Can the copy sound better than the original?


Ridiculous question on the surface, I know. Here are the particulars:
I burned a copy of Mike Patton's "Mondo Cane" to listen to at work. I played the cd-r to verify that it was functional and it seems to sound significantly better than the original manufactured disc. More cohesive performance, better detail in inner voices, a sense of being in the space with the performers, and soundstage depth that is unusual for this system. Nonsense, right? I will state upfront that I have no affiliation with Memorex whatsoever. The cd-r I burned was a Memorex
"Black" cd-r. The only explanations I can come up with are that a) there was some compression in the transfer into i-tunes b) there is something about the way a laser might read a cd that would cause a typical silver cd to reflect garbage light onto the laser, whereas a black cd has less spurious reflective emission. Anybody else care to try this and confirm/de-bunk my perception?
ths364

Showing 1 response by djohnson54

I know this has been argued endlessly but I don't find the idea that farfetched. The issues with reflected light are one possibility but consider also that, during the copy process, the CD has gone through the error correction process of the CD drive. If the burned CD-R needs less error correction AND the error correction algorithm in your CDP is audible at some level then ...

Dick