caused by a scratch, but you can't alter the content in any kind. I wonder what these "review" magazines got in exchange for their reviews.

@laierr Жыл бұрын

Nothing, I bet. It's a psychological phenomenon. Our brains also do an error-correction and post-processing. If you are strongly convinced, that they would sound differently - they would. In your head. So there's a group of people who convince each other that their weird shamanic rituals would improve quality, so they do experience it. It's a real effect that happens in their brains. Power of imagination, if you like. Self-induced post-processing.

@waylandsmith Жыл бұрын

I'm glad he used the optical cable from a dedicated CD audio player (probably of a similar vintage) instead of reading it from a CD-ROM drive because the differences between the two devices would undoubtedly leave some person arguing that it invalidated the test somehow.

@insta_725 Жыл бұрын

@@laierr That's another placebo effect

@laierr Жыл бұрын

@@insta_725 That's a long and elaborate description of the mechanism of a placebo effect in that specific case, yes.

@lord_scrubington Жыл бұрын

@@laierr yeah, if we think something will be better we will perceive it as better honestly tho, it must be great being convinced by stuff like thi I mean, imagine ur some audiophile who is absolutely certain that u can double the quality of sound just by putting a 1 pence coin on top of ur sound system or soemthing like that they will be enjoying their sound wayyy more than anyone else, even if it is total BS I envy those people XD

@Shaken_AND_Stirred Жыл бұрын

It reminds me of the Bedini CD Clarifier from the same time period. It was used to “demagnetize” CD’s. Never knew that aluminum could be magnetized to begin with.

@Videoswithsoarin Жыл бұрын

magnification and magnetization are two different things

@paulcs2607 Жыл бұрын

I’ve got one and it works for sure.

@datobii3526 Жыл бұрын

What makes this even better is that the inventor’s name directly translates to scrap or rubbish

@bami2 Жыл бұрын

I think the lid is also for safety for when a cd just explodes from being spun around at high speeds while stabbing it with a knife

@Trebor2024 Жыл бұрын

I expected that the lid would have an interlock switch on it, so lifting the lid would stop the disc spinning and stop the belt to prevent fingers getting caught in the belt drive!

@MrAsBBB Жыл бұрын

I wish this would happen but not for safety

@erwintimmerman6466 Жыл бұрын

@@Trebor2024 This was probably the 90s or early 00s. The safety regulations weren't as advanced then. That we ever lived through that time without massively dying from all kinds of accidents is a sheer miracle 😆

@suprememasteroftheuniverse Жыл бұрын

Jokes on you! I buy all my CDs female so they don't need to shave. 😂

@fyremoon Жыл бұрын

@@erwintimmerman6466 I've had a Windows installation DVD explode in a PC drive before, so standards haven't changed.

@adriansdigitalbasement Жыл бұрын

You breezed over the claim it made DVDs look better too! Hahahaha. The thing magically can improve MPEG2 data streams by enchanting the video data inside the compressed stream. I guess if you used it on a CDROM filled with your family photos, it would make those look better too! Amazing tech!! How can we all have lived without it??

@PurpleTT99 Жыл бұрын

Wouldn't it have been brilliant if at the end Mat had put a pic of him on an untreated CD Rom, then another on the treated one with a wig on and left us with categoric proof it works. I suspect his sense of humour considered it!

@MrSchimpf Жыл бұрын

Haha, since they never talked about Blu-rays or 4K discs I wonder how they would've tried to talk about how it would 'upgrade' them to 32K and let you see an actor at a cellular level down to the blood cells running through their veins. 🤭

@cericat Жыл бұрын

@@MrSchimpf only by the luck of this coming out and dying thankfully before BD launched.

@equinoxe3d Жыл бұрын

There's probably at least a 10 FPS average gain if you treat a video game CD with it

@egemenka1 Жыл бұрын

The DVD part definitely sealed the deal on the product being a complete BS.

@brucknerian9664 Жыл бұрын

The fact that those who bought that contraption spent $400.00 so the disks had to sound much better and no one can convince them they were scammed.

@piotr78 Жыл бұрын

Yep it's the sunk cost fallacy.

@lancewood1410 Жыл бұрын

And some would SWEAR by those interconnect lubricants LOL

@stefan0ro Жыл бұрын

@@lancewood1410 we need to sell them some orange blinker fluid.

@davidbland8153 Жыл бұрын

"It is much easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they have been fooled". Mark Twain

@sleightofmind2016 Жыл бұрын

For best results: Hold marker with a grip force of 30 p.s.i.* Rotate disc exactly 0.253 m/s in the counter-clockwise direction.** Apply marker without overlap or redundancy, while maintaining the tip at a constant 15 degrees in the superior angle.** The marker must be composed of pure virgin, organic dyes with ethically sourced alcohols. *right hand only **northern hemisphere only

@djpete3865 Жыл бұрын

I’m always fascinated by products that exploit the gullibility of the “audiophile” segment, and the amount of money those people will spend. Thanks for taking the time and expense to show us.

@kcuhc84 Жыл бұрын

These shaving machines give a better result if you upgrade the mains lead. So I hear.

@Iconoclasher Жыл бұрын

I'm an audiophile and I totally agree with you. I've listened to everything from cheap stereos, to extreme high end $150,000 systems. My $3000 system sounds impressive. The $150,000 sounds damn impressive, but not enough to justify the price. Money has its own "sound" and that's what they're hearing.

@davidrobinson4400 Жыл бұрын

There are audiophiles and audiophools.

@JustinC721 Жыл бұрын

I might be considered an audiophile to an extent, but I understand how digital signal process works. And that is either the signal is there, or it is not. It is a binary concept because it is binary. Hence, there is no 'audio quality' because either the disc can read, or it can't. That is all there is to it.

@jaykoerner Жыл бұрын

Gold plated optical cables... Tos link for gods sake uses a plastic core (maybe glass if the manufacturer wants to overdo it), the stupidity knows no bounds

@caseyholford Жыл бұрын

I’m amazed that when you shaved the edge off of the cd the music didn’t leak out! I guess it’s a good thing you sealed it in with the sharpie.

