CD-Rs Burning Issue

Have you noticed much or any difference when burning CD-Rs at different speeds eg 4x - 24x.What about quality of the CD-Rs that you have bought?Do you instantly buy the cheapos or is there any point buying the dearer ones?Is it all down to the SOURCE you are copying?Or does the COMPACT DISC or PC you play them on compensate for any LOW quality. The reason i ask is that most of the ones NOOL's have sent me,quality wise sound GREAT.I am just curious as to what you EXPERTS out there in NEWORDERLAND think. Cheers ROCKET MICK Ps careful with your replies or i will send you a DODGY PLANET ROCKET special.NIGHTMARE or wot? :D

Originally posted by Jeff White we thought you were the expert at copying?!?!no offense to Muffy, of course...or Timbo...or anyone else..

Indeed no...i copy GOOD SOURCE MATERIAL but am intrigued now HOW to better this TECHNIQUE.:D

Burning at a low speed is far better for integrity of the media. As lower you record the discs, less fails and more durability you'll have.

I buy CDs made by Plasmon (from the "tube" ones). A magazine did a research and a serie o tests and Plasmon had the best quality (I'm talking about the "tube" ones).

That's all I know...

Originally posted by Jeff White Micos...I buy whatever is cheapest...and I've had no complaints yet...not that I can ever remember to send people stuff!!

Send me stuff; it'll give you something to do on weekends. My address is 742 evergreen terrace, ? USA

I go for the 'brand' names, Sony, TDK, Fuji, etc. the only problem I've ever had is that I couldn't record to a few of the Sony ones. I have no complaints about the stuff I've received from you Mick soundwise

I tend to stick with brand names as well. Quality can also depend on your recorder. Certain hardware objects to certain media.

At the end of the day, it's always better to burn a CD slowly, rather than a beer mat quickly...

I've got a couple of (newish) rules that I always stick to when copying CDs for people, that have sprung up from some disappointing results.

1. Burn at 4x or slower - never faster. Sound quality can suffer at faster speeds, and it also increases the risk of the CD corrupting.
2. Use only Brand Name CDs - cheapo ones invariably let you down. I bought a batch of 50 CD Line ones for next to nothing from PC World - they had been badly manufactured and could be recorded on either side, unaware of this I loosely stuck a post-it note on the unrecorded side of one, it lifted the cover off on both sides and made the disk transparent !

Originally posted by KnownPleasures they had been badly manufactured and could be recorded on either side, unaware of this I loosely stuck a post-it note on the unrecorded side of one, it lifted the cover off on both sides and made the disk transparent !

now I know what happened to Echo Beach :D

Thanks for your advice and comments. Cheers ROCKET MICK

Originally posted by Geri > Originally posted by KnownPleasures they had been badly manufactured and could be recorded on either side, unaware of this I loosely stuck a post-it note on the unrecorded side of one, it lifted the cover off on both sides and made the disk transparent !

now I know what happened to Echo Beach :D

What happened then ? I'll send you another copy if it has gone Pete Tong.

It's got a big transparent bit and a mark like a thumb print which won't come off. I never said anything 'cos I assumed I had done something stupid with it in my slightly intoxicated state, although we couldn't figure out what would have caused the transparency but it wasn't me after all :) A new one would be appreciated.

Originally posted by Geri It's got a big transparent bit and a mark like a thumb print which won't come off. I never said anything 'cos I assumed I had done something stupid with it in my slightly intoxicated state, although we couldn't figure out what would have caused the transparency but it wasn't me after all :)A new one would be appreciated.

It may have been you - I've only known that happen on one CD, and that went straight in the bin. It could be that the batch of CDs is faulty, and they have been badly layered. I'll do you another one tonight.

There was a 'scientific study' somewhere on the web where they tested burning at different speeds and found that it made almost no difference to the fail-rate or the quality (obviously assuming you didn't burn so fast as to get a buffer underflow, i.e. as long as your hard drive could keep up, obviously you should always burn from the hard drive not cd-to-cdr, assuming we're talking about PCs not stand-alone burners).

In fact, the results seemed slightly better at high speeds than low speeds, burners seem to have a 'sweet spot' somewhere in the middle of their speed range, using a 42x drive at 4x can give worse results than using it at 16x, though no so you'd notice.

Obviously at very high speeds you risk a buffer underflow and clicks in the music, but I think up to 16x is safe.

That's what this study concluded, anyway.

As far as brands go, another study on another web site I can't remember tested a load of disks by artificially aging them and found the main difference was between Japan-made and Taiwan-made. Japan made being much more likely to last than the others (which can go bad after a few months or years). Most bootleg traders seem to insist on Japan made disks. This doesn't seem to correlate precisely with brand name though, as you can get no-brand Japan (Taio Yuden) disks or big name brands that are not Japan made. There's a utility called CDRID that tells you where a given cdr is made by reading some manufacturer data on it.

Don't know about US or Euro or Indian made disks...

But as I understand it the significant point is the factory they are made in rather than the nominial brand stamped on the box. And the issue isn't what they sound like at first but their likelihood of going bad in a year or so.

I prefer Sony, Kodak and Fuji brands, and some TDKs (some are japan made, some aren't).

I know too damn much about this topic, I think...

Cheers 404 for that.