Are Black CD-Rs Better? Some Certainly Think So.

This isn’t new news, but Andy Fawcett revisited the topic of CD-R quality on Audiophilia.com, so it seems like a good time to revisit the notion that black-shaded CD-Rs produce better sound than their silver counterparts.

It seems as if disc color shouldn’t make a difference. Digital 1s and 0s are transferred from one disc to the next, offering an exact copy of the original. We even have programs to confirm the completeness of the transfer.

Still, writes Fawcett, the reality “is that when auditioned in a decent system, the burned disc typically sounds a little less impressive than the original . . . despite the computer confirming that its data is bit-for-bit identical.”

Burned discs typically are silver, however. Many insist that black discs (which can be dark blue or purple) are different. Why is up for interpretation; one theory has the dark shade absorbing excess laser light rather than reflecting it onward or diffracting it within the disc itself. 

Writes Fawcett: “Compare a recording burned to a black disc against the same recording burned to a silver disc . . . and the likelihood is that the black disc will sound noticeably, even significantly better. There’s a sense of clarity and dynamic expression to the black disc that leaves the silver copy sounding horribly muddy. . . . A number of friends have tried it, and the verdict has been unanimous.”

But Fawcett didn’t stop there, going so far as to claim that not only do black copies sound better than silver ones, but in many instances they also sound better than the originals — both to him and to friends in the know. Check out any number of message boards for confirmation or refutation of this. 

The answer, of course, is the same here as it is for all audiophilia – the ultimate test is subjective; whatever sounds better to the listener is better. 1

Technologizer Reader Takes Home Olive 4 Prize

Technologizer gave away an Olive 4 yesterday, as part of its Technologizer Predicts 2010 package, in which readers were asked to submit their ideas for what technology might look like in the coming year.

One of those readers, Aaron Neyer, earned himself an Olive 4 by, well, getting chosen at random.

Aaron’s bold predictions concerned Google’s increasing domination across multiple platforms. “Soon they will be producing their own netbooks running Chrome OS,” he writes, adding that the Mountain View-based company could “possibly even create their own (cellular) network, which completely changes the way we think about phones by making it all VOIP, making it much cheaper, but relying more on your 3G, or 4G network.”

Congrats, Aaron. Let us know how you like it.

(We were more invested in the prediction made by a reader named Dan, who said that “2010 will be the year of high quality music downloads and personal media ‘lockers.’ . . . The first shot will be fired by Apple or Amazon, obviously. Apple will begin selling Apple Lossless files and Amazon will begin selling aiff and flac. Actually, if you look at HDTracks and what they are selling, that is along the lines of the options that Amazon will make available. Although, it is possible that eMusic will throw the first punch here and surprise us all by adopting high quality before anyone else.”

We can only hope.

Thanks to Technologizer for running the promotion. And remember: If you’re not Aaron Neyer, order an Olive 4 or Olive 4HD by Dec. 31 and get the 17-disc remastered Beatles set for free!

Beatles Giveaway Extended Until New Year

Olive is having so much fun with our Beatles promotion — buy an Olive 4 or an Olive 4HD and get the newly remastered, 17-disc Beatles set for free — that we’ve extended it through Dec. 31. What better way to have a happy new year?

(Keep your eye on CNET, one of the sites to post news of the Beatles extension, in January, when they review the Olive 4 and present an Olive 2 giveaway. Of course, we’ll point to them here, and on Twitter.)

Beatles Giveaway Crosses the Web

TechCrunch has seen fit to promote our free Beatles offer (buy an Olive 4 or Olive 4HD and get the 17-disc remastered Beatles set free). That they attached a photo of the Rolling Stones has nothing to do with Olive or our ability to tell Ringo Starr from Charlie Watts.

The Gadgeteer also picked up the torch.

People Love Their CDs After All

In London, the Register’s Andrew Orlowski recently ran a column about the death of CDs, in conjunction with the fact that Linn recently ceased production of CD players in favor of its line of music servers.

The story itself was interesting. More interesting were the empassioned responses it received from readers in defense of CDs.

Among his readers’ comments:

• “CD’s are (more by luck then design) a great data carrier and backup storage medium.  They work in cars, dvd, players, and computers.”

• “I’ve noticed that most people don’t really bother to replace the standard CD system in vehicles and they never notice the little MP3 icon on the set either. So, to them, you buy it in the shop, fight the the packaging in the parking lot and then play the music on your way out. That’s pretty hard to beat.”