@c0ldc0ne Жыл бұрын

It would, if it had been a pop cd. Jazz music has a much higher viscosity and doesn't leak out as easily.

@ahmetrefikeryilmaz4432 Жыл бұрын

@@c0ldc0ne they say black metal cds leak blood when disturbed.

@voomastelka4346 Жыл бұрын

It can't leak, ordinary jazz music is solid at room temperature. Laser in CD player heats it up so that some of it escapes. Ultimately all is gone and you have to replace or refill it.

@c0ldc0ne Жыл бұрын

@@ahmetrefikeryilmaz4432 That's why they require regular transfusions.

@madero-jb5ri Жыл бұрын

I hate when that happens.

@totallybonkers76 Жыл бұрын

The audacity test was a *great* idea! nice one, it's undisputable *proof*, that it does nothing.

@garycollins8253 Жыл бұрын

You are absolutely correct. The way Error Detection and Correction works is it simply returns a missing bit to it's original position and plays the corrected data stream. If enough bits are missing for EDAC not to work you simply get a dropout. There is no fix for that. The idea that EDAC simply dreams up a substitution for missing bits is ludicrous. If that was what happened internet data would o corrupted you wouldn't want to try reading or listening to it. The purpose of EDAC is to return data to what it was originally not just replace it. A cd either works or it doesn't it's that simple.

@jimbendtsen8841 Жыл бұрын

The internet uses a record of TCP/IP packets from the source, and tells the source to resends packets not received at the destination. A missing bit on a cd is missing. How can it be returned "to it's original position", if it's missing?

@monkandrew2891 Жыл бұрын

Error correction involves redundant data on the disk that's transmitted as well. TCP also has error correction, the 3 way tcp handshake confirms transmission, it does not provide error correction. UDP is also error corrected this way

@Lord_zeel Жыл бұрын

What's interesting, is that TODAY we probably COULD do it - with some machine learning, we could train a model to "patch" gaps in the track with something that sounded like it was correct, even if it wasn't - though with sufficient information about the entire track, the result could probably be pretty close to the original anyway.

@NYAudioGuru 4 ай бұрын

@@jimbendtsen8841 data on a CD is repeated multiple times . The interleaving repeats data so that temporary problems like the microscopic pinholes that were common in the early days didn't cause drop outs. The error correction doesn't make anything up. Instead, it attempts to ensure all the data is available even if there are imperfections in the physical media.

@dandickstein6513 Жыл бұрын

Back at the dawn of the cd era they came out with green pens to paint the edge of your cds for much the same effect. Unfortunately the pens weren't pricey enough to catch on with the audiophile community.

@listen2meokidoki264 Жыл бұрын

Not pricey enough. Yes they LOVE telling people how much it cost. And they have no idea how they will go deaf sooner and faster. Sharper clearer sound ruins the ears. Especially tho powerful 20KHz sounds. YES I CAN HEAR IT.

@mackk123 Жыл бұрын

just wait until they are too infrequent

@tedkaczynskiamericanhero3916 Жыл бұрын

@@listen2meokidoki264 *CAN YOU FEEL IT MR KRABS*

@jesuitx Жыл бұрын

It never ceases to amaze how people can learn so much about audio equipment, and fail to understand something as simple as how digital signals work.

@Ebani Жыл бұрын

Completely different subjects, technology by definition does not need the user to undertand the underlying scientific principles to be used/operated.

@lolaa2200 Жыл бұрын

Please define "learn". If by that you mean being able to regurgitate some kind of gospels, then there is no mystery there, it's just a different church. If by learn you mean acquiring comprehensions then, they just don't.

@shandy9421 Жыл бұрын

Another way you could have checked this was to grab the checksum of the first disc and compare it to the second one-and do it multiple times. This would take out any variance there could be in a recording set up and really get down to the basic building blocks-that the CDs are digital files. But yeah, the obvious was already pointed out in your video!

@monkandrew2891 Жыл бұрын

I agree, but recording it the way done in the video ensures that there's no defense along the lines of "oh the OS performing a data transfer has better error correction than real time playback"

@lancelql Жыл бұрын

Thank you for this video. I worked in optical disc manufacturer for almost 20 years. All things are digitally stored on CD/DVD/Blu-ray disc and protected with error correction codes. The way you compare two tracks is correct.

@davidlevy706 Жыл бұрын

Did I expect to view a video about shaving CDs this morning? No. Had I ever even heard of such a thing? Not until about two minutes ago. Am I excited to hear Mat talk about it for next twenty-five minutes? Absolutely.

@steviebboy69 Жыл бұрын

I guess we learn of new things all the time, one another channel I just saw a wind up mini reel to reel tape recorder, the amp was battery powered of course but the motor power was spring powered like a gramophone.

@kitemett Жыл бұрын

haha same

@slambamcam Жыл бұрын

Exactly stuff I didn’t even know I didn’t care about this guy not only makes me want to go buy it, but also research it more, so I’m glad he does both of those things for me!

@polyestermammoth740 Жыл бұрын

This was a brilliant video, but I always find myself looking at the equipment and wanting to buy it. What was that CD player which took two cds?

@alkestos Жыл бұрын

ACKSHUALLY it's 24 minutes and 40 seconds. Debunked!

@chocolateoak Жыл бұрын

Reminds me of when my old band had our album mastered at an expensive Sony mastering studio. We excitedly played the finished product, noting the punchier dynamics and wider stereo field, patting ourselves on the back for money well spent, before realising we had played the wrong CD, and were listening to the unmastered version. The mind plays so many tricks!

@smithjohn383 Жыл бұрын

I assume after that you listened the mastered version. Was the difference as big as you were 'hearing' on the first CD?

@IlBiggo Жыл бұрын

We recorded some fancy band live one time (might have been Steps Ahead) on DAT. Somebody then did a backup copy on tape - digital wasn't really trusted yet. A few people insisted that the tape recording sounded SO MUCH BETTER than the digital recording :D

@Revener666 Жыл бұрын

@@IlBiggo Not suprised analog have the real sound, digital is a limited frequency range and leave stuff out, also depends if it 16 bit, 24 bit etc.

