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Microeditor Help - Versions 5.0-5.5 Discussions for Microeditor versions that use Krystal DSP Engine audio card

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  #1  
Old April 25th, 2006, 06:32 AM
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MAM-A (was Mitsui) and Verbatium CDR media pros/cons

Useful info for CD Mastering.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich LePage
Also the Mitsui (now MAM-A) QC is just not what it used to be, I seem too often to have to reject burned masters for too many errors. Not willing to send them to a plant unless I can verify in 2 sep test passes that the error rates are very low. With the old burners especially, I run the gold media, seems to give best results and still have only ever had one master rejected by a plant for too many errors -- long ago, before we got the QC system.
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Old April 25th, 2006, 06:34 AM
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More wisdom on this topic from the geezer...
Quote:
Originally Posted by geezer
Like you, I am using only the MAM-A gold for all masters and anything else I want to have listened to by critical ears. I have purchased and used the MAM-A silver for some other uses and tests.

One curious, but powerful, set of facts came to light after I did all the dither testing. I spent some time testing various types of media stock burning at various speeds in my Yamaha IDE burner from approx. 2000....The number of variables during this test were huge, and, I'm sure would show different results with a different burner, program or computer.

I started these tests after receiving some table-top duplicated discs from masters I had heard before, and found them to sound quite different than the masters.....I would stress that, although I did do some file-matching tests, all of my media and speed tests were LISTENING tests done in real time on my reference player monitoring via the digial output into my reference monitoring setup. I was testing the way things sound on playback, with the ultimate concern being client auditions and duplication quality as I was considering buying a duplicator.

I don't think errors, in the normal sense, were ever the issue, and here is why: Before I performed the extensive tests using mixes that I know intimately, I took these bad-sounding table-top duplicated CDRs (collapsed image, loss of depth, shift of apparent frequency response), copied them into my Wavelab computer and simply burned them again at the standard speed I use (4X)(no additional dithering) onto the MAM-A gold discs, and all the imagery and depth were restored! (in real-time playback, that is). I would also stress that all of these real-time playback tests provided readily audible results even in my awful sounding car system and my $100 Teac "real world" bookshelf system. Absolute repeatability of the effect on all systems.

What I found ultimately through a very lengthy test process was this: 1)Every piece of media sounded different (real-time playback) at every different burn speed. 2)Only the MAM-A gold was capable of the real-time quality on playback that I am looking for, though the silver came moderately close. 3)With my burner, only the one speed (4x) produced the desired result. Both slower and faster speeds were different, and, in my oprion, degraded.

I had a long talk with MAM-A's main engineer-tech guy about this at a duplication seminar I attended, and he said he had heard of this issue from some mastering engineers, but had never seen any scientific analysis of it. I was going to send him some examples, but had a serious health issue invade my life a couple of weeks later and have not gotten back to it.....He said that his company's tests showed that their discs tended to produce the best results when run at speeds in the middle of their range (i.e.- a 56x disc would do the best around 28x), but the burners themselves responded differently to different media and speeds.

So, I guess this means that when I upgrade my burner I will have to go through this process all over again....I am sure that I will have to revisit all the dithering (I also use Waves, by the way) as well if I ever change anything else- including software.....I just changed cards in my computer, which has changed my perspective yet again, though I think the change was positive and easy to hear, so I have not gone through any further tests around this so far.
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Old April 25th, 2006, 06:36 AM
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More thoughts from Rich:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich Lepage
Your experience in real world listening seems to run parallel to mine and also to what I have been seeing with the Clover QC unit. Yep, diff. media and diff speeds, burners and so on do sound different to me too.

But the gold seems to be about the "roundest wheel". The MAM-A silver, well the quality (listening and Clover testing) has been all over the map from lot to lot. Sometimes very good, but sometimes, really bad. Many of the same problems you mentioned, partic. collapse of the stereo image. The Taiyo Yuden media (80s only) has been more stable lately (testing both very subjectively and with the Clover too) so have been using that for both CDROM work and often for client refs too. So far, no one has kicked back a ref as not playable though it's an 80 min blank, so I guess most clients are using newer players. My car system (late 90s Jeep) will eject any 80 minute CD put into it, though it plays 74's fine.

I've had REALLY bad luck with the MAM 80 blanks though -- both silver and very surprisingly, the gold ones too. Not only do they subjectively not sound as good (same program, same burner) as the 74's but the Clover thing generally shows them to have many more errors. In fairness I think all I ever bought of the 80s was from one batch though. I usually buy from Media Supply in PA, a big MAM-A distributor.

The Clover unit is fairly cool for what it is - consists of a graded and modified Plextor drive (SCSI) which allows it to measure a big variety of error rates, and will even let you look at the pit geometry if you hook up a scope to it.
It requires a COMM port to run besides the SCSI card (they include an Adaptec controller), but will run on just about anything. I have it set up on an old DEC Pentium 200, one of a very few packaged computers I've ever owned bought as a closeout when Compaq bought DEC.

