Does CDR quality matter?

[KenBoy]

This might be an arbitrary question, but I was wondering dose the CDR's brand or quality matter when burring a cd, and are some CDR burners/ writes better then others.

I have been using Toast Titanium for all my CD writing, and my G4 Mac's cd burner . As far as CD's I use the Maxell 700m.

I feel like I'm always loosing fidelity when I burn a cd, either from a PT session or from a commercial cd.

[ajcamlet]

"Does". Not "Dose".

[Stick]

Well, CDs are always going to sound different depending on what player you're using. Generally, the D/As in a CD player are probably on the low end of things...

I actually like hearing my stuff once it's burned... usually sounds a little more "like a record" to me.

As far as the media itself, I've never done shootouts or anything, but I definitely have better luck getting the CDs to play in more recorders with "better" blanks. I'm sure some of the smarter guys around here can explain why that is... probably something to do with error correction and pit depth and whatever. I don't the the "sound" comes from the data on the CD, but more from the player playing it back.

[DaveC]

yes and yes. (and the one can depend on the other - or at least it used to)

I haven't kept up to date on all the dye layer technologies used in CD-R manufacture, just on brands that work, but I assume the principle is the same.

Basically - not all CD-R brands are made out of the same stuff, so some are inherently better than others. There will also (no doubt) be differences in the thickness and tolerance of all the bits of a CD-R blank. So yes, the CD-R media makes a difference (more later)

The CD writers don't all have the same drive mechanisms or lasers. In the old days, if you found researched the 'best' dye layer of CD-R, this may not give the best results on your CD-writer, because the cheap lasers weren't up to burning the pits in the great media! So to some extent, you had (and have) to match the media to your writer.

But as said, the writers do use different components, and you will get better results with better writers. A leading brand seems to be Plextor, which comes with a great utility so you can actually test the written CD-Rs for the different types of error (C1 , C2 and CU which are errors of increasing severity).

I was also under the impression that a poor writer could introduce some sort of jitter, uneveness in the pits, which would affect the sound on playback. Could be wrong on this point though, or this might be out of date due to increased technology since I researched all this.

[Dion Stewart]

You might want to check out this site:

http://www.cdrfaq.org/


I have no opinion on whether or not the information it contains is valid. I found a link to it from etree.org. The folks at etree are traders of live concerts and they're pretty anal about making exact copies without generational loss.


Dion

[lyons]

There's so many options when it comes to CD media, I'm sure you could find one that was awful if you tried hard enough.

That being said, I've never noticed a difference in quality in recent years. I remember this being a big deal back in the early days of CD burning (only use Maxell, only burn at 1x, only use black CDs, etc.) but I haven't seen a thread about stuff like that for years.

For what its worth, duplicating digital media is my 9-5 job, and the company I work for uses MAM-A CDs.

Also, as far as burners go, I wouldn't buy anything that wasn't made by Plextor.

Edit: And at the risk of being a grammar Nazi here, it's "does", "lose" and "CDs".

[Spock]

Big can of worms....

I wish I could find link, but I ran across a site af ew years that explain, in geek terms, what's going on with the different types of CDRs, burners, etc.

If I recall, there are 2 major types of CDRs, both can and do work fine, however, the power and pulse length to correctly write a pit on them is different. And within the two major types things can vary a bit. The people that worked on inventing CDRs thought of this problem and have a way to work around it. Each CDR has a write test area on it. Before an real data is writen, your burner tries diffent power levels and pulse widths, writing then reading back, to find the best combo for the disc you have. To make things even more fun, the best combo will be different at different burn rates.

So you can have el-cheapo CDRs in a top of the line burner at 1X and get super results. But that same brand in a low end burner at 48X, and it's a different story.

What makes a bad CDR burn? It's the error rate, and the type of errors. The inventors of the CD format understood that a CD will never be perfect, you might get nicks on them, dust, dirt can get on the CD or in the reader. To get around this problem an audio CD has 2 levels of RS error detection and correction. You need special hardware/software to tell you if you have an errors on playback. If an error gets past both levels in audio, then it is up the player on how to handle it. If one sample is missing because of an error, it may just double up on the sample before, insert zeros, or average with the next sample. Depending on how this is done, and how often can make a difference in the sound to someone.

If you get a CDR burn that requires that samples are guessed at, you got a real, real bad burn.

When it comes to data on CDs, the two levels of error correction that audio gives don't cut it. So just like the hard disk in computers, each CD data sector also has an addtional error detection and correction code added.

I little off topic, geek stuff ahead....

The comments on CD pit length and such... It doesn't matter. The raw data rate from the CD is not constant. The track is a spiral, so if the disc spins at a constant speed, the raw bit rate increases as you go further out the disc. The exact timing of the pits and lands on a CD do not provide the clocking for the D/A convertor. Remember that the data has been blocked, chop, moved around, interspaced with error correcting data, and must be buffered at many levels to put it all back in the right order and check/correct any errors. Again the inventors knew that keeping the little motor used to spin the disc locked at just the right rate would be expensive, so they figure out a way to make it not matter. CDs have a fixed audio rate, so you never have to depend on the source to tell you the sample rate.

This is unlike S/PDIF and the digital formats like it. If you take the raw bit rate and divide it down you get the sample rate, or word clock. Since CDs don't support different sample rates, the word clock/sample rate is fixed and doesn't depend on jitter in the raw data bit stream.

[Tonzauber]

correct, Spock.