@PBMS123 Жыл бұрын

@@Revener666 No it doesn't

@chamberlane2899 Жыл бұрын

@@Revener666 “leave stuff out” - what file types have you been listening to?

@kaferere 6 ай бұрын

Back in the late 50's, early 60's, my Dad was a very young TV repair man who made House calls ( in the days of Valves ). After repairing an elderly Lady's TV, he was putting his tools away and saying his goodbyes when the Lady asked him "aren't you going to let me choose the best picture ?". My Dad told her that he didn't understand quite what she meant. "Well," she said, "the other Man always lets me choose the best picture from the roll of Film". It dawned on my Dad that her previous TV Engineer used to trip the Vertical Hold control and ask her to say "stop" when she saw "the best picture". He duly obliged and had one very happy customer. That's the science behind this CD shaver I think.

@zombie-process7025 Жыл бұрын

Audio engineer here: Your methodology is spot-on. Good show.

@nhand42 Жыл бұрын

Audiophiles are the greatest source of amusement in this hobby. I was in a store recently and the owner was trying different Ethernet cables on a network audio streamer. He was convinced there are subtle differences in the audio quality between various cables. I nodded and smiled and backed away slowly.

@HawkOfGP Жыл бұрын

That's just incredible.

@tomgidden Жыл бұрын

Did he try an Audioquest RJ/E Diamond Ethernet cable? £1,000 a metre. The marketing web page is full of 100% pure high dynamic clarity oxygen-free bullshit. Oh, incidentally, they need to be plugged in _the right way round_ for ideal audio quality. Seriously. They have arrows on them to show which end goes on the audio source and which on the destination.

@johnsantoro4771 Жыл бұрын

I can POSSIBLY see a difference if it was between a shielded and unshielded cable. But that would be about the only thing.

@m3gAnac0nda Жыл бұрын

monkaS

@m3gAnac0nda Жыл бұрын

@@johnsantoro4771 now you see, this is where I don't know if you're being serious or not

@JordonBeal Жыл бұрын

Your test methodology was spot on. However, this won’t stop audiophiles from arguing that null tests don’t count. They’re a special breed, they are.

@CoolJosh3k Жыл бұрын

Just remember to always lubricate it with proper snake oil. 😂

@martijnvanspaendonck7989 Жыл бұрын

Thank you for this fun, entertaining and educational video/channel!

@Loonistrator Жыл бұрын

If this really resulted in a massive audio/visual improvement, discs would be manufactured this way.

@thesd_outlaw897 Жыл бұрын

You would think, but one should never underestimate what saving a few bucks will do to any given industry.

@MrRancidity Жыл бұрын

They'd sell the treated CDs as premium or gold or in something for even higher margins

@MisterPatel Жыл бұрын

Exactly

@ArachmadiPutra Жыл бұрын

yeah but they still sell the non-treated version for marketing reason

@christocan4710 Жыл бұрын

He missed a simple thing. It’s a hoax and hinted in the name of the guy. “Schrott” meaning rubbish in german. 😂

@chrisnameless8325 Жыл бұрын

This product is absolute genius. It looks like it is doing something while doing nothing. They paid off enough good reviews that people didn't want to on up to hearing no difference. They also did it before tools that could test it were easily accessible. I gives the product 20/10 it is a great idea as long as you have no soul.

@jobbe-wijnen Жыл бұрын

the inventors are probably still alive. Why not interview them too?

@_just_looking_thank_you Жыл бұрын

Greed is the wicked stepmother of invention.

@Typical.Anomaly Жыл бұрын

The United States' Government?

@krist.5861 Жыл бұрын

This demonstrates the true quality of 'expert reviews' on Hi-Fi+ magazine.

@eisirt55 Жыл бұрын

Emperors New Clothes ?

@cjx1353 Жыл бұрын

When doing the first comparison i was screaming 'put it in a DAW!!!' (in my head). Thanks for not letting me down!

@BooBaddyBig Жыл бұрын

The thing is, the error correcting codes used COMPLETELY remove almost all classes of errors. Even if there were reflections, which caused some bit errors, the ECCs would just fix them.

@benkreamer Жыл бұрын

What really pisses me off about this scam is that the device is so similar to a cd resurfacer, which produces real results (i worked in a used cd shop from 1995-2005, removed scratches from more discs than i could ever count using one) such a waste of equipment and display of pure greed and dishonesty. Thanks for the excellent video!

@SuhailRehman Жыл бұрын

From the title I thought this was precisely what you mentioned, a tool that shaves away a microscopic layer to get rid of scratches. The moment he mentioned the snake oil pitch I was rolling my eyes. What a scam. These are the gold plated HDMI cables of their era.

@seannot-telling9806 Жыл бұрын

@@SuhailRehman I thought the same. I have one of the resurfacing. The real one, not the Disk Doctor thing. Works nicely. I think I would like to see him do a segment on the resurfacing tool.

@atheosmachina Жыл бұрын

There's a video on this device from 2013 on YT by AVcompanytours, the salesman almost looks ashamed talking about it. But hey, scheisters will be scheisters.

@gladspooky9455 Жыл бұрын

No, what's really annoying is sites like TechRadar having absolutely no integrity and running botched reviews for scam products.

@TomGreen99 Жыл бұрын

_corporate greed!_

@NealMiskinMusic Жыл бұрын

I'm a professional audio engineer here to say that your methodology is valid. It's what audio engineers call a 'null test' and it's the gold standard for this sort of evaluation. The reality is that digital audio either works or it doesn't.Things like expensive cables, for digital audio aren't going to improve your sound quality (though they may be more durable), because you have to really mess up a piece of copper before it can't accurately transmit digital information. If you have uncorrectable errors you will hear them as clicks or skips, otherwise you should get an identical bitstream.

@danielmoore7342 Жыл бұрын

I see the incredibly expensive power cables people buy, and my first thought: and did you have that outlet you plug into re-run to the panel with solid silver core wire? And then out to the transformer on the pole? Audiophiles have been getting fleeced on some things since day 1. This gadget is no surprise.

