Re: Copying minidiscs

[Tom Ritchford <tom@swirly.com>]

>IMHO: If you have the choice between D->D copying or
>D->A->D  ALWAYS take the D->D copy.  You may not notice
>a great deal of generation loss at first, but it's there.

well, there will be generational loss even in an
uncompressed digital transfer, due to jitter or
just errors.  the error correction will handle
*nearly all* of them...


>going through a
>digital:analog converter, and then back again analog:digital
>gives you a much wider sensitivity to distortion, hiss, electronic
>buzz

much as I love digital, I can't really agree with this.

if your levels are set properly, there should be little or
no noise added.  the d/a/d sections on a professional or
semi-professional machine will be better than 90dB, so if they
were the only problem you could make a hundred generations before
getting to the level of an analog mastering deck or a million
generations before getting down to the level of a good cassette deck.

You'd be much more likely to get noise from other sources
interfering with your copies between the two conversion sections.

>
>Test the theory if you must..  Take 2 Sony MD's, go line-out to line-in
>and make a copy.  Turn it around and copy the copy, again, again,
>again until you hear the hiss.  Now try it digital -> digital and note
>that the sound never alters from the original.
>
>Ken