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Worthwhile CD-R Media?
isdnip asks: "I've noticed that when I burn a CD-R, it's basically a random chance whether or not it will play on any given CD player or CD-ROM drive. Blank CD-Rs are dirt cheap nowadays, but the costlier gold ones are not available at retail, if at all. So which ones now on the market are most likely to work? They seem more interested in bragging about maximum speed, not quality. Does a high speed rating help or hurt readability (I usually only burn at 2x or 4x)?"
"Just for example, I've had pretty good luck with Maxell 'CD-R pro' blanks, mediocre luck with 'IBM' licensed-brand media, and even worse results from Memorex, which had the dubious distinction of looking most like real gold, though really just based on an ordinary dye layer. I don't want to buy a 50-pack of junk. I haven't seen any magazine reviews, either. I'm sure Slashdot readers have had a wealth of experience which we could all stand to share."
There must be a difference in terms of reliability at differing speeds. When I would backup Playstation games, burning at anything over 1x would create unreliable/unplayable games, but you could take those unplayable games and copy them onto another CD at 1x and they would play just fine...
Hey, it looks like you forgot the tag in the comment there, and it's screwing up the page display everywhere.
thanks
Tips and Tricks for Mozilla
This doesn't go toward answering your question, but be sure to use an Audio-only CD if you're burning music which you have no legal right to burn. The Audio Home Recording Act will then protect you from any possible charges of copyright infringement for the noncommercial use and creation of that CD.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Not in mozilla :)
Dan's data has an article which explains CDR quality very nicely
At first, it focuses mostly on strangely colored and oddly shaped cdrs, but at the bottom it has some VERY useful information, including a little utility called cdrid, which identifies WHO REALLY makes the cdr disk. It turns out many differently branded disks are actually made by the same company.
The article also points out that cdrs with a darker dye in them work better. I tend to agree from experience. Typically, I buy Sony CDRS from staples... they're pretty cheap and work good. I also found that the sony ones work fine in most car cd players, while cheap ones don't work at all.
(By the way.... a Plextor 24x burner is only about $150 now... i find that burning cds at lower speeds doesn't improve compatibility, execpt for with cheap disks; but my burner only works up to 8x, so i dont know how faster ones fare). But beware: make sure your drive supports BuRN proof or something similar. There is nothing more aggrivating then having to burn a cd twice because of a buffer underrun.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Does it fix CmdrTaco's mispelings (sic) too?
... I may be wrong, but wasn't the move from gold to silver/aluminum supposed to be a step up in quality, since gold is less reflective?
FYI, I think my bulk CDs report that they are made by CMC/CMG magnetics.
A solution to the problem with music today
It doesn't close the tag, but it doesn't screw things up. I guess it assumes a tag close on the next tag open.
Umm.. How on earth did this post get "Overrated" when it hadn't even been moderated? What's wrong with you moderators?
http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/cdrw/cheap.html
Doesn't look very thorough though
http://www.thehungersite.com
I have never had any kind of read-compatibility problems with discs from Kodak, Sony, Maxell, and Imation playing in different CD-ROMS, car and stereo cd-players. I have had problems with KAO and noname discs.
Another note: Most CD-Rs are made in Asia. I have heard very good things about 'Vivastore' discs which are made in Switzerland but have not been able to get my hands on any.
You typically can't find good quality CD-Rs at the major computer stores and you definitely won't get good prices on them. They don't have the lowest prices out there, but I've been pretty happy ordering 100 lots of 80 min Mitsui unbranded silvers from american digital and haven't burned a coaster or had a CD-R go bad yet. Hunt around and I'm sure you can find some better deals online.
... rjs
I find the 'black' cdrs that memorex makes are quite good, although they are really a very dark red.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
It wouldn't do anything on another tag opening - only closing. And in this case it doesn't assume upon the next close - only when a parent tag closes would it be safe to assume all children should be closed.
The local Office Depot sells 100 packs of their branded (hence well-laminated) 80-min CDRs for around $29.89. I just picked up two 100 packs the other day. I've had zero coasters with them, and no problems using them in various players (my Pine D'Music SM-200C, ancient 2x SCSI CDROM drives, various standard CD boomboxes, etc).
I've had the same luck with Fuji branded disks (also Taiyo Yuden, I believe). Zero coasters, and no problems on playback in the above devices. Best Buy sometimes has these on sale for around $20 for a 50 pack.