@rhythmandmoose Жыл бұрын

Absolutely no esoteric audiophile. Quite the opposite. But where in a setup are external copper cables used for a digital signal? Speaker cables don't transport digital data, neither does a power chord. That said: For both cables the only decisive factor is if it has the right gauge for the power transmitted.

@JohnWiku Жыл бұрын

@@danielmoore7342 audiofools are the ones that need fleecing

@andic6676 Жыл бұрын

I recall working in a workshop that handled vintage electronics recently, and how a determined band of audiophiles would waste our time asking for pointless capacitor "upgrades" to be fitted to their already correctly working equipment. Drove us nuts!

@danielmoore7342 Жыл бұрын

@@TelepathicRabbit POWER cables. Look what I found below. Blows my mind.

@IvanToman Жыл бұрын

Hey. I was heavily involved into audiophile stuff in my college days, some 20 years ago. I knew about the method of "improving" CDs by painting their edges in black. I never heard any difference after painting my CDs, but I painted all of them. Like, better be safe then sorry. Fortunatelly I wasn't aware of requirement to shave their adge at particular angle as that would not be as cheap tweak for a colledge kid, as painting with black marker :)

@Haydos 9 ай бұрын

That is the same method tho. They only said that this angle is better because they could then sell a machine to cut it. People still do the marker without cutting and it's way better for the disc also. You can wipe it off if you want to remove it. You can't remove a cut. Still not saying it will actually improve the sound tho

@inkwhir Жыл бұрын

What a cutting edge technology

@giorgiopalmas7934 Жыл бұрын

You went there. Well done my son.

@IllusionSector Жыл бұрын

I heard back in the medieval times counterfeiters would mold those CD edge shavings into more CDs. This would cause CD inflation, so the punishment for this crime was death.

@Sandyaudiovisual Жыл бұрын

I was REALLY hoping this was a high-end device that removed scratches from the surface. This device was snake oil. Great video!

@doro626 Жыл бұрын

Snake Oil gets a bad wrap. I saw a yoututbe video on it. 😂

@donosborne9398 Жыл бұрын

Yeah, I thought they were gonna shave the entire surface like those disc polishers but better.

@QuinnShaw Жыл бұрын

There are legit devices that buffer the surface of CD's that can remove scratches and make some unreadable or skipping cd's readable again.

@pyropulseIXXI Жыл бұрын

remove scratches by shaving them off?

@Sandyaudiovisual Жыл бұрын

@@donosborne9398 got any links?

@SmoothEmJay Жыл бұрын

Gotta love the DVD comparison, several times in reviews. Literally digital files on a disc, you can't improve the quality in any way or form. You get what you've got.

@wbfaulk Жыл бұрын

Data CDs have more error correction than audio CDs do. That doesn't make this device make any sense, but you can't make a valid argument that audio CD data is exactly the same as data CD data.

@jk9554 Жыл бұрын

Loved the bit about the "image becoming sharper"...

@jhoughjr1 Жыл бұрын

But but noise floor!

@infesticon Жыл бұрын

@@jhoughjr1 So noise floor is a term for recording. As in while you are making the recording. So shaving cds is so effective it goes back in time and improves the equiment used to make the recording.

@JC20XX Жыл бұрын

@@infesticon don't forget the soundstage 😂

@bassplayingchris Жыл бұрын

well clearly if I paid more for it, it sounds better! what you did is a null test and its very valid, I've been enjoying these vids!

@harlequinems Жыл бұрын

If there's anything I've learned from having to deal with the audiophile community it's that they are SO. GODDAMN. PRETENTIOUS. 😩😩 I had to deal with a guy who wanted his (extremely expensive) B&O soundsystem stripped down and "better resistors" put into the boards because his friend, who is apparently a sound expert, said that they give off an electrical noise that muddies the audio output 🤦🏼‍♂️

@RennieAsh Жыл бұрын

Well I mean they can't have cheesy parts in their audio system right because they heard all this happening before someone suggested that there "could be parts causing issues" xD

@my3dviews Жыл бұрын

As an electronic service technician. That sounds legit. No it doesn't. 😂 .

@joemills4603 Жыл бұрын

Well, depending on where the resistors are, they can absolutely affect the analogue signal quality (as can almost any component). I say this as an electronics design engineer, but not someone who knows B&O systems. Doesn't change that the customer was pretentious, of course.

@harlequinems Жыл бұрын

@@joemills4603 yeah that's absolutely true, and a good point, but I assumed that with B&O style systems they wouldn't be using any mass produced PCB's, so there "shouldn't" be any accidental crossover between the signals and the electrical components due to design, but I too don't work for B&O so 🤷‍♂️😄

@j.p.sixgunner7194 Жыл бұрын

@@my3dviews I concur. I mean it certainly IS possible and definitely CAN make a significant difference. For corn's sake....if "the customer is always right", who tf are *you* to tell him he's wrong? I mean, just because YOU suffer from the unfortunate disability of having unrefined ears which cannot discern either way is certainly no reason at all to attempt to hang such an ailment on a paying customer.... Amirite?? 😉 Although I definitely DO much prefer good repeat customers over any one-and-done customer! Therefore I do believe in using a fair degree of tact while still factually informing them regarding something they could harbor vindictive feelings about at any time in the future, and certainly the minute their ego is damaged. Their cousin's bestie DID work at IBM, after all... Ya' really just don't wanna haul off n' say: "I CAN sell you this but YOU are too uneducated to know the difference, so...save your money or go elsewhere". There certainly is some legitimate wiggle room in between...and in my experience that works out better for both parties somehow.

@timewave02012 Жыл бұрын

I took a DSP class in the early 2000s with a professor who was big on digital audio quality. Long story short, the source of most people's complaints at the time was aliasing caused by inadequate analog filters. The solution was digital filtering aided by oversampling, hence why oversampling was marketed as a feature in that era.

@grayrabbit2211 Жыл бұрын

Retired broadcast engineer here. Well done. Flawless testing methodology. The conclusion didn't surprise me at all. The supposed benefits of CD shaving (better bass, expanded sound stage, etc.) simply can't happen with digital source data. Perhaps this might make a difference if there was an analog optical disc format. But even Laserdisc was analog video, PCM digital audio IIRC.

