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99 Minute CDs?

Posted by Cliff on from the 900M-per-CD? dept.

Ali Hassani asks: "I was looking around for a cheap place to buy CD-Rs and I stubbled upon a website talking about 99-minute CDs Have people had success in using in these CDs on normal audio players? I know that the new Beatles CD has something like 26 tracks and I was wondering if any high capacity CDs are being used currently by the music industry."

11 comments

  1. I don't think so... by Medieval_Gnome · · Score: 2
    From the website that you mentioned
    Given the extreme exploitation of all existing tolerances you are likely to experience problems when recording or processing 99 minute blanks. Not every drive will happily record information onto the blank.
    In other words, it probably won't work with much stuff.
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    :wq

  2. More Tracks != More Music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Check if it's still until 74 mins in total.

  3. from what i've read/heard... by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 2
    ...these things are a myth. Sometimes you'll get 80 minutes out of them, but I've yet to meet anyone who's ever gotten the full 99, and the price premium for the things for what amounts to a crap shoot (will you get a couple extra minutes out of it or not?) is hardly worth it.

    - A.P.

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  4. will they work? by redled · · Score: 2
    In a word, yes. They are made by packing the tracks more tightly together relative to 80 minute cd's, in the same way 80 minute cd's have tracks packed close than 74 minute cd's. Now, it seems obvious that some drives would fail to read/write to them because they were not designed for such large capacity, and that's true. But the reason why they won't read/write may surprise you. Most drives, including those in stereos, etc, can handle the higher track density in 80 and even 99 minute cd's. BUT, the original cd specifications from like 20 years ago called for a maximum of 80 minutes. As a result, most cd burners could only burn a maximum of 80 mins. When 80 min cd's started becoming popular manufacturers updated thier firmware to support more than 80 mins (I believe most support 89 minutes). Therefore, most current burners will fail with 99 minute cd's after the 89 minute mark. After this point they will assign negative time values to the tracks and then the drive and software similtaneously give up. If you successfully burn over 89 minuts with an average drive, it probably won't work in your stereo past 89 minutes. Newer drives that support 99+ minutes though will probably produce cd's that will work fine in your stereo. The most common problem reported with them is the inability to manually select tracks. In other words, they cd will only play if you start at track one and listen to the entire cd.

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  5. found a url... by redled · · Score: 3
    cdmediaworld.com has an article on 99 minute cd's. Has more accurate information than my previous post.

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  6. The new Beatles CD is only 78 minutes by Trongy · · Score: 1

    There are 27 tracks on the new Beatles CD with an average length of less than 3 minutes. The whole thing is under 78 minutes - so nothing new there.

    As for the music industry going for something that has compatibility problems, I strongly doubt it. If even a small fraction of customers return their discs, then the cost will be enormous.
    If you have been reading Slashdot for a while you might remember this story about a copy protection scheme that BMG trialled in Germany. Compatability problems put an end to it.

    1. Re:The new Beatles CD is only 78 minutes by SmittyTheBold · · Score: 1

      Care to include a link to a real story?

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    2. Re:The new Beatles CD is only 78 minutes by SmittyTheBold · · Score: 1

      This is the story on /. that I believe he intended...

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    3. Re:The new Beatles CD is only 78 minutes by Suppafly · · Score: 1

      way to be on the ball smitty..

  7. Who cares how many songs there are... by Hall · · Score: 1

    I just burned a CD of MP3s over the weekend for my brother-in-law that had, I think, 25 songs. It fit, with a little room to spare, on a 74min/650mb CD. I've tried some 80min/700mb CDs and they're "iffy" with my burner (an HP 9150i).

  8. NINnies by Darth+Hubris · · Score: 1

    Lest we forget the NIN cd 'fixed'. It had 99 tracks. I reburned a copy minus the zero-length tracks to save my sanity.

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    The party's over ... the drink ... and the luck ... ran out