The only disks I've ever really had issues with playback are some old Imation blue (dark blue) disks. Very few devices can read them--pretty much just CDRW drives. As far as quality, I bought some CompUSA unbranded disks once, 100 for around $19.99 and they are crap. They read fine, but are basically unlaminated, and more than half the ones I've used so far (150+) have been scrapped, and that is NOT in an abusive environment.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
The unplayable CD may well still be readable due to the quality of the tracks which were written. I.e. if the writer (and subsequent reader) have a fairly narrow read path (beam) and fairly sensitive pickup, then they can read even a shoddy job of writing. (Note that higher-speed equates to a narrower and spectrally shallower track).
As such, the drive which can't read it probably has a wider beam and/or a less sensitive pickup.
But if you put that same disk back in a CDRW drive (like the one which wrote it) you'll find that it reads just fine. (Kind of like a floppy drive being out of alignment, only in this case the "alignment" is a matter of quality of beam reflection rather than magnetic field).
To move on...
Media is, as mentioned elsewhere, only made by a couple of manufacturers, BUT they also make a number of different levels of quality which are then sold and branded by anybody/everybody.
So how do you tell? Most cd-burning software nowadays will tell you what the media is, but that doesn't help much in the store. (Er, excuse me, can I burn one of these just as a test? Yeah, I'll tape the box back up nice and neat if they suck...)
So you have to judge by color. Unfortunately many of the top-side decals/coatings used in the branding process have a color of their own (hence light-green phthalocyanine dye often appearing blue or dark-green).
In general, a CDRW will give MUCH better cross-drive compatibility than a simple CDR due to the higher sensitivity of the dyes and the better quality reflective surface behind.
Which brings me to cheap CD's. Real CD's have an aluminum surface sandwiched between two plastic disks. A CDR actually needs an extra set of layers because the dye isn't reflective! It has a silver backing which is laid on top of the second layer of plastic. Now a few people will disagree and say it's on the same layer as the dye which is sometimes true, but most of the manufacturers have switched to having it be on the other side (outside) of the plastic sandwich as it makes for a much lower level of defects. But this means that you really have to have the final decal with the cutesy branding/artwork/whatever to protect the silver!
Super cheap (blank silver) CD's will very often scratch very easily on the top surface. I've even seen a few that you could smear the silver off with a firm rub of your finger tip.
Evil...
Bad...
Stay away...
So cheap is fine s'long as they're CDRW's (or at least the darker CDR's) and they have a top decal (or 3rd layer of real plastic for the fancy-schmancy folks).
Finally, burn slower! Cut 20% off your drive's rated speed (or the CDR's rated speed if it's slower) and you'll get much better burns. Manufacturers of drives and media alike advertise the best possible numbers they can get away with. If your drive's beam is a little under-powered and the dye on that batch of CD's is a little thin, then a reduction in speed will make for a lot fewer toasters, er, coasters.
(I've been playing with OSX too much, I can tell!)
Enjoy!
i have a cheap ide hp cd12 model i recently purchased for around $100 from bestbuy. i also bought a spindle of 50 cheap 700mb Memorex white cdr's for $17. out of the 50, not one coastered. that's burning at 12x(~5-8min per cd).
if you have to burn at 2x or 4x, you probably are burning from a REAL slow drive. in all fairness, i am burning from a scsi drive, to an ide drive, and the cdr is the only ide device in the computer.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
The issue of CD-R compatibility has a great deal to do with the quality of the burner.
/ index.html
/injection-molded CDs have no visible contrast (or IR contrast, for that matter), and all of -those- work justfine.
Three years ago, I picked up an 8x Plextor burner, and decided to run some tests in order to determine what kind of (then expensive) blanks I should be using.
I ordered 2 each of ~12 different makes of CD-R blank -- as many as I could find at one place at one time -- and tried them all. As burning at 8x was the latest-and-greatest thing at the time, none of the discs were "rated" for the speed except for a special, higher-dollar one from Kodak.
After burning identical audio tracks at 8x to half of the discs, I listened to them with a well-calibrated ear on a good mid-fi stereo.
They all worked fine. No ticking, no artificial harshness, nadda. The twelve of them sounded exactly the same.
This was frustrating, because I still had no idea what brand to buy - so I downgraded the CD player from a Carver TL-3300 to a friend's borrowed (and quite abused and tired) Playstation.
