SilverWook said:
Current models are no longer limited to "Music only" recordable discs.
Got a Teac recorder new in box pretty cheap on Ebay.
http://www.guitarcenter.com/Teac-CD-RW890-Consumer-CD-Recorder-Player-108256876-i3043886.gc
Some Amazon reviews harped on the editing features, but I don't need those. LD's never had any sort of copy protection, so I don't anticipate any problems.
Once I have a capture, how do I determine it's accuracy to the source? Is bit perfect even something the human ear can tell?
There are two aspects to test for when wanting to achieve bit perfection. One, is the digital audio signal being altered/processed in some way by either the LD player or the CD recorder? Two, is your LD player doing a perfect playback of the digital audio track?
To test for #1, your LD player will need to be able to play CDs. Play a track from a CD in your LD player and record it with the CD recorder. Then extract that track from the CD-R using EAC or XLD (CD rippers). Then, take the original CD you were playing in the LD player and rip the same track using EAC or XLD. Now do a cancellation comparison on the two files. You may need to edit some samples to get both tracks into perfect alignment. If they match, your setup is playing and recording the unaltered digital audio track. If they don't match, depending on what audio is left behind in the cancellation process, we might be able to determine what type of alteration is being made. But you would most likely need to repeat the test with another LD or CD player to try and determine which device is altering the signal.
To test for #2, you'll need to record everything twice and do a cancellation comparison. Any place that does not cancel out to pure digital silence, you did not get bit perfection. I'm running into this problem with my setup. So far, 4 of my LDs have recorded perfectly and match 100%, while two are giving me issues. At times, the difference is only an isolated sample here and there. Other places it's a section of many samples not matching up. Sometimes this isn't heard, other times I can hear light ticks. The LDs look totally clean and have no evidence of rot in the video, so I suspect my player is a bit weak at accurately playing digital tracks on certain discs. I don't have another player to try, which could possibly confirm if the problem is with the discs.