@Scotswolfie Жыл бұрын

Given how fiddly the Laserdiscs were to handle, grabbing them out of the case and shaving off the edge would be the last thing you'd want to do to them I imagine 😅

@patb5266 Жыл бұрын

Yup, the only thing that would make any difference in all these subjective reviews would be the post AD electronics.

@REXXSEVEN Жыл бұрын

Everything you just stated I already suspected or rather knew. Especially after watching VWestlife's video regarding cheap versus expensive audio cables with regard to digital sound.

@Babaroga777 Жыл бұрын

I agree 100% with test methods, from the beginning of the video I thought to myself "please do the waveform inversion method" with each as accurate signal sampling as possible, which he did when he recorded the signal digitally. If there had been even the slightest deviation in anything (stereo image, transients, etc.), you would have been able to see or hear it with the inversion method. BTW, I am a passionate sound tinkerer, have been making my own music and working with digital sound processing for almost 20 years.

@darkstarnh Жыл бұрын

Retired broadcast sound engineer too. Absolutely right.

@joelnesmith Жыл бұрын

Absolutely fascinating video! A really fun watch

@gmscott9319 Жыл бұрын

One of the benefits of digital content is that it either works or it doesn't. On or off. There is no 'drift' with a digital signal. Great video! I would've just dismissed this product as snake oil without giving it a second thought because I know how digital audio works. But your dedication to this channel is outstanding!

@tzxazrael Жыл бұрын

i mean... it IS snake oil. but many "high end audiophiles" (maybe most? maybe almost all of them?) are pretty deliberately looking for some kind of snake oil so they can claim a supposed superiority over anyone who "can't tell the difference with [whatever] OBVIOUSLY superior method that they are using."

@Finder245 Жыл бұрын

If you think that's how CD audio works, then you need to read "Error correction and concealment in the Compact Disc system". Audio CDs were designed to allow CD players to play back corrupted CDs with reduced quality. If error correction fails, then concealment can still interpolate between samples, which halves the analog bandwidth (~10kHz instead of ~20kHz). If the data is even more corrupted, the CD player will mute the signal before the corrupted portion. Data CDs have an additional layer of error correction because concealment does not work there.

@justins8802 Жыл бұрын

All those publications that sang the praises of this product are the real story. They should be blacklisted by the audiophile community (assuming they aren’t out of business by now)

@ThatOldGrey Жыл бұрын

@@Finder245 But that's the opposite of the point. Yes, it's possible to get *worse* sound out of a CD, but it's not possible to get *better* sound, which is the product's claim.

@falxonPSN Жыл бұрын

@@ThatOldGrey exactly. When audiophiles with no technical chops start claiming error correction or jitter, it's usually a warning sign that they have hit the Dunning Krueger level of subject matter expertise.

@mindtpi Жыл бұрын

After your demonstration of data using a light switch, I've sanded down the edges if all my light switches, coloured the edges in with marker pen and have noticed the light bulbs now give a much better, clearer light with better separation of the light frequencies and shadows are more defined

@ThalesRod Жыл бұрын

They probably have a more 3d feeling aswell

@Sigurther Жыл бұрын

i tried this with my cat to improve the quality of it's disposition, but sadly the applicability of that theory did not translate well. On a side note, if you find any random pieces of ear, nose or fingers lying around, I'm gonna need those back.

@GGoAwayy Жыл бұрын

I prevented light leaks on my eyeballs by drawing a ring around my irises with a Sharpie. The whole world has vastly increased resolution now.

@xioux24 Жыл бұрын

Cheeky! I’ve done the same and can really tell the difference in the shadows… I can hear them…

@zawacchi Жыл бұрын

😂😂😂😂

@sonhouse9636 7 ай бұрын

Brilliant demonstration!

@JayMStein Жыл бұрын

I really appreciate your excellent test methodology.

@walterheukels Жыл бұрын

Don't worry, audiophiles don't sully their elevated minds with anything as sordid as evidence. What you've done there is just deepened the mystery for them, which will make them appreciate their $500 magic box even more. "The difference is so subtle, a digital device won't pick it up, but I can clearly hear it!"

@zaprodk Жыл бұрын

Haha, good one :D

@UnjustifiedRecs Жыл бұрын

I build soundsystems for a living and it's amazing how most 'audiophiles' really know nothing at all, spouting shit and stats they read on a website trying to justify spending 20k+ on their hifis, when I can make you a rig and even an amp for a fraction of the cost that'd wipe the floor with anything their bought from richer sounds lol 😂

@chris9650 Жыл бұрын

@@UnjustifiedRecs what do you recommend as a good brand?

@lasskinn474 Жыл бұрын

Seeing the same guy review hundred devices kinda does the trick. Clearer highs

@Szlater Жыл бұрын

Audiophiles have been providing the comedy for over thirty years.

@pittypolyphonic Жыл бұрын

if a simple bevel and dye could have such a massive effect, why isn't something like that part of the manufacturing of discs! excellent video as always!

@denimadept Жыл бұрын

Exactly.

@KelvGaming Жыл бұрын

Cause then disc shaver companies like these can't do business anymore, much like why fuel saver gadgets are not built into cars as the automobile industry is in cahoots with the Big Oil.

@pittypolyphonic Жыл бұрын

@@KelvGaming yes and why the doctor won't sell you snake oil yadda yadda yadda

@JMcMillen Жыл бұрын

@@KelvGaming But the CD manufacturers could charge more for beveled CD's vs unbeveled ones. Why should they let some 3rd party gadget company make money that could be going into their own pocket instead.

@unitrader403 Жыл бұрын

@@KelvGaming yeah, i can confirm that these Fuel Saver things work. i Plugged one in my Tesla and never had to drive to a Gas Station since....

@mathieumelenhorst8308 Жыл бұрын

Got my CDs balanced at the tyre workshop. Defenitely a huge improvement.