Some variations finally showed. Surprisingly, the 8x-rated Kodak disc worked least well - slow seek times, and strange behavior. I don't remember the rest of it that battery, unfortunately.
The next test involved ripping the CDs with cdparanoia, and timing how long it took for a good rip, on a 32x Plextor reader. All discs ripped without reported error, which was good - the Kodak was slowest of the bunch, and TDK the fastest.
Interestingly, the burner came packaged with a TDK blank as a gimme.
But what makes this interesting is that some of the discs were not rated for speeds anywhere near 8x - IIRC, the Maxell blanks said 2x on the package. They all passed. Even the Kodak, though strange in some way, was acceptable (and guaranteed to be readable for 100 years or somesuch).
Since then, I've not done anything as exhaustive. But I have had 74-minute Verbatim discs fail to read -at all- in any Playstation, while the box of 50 80-minute Verbatims (with, appearently, the same dark blue dye formulation) work well with everything.
At the studio, I use the cheapest, no-name unbranded shiney CDs I can get, with an identical Plextor burner. I've never had any customers say anything to me about an unreadable burn, and I never burn at 4x, 2x, or 1x - why waste the time?
Meanwhile, my sister has a 4x Phillips CD-RW, which always produces skip-prone CDs, that occasioally tick and pop - no matter what media is used.
To conclude the sermon, I'd like to point out that Plextor makes the most expensive burners available to consumers, and that by most (if not all) accounts, they're worth every cent. For a more lengthy and detailed analysis, on more modern hardware, see: http://www.digit-life.com/articles/cdrwtestidep12
Further, so long as I'm ranting, the color of the
dye means absolutely nothing, except to visually compare two or more CDs. Even if CD players used some binary reflective/nonreflective technique to read a disc, which they do not, they use infrared light to do their business. Which is to say that unless you're wearing IR goggles, you have no idea what the dye looks like to a CD player.
All that happens (or, rather, needs to happen) when a CD is burned is that it makes a longer path for the light of the reading laser wherever a pit should be, by putting a hole in the dye layer below the reflective metal (which, FYI, was 24k gold on the Kodak disc, and silver (not aluminum) on the TDK).
You might've noticed that mass-produced, stamped
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Kid-proof tablet..
I have a Yamaha CDRW8424 SCSI CD-Burner and I always use Sony CDs. All other brands (including Traxdata CDs which are quite expensive !) randomly crash...For me, Sony CDs are more than 99% efficient.
I often burn CDs using my x8 Yamaha burner at home, but I also tested Sony CDs with a friend's x24 Plextor burner , and it worked really fine burning 50+ CDs in a row without any problem.
____
nico
Nico-Live
Be careful of leaving cdr's in the sunlight. The dyes are light sensitive and easily damaged in the sunlight. Might be a consideration for some of you. Kodak makes some cdr's which have a protective coating.
I have a 2x burner, so speed isn't an issue, but I buy the cheapest cdr's I can find and haven't had any big problems.
I have a HP 9100i and a 100 pack of Memorexes.
I'm half way through (its an 8x burner) and haven't burnt a bad one yet.
For making Audio CDs, nothing worked for me more reliable than the Sony's CD-Rs. They produce the most reliable with the best quality CDs.
Use anything for data CDs, but for Audio, stich with SONY.
It isn't a scientific test, but I've had excellent results with the Kodak Ultima (Gold and Silver) CD-Rs. I've gone through hundreds of them without any problems.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Personally I've never noticed much difference between bulk packs on spindles and the more expensive name brands. I've got (ahem) back-ups, vcd and audio disks on all sorts of different types, colours, sizes and supposed 'max speed' disks and I've never had any problems restoring my (ahem) back-ups on any machines, nor listening to the audio on a range of cd players, including my portable Technics and my Sony midi and the VCD play fine on my Wharfedale and on my PC.
My friend did comment that an audio cd I did for him sounded 'colder' than the original disk, to which i snorted at and informed him that that was impossible as it was a bit-for-bit copy, but I read somewhere that different quality cdr can indeed sound different, but as I'm no audiophile (regularly listen to mp3 through headphones without wincing) it doesn't bother me.
I have the Yamaha CDRW2200E. I like the 20x burn speed. I use the Maxell 80min with a max burn speed of 12x. The amazing thing is I burn every CD at the 20x speed and have had a perfect burn every time so far :D
Has anyone else been able to do that on any other high speed drives?
