Audio Systems: CD player reading differences, harman kardon festival, huey lewis and the news

Question
I got lots of CDs whose lasting time differs from the stereo CD player and the PC one:
for ex. 1st CD in Arcam lasts 54:05 in the PC 53: 58
2nd: 49:14 in Arcam and 49:01 (!)in the PC one.
Is there more definition and precision in stereo players or is it that PC computers have more precision cos they eliminate pre-tracks?
Best
Markus

Answer
Dear Markus,

I put 3 CDs into my Harman-Kardon Festival 60, recorded their total time, and then put them into my PC (Dell GX270 running XP Pro). They were (1) Bangles, "Different Light", (2) J.J. Cale, "Naturally", and (3) Huey Lewis and the News, "Sports".

In terms of total time, the CDs were (in order) 2 seconds, 2 seconds, and 3 seconds less on the PC vs. the HK. What was more interesting was that the individual song times varied, either more or less, by as much as five seconds (!). However, when I played individual tracks, the actual music started and stopped with the same net playing time.

It seems as if the PC values the dead time between tracks differently from the HK's CD player. For instance with Huey Lewis's "Heart of Rock'N'Roll", the nominal time on the disc sleeve is 5:01. The HK reflected the same time. The PC said 5:04. However, on the HK the music stopped precisely as the timer hit 5:01. There was a slight delay, and then the next track started. With the PC, the music also stopped at 5:01; from 5:02 to 5:04 there was dead silence--and the next track kicked in immediately after the PC's timer flashed off the 5:04. I repeated this with a number of tracks from "Sports" and the other CDs.

I don't know why this is happening. Seems to me that a digital source would be equivalent regardless of the playback medium. The good news is that although the timing is apparently different, the music is being played back at the same speed and intonation. I copied "Manic Monday" from "Different Light" on to my hard drive and cued its start synchronously with the original CD in the HK. They began and ended at exactly the same points even though the PC had a nominal 3 second "longer" time--which turns out again to be the space between the tracks. If either playback mechanism were fooling around with the playback speed, even a half-second difference would have been easy to hear. There was none.

I guess if the issue made a difference in sound, I'd be concerned, but as far as I've been able to test, it doesn't. So I'm not concerned.

Hope this helps. And thanks for choosing allexperts.com!

Kindest regards,

Kevin