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CD cloning with NAD
The modern miracle of digital life
By Max Christoffersen
March 2001
NAD C660 CD recorder. $2399
Cloning may be the new buzzword of the 21st Century, but for music fans we've been doing it for a while. Digital CD cloning that is.
Creating bit-for-bit copies of the original CD that you can't tell apart from each other. Or can you?
You can read my first foray into digital cloning (Philips CDR-778) which was nothing short of a revelation.
And the lasting impression from that first cloning experience is that CD recording is: a). a minor miracle, b). easy and convenient, c). not yet perfect.
Don't get me wrong here. I was formerly a digital-bit = a digital-bit kind of guy. You either have all the digital information or you don't. Well that being the case, the cloned CD copies should have been perfect. And while they were very good, I could tell the difference. And it wasn't a squint-till-you-think-you-can-hear-the-difference. This was night and day obvious.
So a new year and a second shot at trying CD recording and the NAD 660 dual deck CDR is the first one up.
Basically, the same approach as the Philips applies: Simply put a disc in push 'record' and out pops a CD. Amazing.
Having previously made recordings of vinyl, VHS and CD, I decided this time, to try some LaserDisc and DVD recordings as well. I wanted to transfer some live LD concerts to CD and the question as always is, was anything lost in the translation?
Really, that is the only question that matters.
So onto the recording chores. Like the Philips, recording was simple and straight forward. In fact it was a simple two button job. Push dubbing, check the screen commands and push play. That's it. When finished, press 'Finalise' and you have a brand new CD. It is very simple and when doing a digital dub between two CDs, all recording levels are set automatically and is virtually klutz-proof. And you can record track-at-a-time, or complete disc at a time. And erase backwards from the last track (on the rewritable discs) to start over if you've made a mistake. And all this can be done at 4x recording speed!
And on the more-good-news front, recordable CDs (labelled 'Digital Audio Recordable') have continued to drop in price, down to around $5 for a record-once and around $25 for a re-recordable blank. [Computer CD-recordable media cannot be used with audio recorders - Editor]. And of special interest to many with this NAD, may be the unique facility of MP3 playback that provides 10 hours of music per disc!
When starting out, it still helps to have a re-recordable CD blank to make your masters and then dub from that to your permanent record-once only blank CD. And NAD enclose a blank in the box to get you started - nice touch!
There is a very good range of digital inputs which allows for some flexibility from the optical input on the front to the array of digital and analogue inputs and outputs on the back.In fact you have both decks going simultaneously with separate outputs feeding multi-room systems. One disappointment though is the random play feature does not allow for both decks to play randomly together.
NAD make the point that this is an audiophile quality CD player. And I have to agree there is more body in the playback, which makes for a more substantial and warm sound quality typical of high quality CD playback. But while it sounds like a 21st Century CD player, I was concerned about some of the clunkiness of the loading tray mechanism and the aging grey and green NAD look which really is past its use-by date.
So how did it sound?
In a word spectacular. The full bodied sound was evident on the new recordings
and for the first time, I'm not confident I could pick the difference
between the CD original and the clone.
First up was a recording of the LaserDisc of Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps. A live performance with different set list and not available on CD. Side-by-side I couldn't tell the difference between the recorded CD and the LD. Same story, different LaserDisc with Windham Hill. The performances from Michael Hedges, Bill Ackerman and Shadowfax were identical to the LD. Which when you consider some of the complexity of the musical instrumentation is no mean feat.
The NAD also offers HDCD decoding and playback. I used an HDCD recording of Willie and Lobo's Caliente CD to test the performance. And whatever differences HDCD brings to playback are subtle to say the least. But interestingly, the HDCD signal was recorded on my cloned version of Caliente, confirming that the NAD will successfully copy HDCD discs.
So
digital recording it seems has arrived bug free and fulfilling the promise
of the digital age.
The only thing left with cloning is the philosophical debate. And that may prove just as complex for both digital and analog cloning!
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