Yea, talking to any involved member of etree will let you gain some knowledge. We all kind of feed off of each other. ;-) Brand names can be very misleading. TDK's used to be very good, but it seems like TDK has begun to outsource a lot of its cds. Kodak is always good, Mitsui is always good (Mitsui is Taiyo Yuden as far as I remember), and I've never had problems with Ricoh. The point is somewhat moot however, because etree'ers tend to once record the audio onto discs, and then backup the SHN files (lossless audio files) to another set of discs. Always have a last resort!
-Etree'ng since 1999
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
It used to be that Verbatims were the only blue dye/silver layer brand out there. Now TDK and Nashua both sell this type disc, but Verbatims no longer do so.
Verbatims used to be my absolute top pick for a brand. They always burned reliably (mind you, I've had a CDR for 6+ years now and have certainly burned well over 1,000 CD's), Verbatims were also pretty well tolorated. I only had one CD Player (portable) that didn't like dark coloured CDR's in general... Might have been more to do with the strength of the laser over anything else...
Now Verbatims are a light yellow-green dye color and have quietly repackaged their discs to omit any specific mention of a "lifetime reliability guarentee" blurb. This kind of worries me.
I have tried well over 100 different "brands" of CDR's, while most are basically OEM's of one of the major dozen manufacturers... There are subtle differences between most. What I look for is universal compatibility and good top layer coating. Scratching the top of the disc can mean instant death to any disc because that's basically where the "pits" reside.
Kodak Gold CDR's are touted as the best for archival by a lot of people, but i've had nothing but problems with them. Discs tend to lose their "memory" after about 3 years in storage. When found this out, I spent a long time reripping/reburning the Kodak CDR's I had to ensure I didn't lose anything. I've kept watch on the others I had and gradually they die. Maybe in another year or two, I expect all of them to be dead. CDR's made before the time I got the Kodaks, such as TDK and Verbatims, are still practically flawless to this day.
While I don't have the luxury of time to back up my claims here, I think the best brand out there are PNY. They make two "neat" type blanks, Black Diamond and Rainbow substrate types. The reason I pefer these is because BOTH use a clear dye type in the layer of the discs. While the plastics are a different colour (black, blue, red, orange, yellow and purple), they're all tolorated extrememly well by just about every single CDRom/Player I've ever used. Even the really shit ones.
The absolute worst brands I've ever used were also the cheapest... so try not to think you're getting a good deal when you find a 50-spindle pack for $9.99... there's probably a reason they're that cheap. Tera Media, Prescision, Kensiko are three more common brands (like at Staples, etc) that I've had terrible luck with. The Kensiko and Tera Media discs both had noticable pits and holes in the foil layer that were visible through the disc. Inspecting different batches at later times turned up similar issues. Avoid.
Generally so, Sony, TDK and PNY discs get my stamp of approval. I'll use those at any time for any reason.
I have a 30-pack of Memorex 800MB CD-Rs and a Sony 12X CD-RW. I use the FreeBSD burncd utility and burn at 4x. I've copied CDs from Therion, Iron Maiden, Sarah Brightman, and the Trans Siberian Orchestra, as well as making copies of the FreeBSD install media and backups of my ~/Mail and ~/doc directories without any trouble at all.
For audio at least, the Memorex cdrs that come in the 30packs with the slimline cases have worked great for me. I work at a college radio station that has CD players that are VERY picky with burned cds (So picky that most people avoid using them at all costs (they're Denon C630s)), and I've NEVER had one of these Memorex cds skip or stop on me. I usually burn at 4x on a Matsushita (Panasonic) 4x4x32 cd burner. Using these cd players, I definately do see a difference in playback performance between cd brands (Imation does particularly bad (though I can't remember any other brands that suck for those players at the moment)).
"Moltar, I have a giant brain that is capable of reducing any complex machine into a simple yes or no answer."
CompUSA sells 100-packs of generic, blank, ugly, shitty-looking CDs for about $20, but in my experiance, they have a better rate of reliability than more expensive, name-brand discs. Go figure.
Interesting note: from what I've been told, many of the newer burners available (16x, 20x, 24x) are all the exact same hardware, with different firmware. I've been wondering if I could somehow put the firmware for a TDK 24X into my 16X and burn happily at the new speed...
And for those of you wishing to upgrade your old burner, CostCo has TDK 24X burners bundled with a total of 12 24X CD-Rs and a 10x CD-RW or two...for about $135...WITH a $20 mail-in rebate. You can't beat them apples.