• “I like the idea of an album as a conceptual package, which the digital ‘buy by the track’ concept undermines. I want to hear what the artists have to say, whether I end up liking it or not. . . . I believe digital ‘buy by the track’ music marketing will eventually stifle innovation on account of if you only ever get exposed to what you know you won’t ever know any different. . . . Solid state music storage and reproduction is a great idea, long past its due date. I might be persuaded to forego the artwork to own music stored on chips  . . . The model that has been developed to deliver digital music to the buying public is a boil on the backside of civilization, and the inventors should be publicly horsewhipped for perpetrating the swindle.

• “Because it is uncompressed, it comes already backed up on physical media, it is easy and convenient to rip and store in my FLAC music repository. . . . Buy music in some specific, compressed format? Why?”

• “because they contain full quality, uncompressed digital audio! – because they can be then compressed at whatever quality/bitrate I require! – because they have no DRM / copy protection on! – they come with artwork and usually lyrics!”

Seems that music quality knows no borders. Even in England people enjoy the freedom to rip their music into a variety of formats, for playback as they see fit.

Save the sound.

Indie Label Brings Quality Audio to the Masses in Asia

Once, “Made in Japan” was a label that connoted cut-rate craftsmanship. Now it stands for world-class quality.

A Malasian-based record label is looking to do something similar for Chinese pop music, which the company founder saw as “stale” and having gone “downhill.”

Thus, Leslie Loh is setting out to reestablish the quality of the region’s music scene with his Malaysian audiophile record label, pop pop music.

“As the music industry is in the doldrums at the moment, one surviving genre is audiophile music,” he told the Star, Malaysia’s largest English-language newspaper. “People who buy audiophile music don’t mind paying and they are particular about sound quality and high fidelity reproduction.”

Loh cut his teeth on audiophile recordings last year with the first audiophile Chinese pop album recorded in Malaysia, called 2V1G 

(2 Voices 1 Guitar), which has gone on to sell more than 10,000 copies worldwide. 

The label’s latest, “Love’s Tapestry” from guitarist Roger Wang and vocalist Gina Panizales, is set to drop Friday. “We invested heavily on studio hardware and audiophile-grade components such as cables, power line conditioners and microphones,” Loh told the Star. “For the mastering, we engaged Doug Sax of The Mastering Lab, one of the world’s top mastering engineers. The result is a stunning recording that is discernible even on mass-market low-end playback gadgets like IPods or MP3.”

The upshot: quality counts. Audiophilia is catching on — even with independent labels far from the music centers of the West, and even as those same music centers suffer any variety of economic hardships. 

Kudos to Loh for helping save the sound.

TechCrunch Olive 4 Giveaway Gets Underway

The TechCrunch Olive 4 giveaway kicked off today, and as of this writing has garnered 358 comments.

The criteria for entering: Convince them of the general despair surrounding your current audio setup, and they’ll “pick the saddest of the sad sacks. Extra points if you include a link to an image of your sad, sad stereo.”

Some of our favorites so far:

• “My current audio setup consists of an 8-track player hooked up to a speaker ripped out of a 1973 Gremlin. My multiroom audio is tin cans and wire strung outside my house from window-to-window. I need this device!”

• “For the last 12 months I’ve been trying to hack the ‘Family’ Gramophone that has been passed down from generation to generation so I can play my iPod and CD’s through it. I’m still having issues so this would save me another 12 months of ruining a family heirloom!”

• “I have an 8 track tape player salvaged from my 73 Chevy Nova, and the only tape that works is The Captain and Tennille’s 1976 classic Song of Joy.”

• “My current music system compromises of a mule and a goat; I consider the sounds that they produce when I pinch them ‘music.’ You may be induced to laughter, but their impression of Britney Spears’ ‘Baby, Hit Me One More Time’ rivals (in both sound quality and stage presence) the pop diva herself.”

There are also compliments, of course:

“I prefer it when my products don’t make me compromise,” “This could possibly be the only audio system I would ever need,” “My system sucks because this isn’t in it, “Sounds like there are still people out there caring about the quality of stuff,” and “Deck my halls with sounds of glory!”

We’ll give the last word to TechCrunch reader Neil Stebbins, who wrote, “I used to write an audio column directed more towards people who actually listen to their music than gearheads who just play parts of certain tracks to impress other gearheads. The Olive seems to harbor few techie pretensions. This user-friendly unit sounds ideal to me.”

There’s still time to enter; the winner will be picked on Friday.