Description



VerifyCD verifies that a burned CD or the final pressed CD has identical sound data with the master file. Help information and explanation of the fields are given in the Help.htm file in the doc folder. Help on setting the options is given in the OptionsHelp.htm .

The demo version has full professional functionality but limited to 5 min comparison.
Download the demo version here.

Who needs this utility?


Everybody who burns CD-Audio records and wants to make sure that the audio data is correct! There is less error correction used for audio CDs than for normal file system CDs and errors are likely to occur depending on the quality of the CD-R medium. Without a utility like VerifyCD it is simply necessary to listen to the whole record to make sure that there are no pops or glitches. The situation is even worse since you may not notice an error because of the error correction embedded in all CD players. VerifyCD makes sure that the digital data on the disc is equal to the master file. Professional users like CD manufacturing plants and Radio/TV stations are now using this as a quick, reliable and inexpensive method.
The glasmastering plant will run a quality check of the CD measuring error rate and pit geometry, so refer this part of the testing to them. You cannot do error rate testing by listening since you are dependant on the CD player used.

User Experience


We have numerous examples over the years that this utility has tracked a problem while listening has not.
This software in its original form has been used since 1996 by www.sonoconsult.se, all records mentioned under the recent_recordings tag and several more have been checked by this procedure, no case where any listening session has found a problem not found by VerifyCD exists.
If you get the message “Equal files” you do not need to listen. The digital data representing the sound on the CD is identical to the master.
The software tries to re-sync after an error is found. This may not always succeed if it takes considerable processing time. This is because the CD should be rejected anyway as soon as an error is found.
The use of PREGAP and POSTGAP commands that puts silence before or after a track on the CD is supported. This means that the files are considered equal even if silence is inserted anywhere on the CD.
The use of VerifyCD should be sufficient in most cases in order to make sure that the CD has the right sound stream, but many sound engineers still want to do a final listen. The use of this utility saves time to track any clicks or pops on the burned CD. The comparison only takes a few minutes on a modern PC or MAC.

Installation


VerifyCD is will be installed into your Windows Program environment by running the install file.
Uninstallation is done using the uninstall programs in the control panel.

Quality


The program is developed using Extreme Programming (www.extremeprogramming.org) . We have a number of audio files in a test-bed accompanied by test programs that specify most alternatives of input data and program results. This test-bed verifies the coding. The use of extreme programming practices lowers the risk of bugs to an absolute minimum. If you find a bug we will be happy to receive two sound files (with minimum size) that reproduce the bug and will consider to add them to our test achieve so that the bug is sure not to appear in future releases.
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Usage

  1. Listen to the final mixed master sound file in your computer. Use one large file for the whole CD.
  2. Burn the premaster using your favorite software, e.g. CDRWIN from www.goldenhawk.com or EAC from exactaudiocopy.de .
  3. Run VerifyCD. If you get the message “Equal files”, the sound data on the CD is binary bit for bit equal to the master file. Limitation: Each track must be longer than 2 seconds. This is because VerifyCD will try to resync data after a difference is found and will need approx. 1 second of data to do this.
    Most glasmastering plants run further tests to verify Redbook compliance before making the glasmaster.
  4. Make a copy of the CD premaster.
  5. Verify the PQ, ISRC and MSN codes using your CD burning or CD ripping utility.

The demo version has full professional functionality but limited to 5 min comparison.
Download the demo version here.