Clover's info claims that some of the errors it is measuring are likely causes of some of the same things you and I are hearing/seeing-- it measures much more in terms of errors than just BLER.

But like anything else, it is not totally empirical either-- since there are the variables of the computer host, also many others. You check to see that the thing is still calibrated fine and that all is well using 2 test discs they supply with it -- 1 known good (they give you the analysis of the disc when the unit was shipped) and one with def. known errors (they give you that analysis too). So far, our system seems very repeatable to the standards from when it was shipped (about 1.5 years ago). But seems the more bare bones the host machine, the better. I have it on a very simple Win98 system that is about as vanilla as you could have, no Internet etc either. I just use that computer for QC'ing, really nothing else except printing out the documentation.

That's also why I check masters twice with it-- the results always will differ, but only very slightly with a good master, and the results will be fairly close to the "standard" cal. disc when all is well. I print the results and ship with the masters too.

www.cloversystems.com if you are interested at all, but it isn't cheap, though about the cheapest thing beyond toy class that I could find when I was looking around. The owner apparently did some work way back for Dave and MTU in its very early days, though last time I spoke with Dave he didn't remember the guy -- that was some time ago however. They make a few different types of units, the one we have is called CDX.

Seen the same thing with DVDs used for data backups. No surprise that cheapo media is not reliable -- but the one brand that seems to work well time and again for those has been Verbatim. We have many DVD drives, from 4x to 16x, mostly use them for data backup which is always fully verified after writing (as a separate verify pass, using Backup Exec). The Verbatims seem to be very reliable, most others, not. Will have to see how they hold up over time as storage media-- but I did restore a project done a few years ago recently that was backed up to DVD and it worked out fine. With really critical stuff that is very likely to be reworked years later, I back up to both DVDs and DDS data Dats which is what I used before the DVDs, and usually run 2 sets of DVDs too just in case. I get paranoid that way!
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Old April 25th, 2006, 06:39 AM
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More from the geezer...
Quote:
Originally Posted by geezer
....Yeah, I've been looking at the Clover unit too because I've been trying to figure out how to generate more straight-up mastering work (I've alway been very multi-operational, with a lot of live recording and start-to-finish production). Can't justify it yet, but it's on the list.

I buy from Media Supply too. They're the ones that sponsored the duplication seminar I went to. I started up with them because they are practically the only place that carries the MAM-A golds.

One thing that the MAM-A guy at the seminar was claiming was that some standard DVD-Rs have a shelf life of a year or less in their environmental testing. He was, of course, touting their new Silver and Gold DVD-Rs. Have you tried these yet?

Sounds like you feel pretty confident about the Verbatims. A lot of folks seem to like Taiyo Yuden. The Taiyo Yuden guy at the seminar said categorically that all of their DVD output, no matter what retail outlet it wound up at, came off the same production line with the same quality control. That was heartening. The quality control issues at MAM-A you are seeing are not.....I'll try to dig out the engineering guy at MAM-As contact info and give it to you.

The MAM-A guy was pretty accessible, and gave a great talk on the technical aspects of things, including all the pit geometry stuff. This mostly, but not entirely, supported the superiority of their patented dyes.....generally pretty interesting.
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Old April 25th, 2006, 06:44 AM
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More thoughts...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich LePage
What led to the Clover for me was (besides wanting to be able to know more
what was going on) that many clients had been seeing problems with stuff done by competitors, and so though it wasn't the case with stuff I did, I figured it was high time to be able to understand more why and also to be able to provide documentation of what was going on with masters when they left here. I've also got work because others produced CDs that plants rejected - sometimes several times. Also more routine things like whoever did the work had no concept of average and peak level in some cases!

The Clover guy told me he also has seen same variation situation with the MAM-A's in more recent times- says he's been using the Taiyos more with the duplicators they also build. Guess he offers short run duping services too.

I'm only "sold" on the Taiyos for the moment. I have a bunch on hand, along with a bunch of MAM-A silvers from diff batches. I try to pull about 25 pcs from each batch and hold them awhile just to have a benchmark, though I do that less with the golds since they've been good except for the 80s.
The older MAM-As are often more consistent from disc to disc than current
production, though that's a somewhat subjective call. Anything that still says Mitsui on it has been very consistent for most part.

Send the MAM-A guy's info whenever convenient and I'll inquire.

I've seen less variation in the packaged MAM-As than the bulk ones. For convenience, I buy some silvers in jewel cases in cartons of 25, and use those for cassette masters which get burned at higher speeds than CD masters, though usually just at 4 or 8x tops.

Have not tried the MAM-A DVD-R's in quite a while so will get M/Supply to send me a few next order. The Verbatims though have been great. Not so with cheapos like Optodisc and Ritek - as you'd expect.
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Old September 29th, 2006, 06:44 AM
Micfobvez Micfobvez is offline
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Achtung!!
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Old September 29th, 2006, 10:23 AM
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Another idiot.
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Old September 29th, 2006, 11:12 AM
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