@Saintlawrence100 Жыл бұрын

I didn’t think trimming would do it..great video!!.. subbed…

@johnlouis3873 Жыл бұрын

If there was a significant improvement in sound quality between the two discs, manufacturers of CDs would have implemented this in their production.

@Guovssohas Жыл бұрын

good point.

@life5161 Жыл бұрын

Exactly. I've seen people color the edge of the disc black thinking it does something! 🤣

@ModernClassic Жыл бұрын

The amount of analog thinking that audiophiles apply to digital recordings has always just been confusing. I think there's just a refusal to accept that there's nothing more than they can do to improve the sound of a particular recording; that it just is what it is. The entire audiophile culture grew out of these constant tweaks to get better sound in the analog era. With digital, all you can really do is try to improve the links in the chain at or after the analog conversion - the DAC, amp and speakers. Everything else is just a fool and his money parted. But still, almost any device that claims to improve the sound of ones and zeros seems to catch on like wildfire in the audiophile community. Someone's gonna call you out for using a poor quality optical cable or a low-end minisystem CD transport, I guarantee it.

@OrgaNik_Music Жыл бұрын

I remember an article where audiophiles blind tested some "high end cables" that were in actuality just metal coat hangers or something like that, and nobody could tell the difference.

@ncot_tech Жыл бұрын

The lack of understanding that "error correction" is correction is insane. The hint is in its name. It's correcting errors, not making up guesses about missing data. And of course, if you're reviewing some kit for your magazine, you're going to say it works well because you're in the business of promoting this nonsense because those people buy your magazine.

@kmetze Жыл бұрын

Search 'Linus $1000 HDMI cable' for a wonderful example of this principle at work ;)

@EclecticBuddha Жыл бұрын

I'm pretty sure the coat hanger v cable experiment was either done by or published on James Randi's site.

@DaveF. Жыл бұрын

there's more than that - thre's an active desire to spend stupid money on stuff that clearly and obviously cannot make any possible difference. I think it's partly a willy-waving exercise since they're way past the limits of what's objectively better than their friends systems so they need to just spend more to be 'better' Plus there's simply refusual to accept that they've spent £5,000 on speaker cable that is indistinuishable from bent coat-hangers. Prime targets for con-men.

@pev_ Жыл бұрын

Also, the error correction in a CD is not just "cannot read a bit, let's guess what it is". There is a lot of thought and different mechanisms on how the data is stored so that it can losslessly recover even quite long read errors, check it out, it is quite fascinating stuff. And with all that complexity, audiophiles think that something like light scatter would not have been considered, hehheh.

@nidavis 4 ай бұрын

This is true, but the patent application for "Cross-interleaved Reed-Solomon coding" (US4413340) does list 2 methods the encoder can use to interpolate for unrecoverable errors.

@glenmorrison8080 Жыл бұрын

I was hoping you'd try an inverted comparison of the two versions of the track. Excellent approach. Perfect.

@MizoxNG Жыл бұрын

the vast majority of CD players read the data into a buffer and then the DAC (or next stage in the audio pipeline, whichever) pulls data out of that buffer at its own pace, this is both necessary as part of the decoding step (as part of error correction, the bits on a CD are not only expanded for storage, but not even stored in playback order), and also gives the laser time to reread a sector if it fails the first time. notice that if you have a CD player without a top cover, if you put a finger on the disc to stop it from spinning, the player will continue playing for a few seconds. NO CD player plays them back in real time, they're not records

@dingdong2103 Жыл бұрын

Sssh don't try to reason them. They put shakti stones on top of the CD to erase the buffer!

@fdfsdfsvsfgsg4888 Жыл бұрын

This is blatantly false. Seconds? Get a grip fella.

@MuriloBauerAYYLMAO Жыл бұрын

@@fdfsdfsvsfgsg4888 literally just tried it, played for another 3 seconds for me

@DirtySouthSOHK Жыл бұрын

@@fdfsdfsvsfgsg4888 I could pop the disc out of my PS1 and still play the game until it needed to load more data from the disc. With some games I could finish a level before the game stopped. A major mechanic of Monster Rancher was to remove the game and insert a random music CD 😂

@TristenSinanju Жыл бұрын

cd players used to be touchy. dance too hard and your disc would start skipping, aha... modern cd drives have skip and error correction, but my 1980's cd player sure doesn't :) (i'm not supporting shaving disc's tho ;0 )

@hamandwine Жыл бұрын

Hi! As a former engineer developing CD / SACD and DCD drives for automotive use, I am very greatful that someone is showing the facts without ranting of useless overpriced equipment that just rips off people with too much money but far too less technical understanding. However while watching the whole video I would suggest you should do a video on the technical details of the CD and why it is better to put it on the desk with the optical side down, why the sector interleave helps correcting errors without the loss of a single bit of information and why you can punch a 5mm hole into the disk that nobody will ever hear. Leave me a note if you like to do that and I support you in that task.

@wayland7150 Жыл бұрын

The plastic is thicker on the optical side than the label side.

@DaVince21 Жыл бұрын

I believe he has a video on your first suggestion, if I'm not mistaken!

@damagedgears Жыл бұрын

Technology Connections has an excellent series on CD (and Digital Audio by extension) Audio format.

@colonelmustard2652 Жыл бұрын

@@wayland7150 the label is just screenprinted onto the data layer. there is no plastic protecting the data layer on that side.

@RyanSchweitzer77 Жыл бұрын

@@colonelmustard2652 But, IINM there is also a layer of lacquer that is applied via spin coating to the data layer before the label is screen-printed to provide some protection.

@RandomKSandom Жыл бұрын

You've done well with your testing. If you want further confirmation, you could use a CD ripper to rip to uncompressed audio, and then do a binary compare between the tracks, as well as your audacity check.

@user-kg6us4ik6i 11 ай бұрын

Is this why backmasking a CD doesn't work?

@RandomKSandom 11 ай бұрын

@@user-kg6us4ik6i Could you explain your thinking?

@apars78 Жыл бұрын

Smart and scientific way to eliminate BS! Well done

@davidlevy706 Жыл бұрын

*SPOILERS BELOW:* I must express my appreciation of Mat's presentational style, which I prefer to the "this is a blatant scam, and now I'll tell you why - right after this message from today's sponsor" approach employed by many KZfaqrs. When he explained what the product was purported to do, it sounded like utter nonsense. "How could physically altering a Compact Disc enhance the digital data it contains?" I thought. "Improved instrument separation? That's absurd." Then came the reviews, which genuinely had me questioning whether I was fundamentally confused about how CDs work - and wrong to dismiss the product's potential benefits. When the tests showed absolutely no waveform differences, this was vastly more satisfying than it would have been if I'd known from the start. It's the difference between a lecture and a journey. Bravo, sir.

@CptJistuce Жыл бұрын

The reviews were almost certainly not from blind tests. They knew what the "improved" disks were, and thus heard the improvements they believed should be there. Also, I'm incredibly amused that they go on about how blacking the edges doesn't work because the laser is infrared, then tell people to black the edges. ... And I absolutely lost it when they declared that one angle is appropriate for both the infrared of CD and the actual red of DVD and SACD. That optimum angle should depend on wavelength, I'd think(not to mention that there's no way this can generate a sharpness difference on DVD-Video. MPEG doesn't work that way.)

@finnmcool2 Жыл бұрын

I thought the same, plus 'light scatter' is something you hear about illumination sources, not lasers. In fact, lack of scatter is one of the benefits of laser light, it's how they can use them to measure the distance to the moon.

@st0rmforce Жыл бұрын

I saw the title and expected some kind of scratch removal / extreme cleaning device. Then he started explaining what it was... oh dear

@CptJistuce Жыл бұрын

@@st0rmforce Honestly, this is kinda close to what I expected. The bevel was a surprise, though. I thought the thing was going to trim the edge to "true up" the disk and reduce physical wobble. But it only trues it as an accidental side-effect of the nonsense snake oil.

@bazzle592 Жыл бұрын

Your TOSLINK cable wasn't expensive enough, you really gotta spend at least $3000 on one to get listenable sound out of a CD. It probably wasn't even shielded and didn't have gold plated connectors. Imagine the interference it was picking up! /s

@FruitMuff1n Жыл бұрын

It picked up the same interference in the same pattern each time you ran the test too :) /s

@xue8888 Жыл бұрын

Power cables were too cheap also /s

@graealex Жыл бұрын

Optical cable needs to be made from oxygen-free glass of course. Otherwise the mid-tones will sound soft, and the high end will sound muffled.

@MarcAndreBelleau Жыл бұрын

For a moment there, you got me.

@Not-Only-Reaper-Tutorials Жыл бұрын

it has not skin of real prehistoric Python

@thainmlh Жыл бұрын

Funny thing... if this was true, wouldn't CD manufacturers just do it? LOL!

@JETZcorp Жыл бұрын

Seriously! It would be cheaper than the label.

@lesalmin 9 ай бұрын

In 80's one Finnish music magazine got the original digital data of one CD from the company making CDs and they compared it bit by bit to the data read from the corresponding CD and there wasn't a single difference between those two. If there has ever been any problems with CD sound quality, they are caused in the AD-conversion of the original analog data to be written into CD or in the DA-conversion of the digital data read from the CD.

@ceptimus Жыл бұрын

What a happy coincidence for the manufacturers that the 36-degree angle of standard craft knife blades just happened to be the perfect angle to "minimize internal reflections" !

@purplegill10 Жыл бұрын

For me this is the biggest weakness of the product itself: why aren't they using gold-plated blades to improve the cutting quality?

@romank90 Жыл бұрын

@@purplegill10 and make the knifes soft and single use, so you have to buy new for every CD you mangle? Brilliant!

@purplegill10 Жыл бұрын

@@romank90 _Now you're getting it._

@MrPGT Жыл бұрын

@@purplegill10 Yeah, but he forgot the orphan tear based ink for blackening the shaved edge. Even more expensive per ml than inkjet printer ink. You need those extra special audio grade Sharpies.

@andrewgwilliam4831 Жыл бұрын

@@purplegill10 For that, you need the professional-grade box. More expensive, sure, but worth it!

@Silent002 Жыл бұрын

Really makes me wonder how much those reviewers were paid to hear a difference before and after treatment. Great video, your methodology for testing was perfect, leaves no room for interpretation in my opinion.

@alanrogs3990 Жыл бұрын

They get paid by not being asked to send the test equipment back. Then they can either keep it or sell it. Money in the pocket.

@filker0 Жыл бұрын

It is more likely that the reviewer was listening to the same CD before and after the "tuning" and was simply unable to remember enough about the first playing, and convinced themselves that it sounded better the second time. A double blind test would probably have been a toss-up.

@AllSortsOfStuff58 Жыл бұрын

...and I used to think reviews could be relied upon...Silly me...

@djraptorx Жыл бұрын

They don’t need to be paid anything, it’s all the power of suggestion.

@alphabeets Жыл бұрын

@@djraptorx exactly.

@OrdinaryWorld Жыл бұрын

Beautiful. No trickster, conman, illusionist or magician can fool a man to the extent to which he can fool himself!

@peteraugust5295 Жыл бұрын

Coming up with ideas like this one to milk people requires a rare combination of a genius and an absolutely gutless human beeing.

@Wurlyscope Жыл бұрын

It is clear to me that if it does make a difference in sound reproduction, all CDs would be manufactured with a bevel edge at no extra cost. Thank you for your video.

@Constantinus213421 Жыл бұрын

Nooo, it's a greedy conspiracy, beveling the CDs cost more, so they leave them rounded.

@lolaa2200 Жыл бұрын

How could you expect audio improvement at no extra cost ? The only way you hear a positive difference is precisely because you have paid premium price for it so your brain kicks in confirmation bias. If it's the same price then it kills all the effect.

@leeadkins1360 Жыл бұрын

Your null test was spot on (recording both and flipping polarity on one of the tracks to check differences). In the audio production and audiophile communities there is a lot of wankery that's just based on placebo and biases. Dan Worrall has done some good videos on this topic. If you aren't doing null tests and double blind tests you can't be sure your perception isn't being coloured by bias.

@janedoe6350 Жыл бұрын

Fine for Digital... not sure if it would work on vinyl... nulling would let you hear the difference in dust accumulation between two identical pressings though. Or at best... be a good check if your cleaning system is effective if you record a before and after. Personally, i always find buying a good clean second hand recording at a really nice price makes the music sound better. :)

@westelaudio943 Жыл бұрын

Things can have inherent qualities without being objectively 'better' (it doesn't apply to this nonsense,).

@westelaudio943 Жыл бұрын

@@janedoe6350 The speed of turntables is too inconsistent for exact nulling.

@dr_jaymz Жыл бұрын

For vinyl you'd never ever get two playbacks that are the same its impossible because no matter how small the noise is, it cannot be zero thats why we don't use analogue. For digital it can absolutely be zero, i.e. checksum for two playbacks will be indentical. The noise is then introduced at the amplifier stage. Cds were a bloody good design especially for the 1980s.

@JoeySchmidt74 Жыл бұрын

Don't lump us budget audio producers in with the audiophiles!

@YourWealthCome Жыл бұрын

I do like the look of the black edge especially with the red label.

@purpleghost4083 Жыл бұрын

What if they had made the CD look black - like some of the CD-Rs that you could buy or those Playstation(?) discs? That might be a nice look too.

@dwayneabsolutelydribblin3903 Жыл бұрын

You save me money all the time great stuff 👍🏻

@Weissenschenkel Жыл бұрын

The result is what I was expecting. Snake oil lathe for clueless audiophiles. Using Audacity to compare tracks is something I used to compare songs with different bit rates. It was the cherry on top of your review! Thank you, Mat!

@Hans-gb4mv Жыл бұрын

I don't understand how people can fall for this. A CD (and SACD, DVD, ...) is digital. You can either read it or you can't. There's a signal or there isn't. The error correction doesn't slow down the read, doesn't change the sound. The CD doesn't make anything up if it can't read it. Too many errors and your CD player just stops playing. And at that point, reducing the light scatter might help. What got me even more was the DVD claim. A clearer picture? Really? It's a digital video stream. 1 bit out of place and your frame won't render. And if it's a keyframe that is missed, you'll be staring at multiple seconds of something unwatchable. So that begs the question: those reviewers, were they paid for a positive review? Or were they just willing it to be true?

@nikthefix8918 Жыл бұрын

@@Hans-gb4mv The CRC error correction should be transparent but the interpolation and mute corrections do produce artefacts. Interpolation really is effectively 'making stuff up' using an educated guess (only for audio CDs and we're only talking about a short burst of missing or inconsistent samples). The effect of an interpolation error might be to reduce the high frequency component of the affected burst as the interpolated data would follow a sinusoidal / simple harmonic profile - linear interpolation could introduce clicks.

@Kylefassbinderful Жыл бұрын

I love how honest and humble you are when comparing what appears to be a pretty obvious scam process and an "untreated" CD. I appreciate that from your videos.

@HOLLASOUNDS Жыл бұрын

Part of the potential problem is the high very popular artists or music people who backed it looking stupid.

@Kylefassbinderful Жыл бұрын

@@HOLLASOUNDS meh, it was stupid to endorse it but saying they look stupid about a product most people don't remember is a bit dramatic.

@HOLLASOUNDS Жыл бұрын

@@Kylefassbinderful Well I see similar stupidity today in music sythersizors, with people claiming they can hear the difference between the very expensive and limited Analog sythersizors vs Digital or Software sythersizors but when blind tested almost nobody can tell the difference it's all in there minds. There is even a popular Hiphop producer claiming that Analog recorded onto tape sounds better then digital because the tape captures the electrical vibes of the people in the room, total nonsense.

@Kylefassbinderful Жыл бұрын

@@HOLLASOUNDS the electrical vibes is a good one lol. Sounds like a good laugh.

@paulstearns93 Жыл бұрын

Your testing regime is better than I would have expected, kudos. Being more of a data person I would have put the data on a hard drive using whatever ripper I had handy. I would then do a bitwise comparison of the files. Your method may take other factors into consideration and might be better. Mine would take the DAC out of the equation. Assuming the comparisons you provided were in the analog domain as interpreted by a DAC.

@WFTL14 Жыл бұрын

Thanks, about what I expected. If I can't hear the difference it doesn't matter.

@treelineresearch3387 Жыл бұрын

I like how with audiophool products like this they always use unquantifiable metrics like "clarity and transparency", rather than something real and easily measured like bit error rate or clock skew.

@movax20h Жыл бұрын

A simple double blind A/B test would dismiss 99% of product in this space. It is mostly placebo to users. Sure, some of the equipment and techniques are of better "quality", but it has absolutely zero effect on end result in terms of audio.

@billr3053 Жыл бұрын

Be careful using terms like "clock skew". For a while, clock-jitter was a colossal problem that needed solving. I remember separate drives and D-to-A converter boxes. Then that same company decided to put those two components into one box. Imagine that. Oh but they're totally separate, we swear. It's just smaller now. But don't by any other brand who've done this since their first model. They suck.

@HermanVonPetri Жыл бұрын

Exactly. Audiophile promotions always use ill-defined, imprecise language based purely on subjective opinion. They are selling a feeling, not a solution, because there was no real problem to solve in the first place.

@BigTroyT Жыл бұрын

All that matters is the data. You can very easily compare the data extracted from an unaltered CD with the data extracted from a shaved CD. They will be identical, down to the last bit, unless the CD is extremely scratched up. Since the exact same data is being sent to the DAC, the DAC is going to produce the identical sound (within the limits of the DAC). Like many things, this product was sold to ignorant people who could be convinced, via feelings, about things that are quite easy to disprove scientifically. If a 36 degree angle on the edge of a CD had any advantage, ALL CDs would be manufactured that way - this would be a relatively simple additional step in the CD manufacturing process. But they aren't, because it's completely unnecessary.

@AJBtheSuede Жыл бұрын

@@movax20h A-B-0 tests are absolutely hated by people that sell 3000USD 3-foot IEC power cables. And by the people that buy them :)