There is this old rule of thumb I learned from a Sony duplication engineer when the first CD-R drives came out - as long as it plays and you don't hear any noise, clicks or pops, you hear what was intended.
There is quite a huge amount of the data on the disc dedicated to redundancy and error correction, but error correction not meaning making the signal "somehow" come through, but recreating the original.

Actually CD-R is quite a foolproof system, that's why it's around still today.

On the other hand, I personally don't like Audio CD-R as a master delivery medium. The problem with error correction is that it is a relative system. dependant on the quality and state of the laser pickup of the player used. So discs that "still" play well on player A will under some circumstances not play at all on player B. Also, after importing an Audio CD for duplication I don't have any checksum-reference or whatever if I really got everything. DDP (on DVD) is the choice for me there.

[bunnerabb]

Oh my freakin crap, yes, it matters.

I've had pretty good luck with Taiyo Yudens for data, but they're very twitchy about what they'll play back on if you put 44.1/16 audio on.

Memorex has been utter trash so far.

Shame.

My gauge is if I can pop a 4 year old backup into my drive and it's all there... it's not a bad data CD/R.

If anybody can recommend a good injket printable audio CD/R, I'd appreciate it. The Taiyos are cool for data, but not every one plays back on every player for my little, vanity, two song summer singles I sometimes put out at the merch window at the bar I work at.

[otek]

I've never been able to scientifically quantify or substantiate that one brand sounds better than another.

And I've used them all, pretty much.

Right now, I just buy whatever's cheap, because I use a lot of CDs.

Unless, I am sending something off to mastering, in which case I tend to get one of the expensive (and expensive-looking) brands.

Makes for a better impression. At a price difference of a dollar or two, it's not gonna hurt.

[David Aurora]

yeah it matters. only i cant remember the shit brands cause i havent used any in a LONG time. but i do recall a few brands which crapped out majorly, consistantly. usually the problems would reveal themselves as massive distortion in playback after a few weeks, or more often after a few months. i dont mean subtle distortion, i mean distortion that would make your mum go "hey, what the fuck is that shit?". odd, i still dont understand how that happened, but it did with a pile of different brands and multiple burners and computers. you'd burn it, it would play fine, then 6 months later youd play it and its distorted and just plain fucked sounding

last few years ive used sony discs and had no probs.

[KenBoy]

That's why I wrote this post. I think I'm getting a lot of distortion introduced when I burn a cd of my Mac G4. Do you think it's the computer, or am I just nuts ?:Confused:

[David Aurora]

That's why I wrote this post. I think I'm getting a lot of distortion introduced when I burn a cd of my Mac G4. Do you think it's the computer, or am I just nuts ?:Confused:

trust me dude, if it was what im talking about you would KNOW. im not talking about the distortion audiophiles get off on, like "oh dear, i believe there was a .00000000000000000000000000000001% boost in THD due to the fact i only had 275892745897285723957892379 grains of sand under the speakers instead of 275892745897285723957892379+1". i mean that you hit play on what was a normal sounding cd, then it sounds like youre playing it back through a guitar amp. massively reduced bandwidth and a fair bit of obvious distortion.

are you hearing that, or something more subtle? the reasons would be worlds apart so we need to be clear on what it is youre hearing

[KenBoy]

It sounds like a L2 at -10. Everything is squashed sounding. Not distortion like when you would record cassette tape to cassette tap, but just really squashed sounding if that helps.

Also what Plextor burner would you recommend. I checked out there web site and they are like 1,200 $ new OUCH!!:icon_eek:

I have a G4 2x 1.25 running 10.4.8. This is the type of Burner shipped with it. HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4480B:

Thanks.

[lyons]

Also what Plextor burner would you recommend. I checked out there web site and they are like 1,200 $ new OUCH!!:icon_eek:

I have a G4 2x 1.25 running 10.4.8. This is the type of Burner shipped with it. HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4480B:

Thanks.

I'm not sure what burner you're talking about, but after a quick look at Plextor's website, the most expensive burner they have is $999, and that's the PX-B900A, which is a Blu-ray burner. The rest of them are all under $200.

I just bought their PX-755UF (about $155 after taxes), because I needed an external DVD burner that I could switch out between Mac and PC, and I'm very happy with it. Very quick, quiet, and no coasters yet.

I don't want to sound like a corporate shill for Plextor here, I'm sure there are other decent brands out there, but in my experience, every cheap burner I've ever bought has failed shortly after the one year warranty is up, until I finally shelled out the money for a nice one.

I believe your drive is made by LG, which has pretty much cornered the market on high performance drives at a cheaper price, so take that FWIW. However, I would particularly recommend against any drives made by Iomega, and I haven't had much luck with Yamaha or Sony either.

As someone else already mentioned, the best bet is to find the media that works for your drive and stick with it. Most drives come with a list of supported media, and most burning software should be able to provide you with similar information.

[KenBoy]

Those Plextor cdr burners are F-ing amazing!!!

I took you advice and ordered the PX-755UF, and it's like a night and day Difference between burning from my Mac and burning from the Plextor. Everything sounds deep rich and 3-D. I never new that a Shity burner could have so much effect on the sound quality.:Thumbsup:


Thanks For the good advice. :Coolio:

[lyons]

Those Plextor cdr burners are F-ing amazing!!!

I took you advice and ordered the PX-755UF, and it's like a night and day Difference between burning from my Mac and burning from the Plextor. Everything sounds deep rich and 3-D. I never new that a Shity burner could have so much effect on the sound quality.:Thumbsup:


Thanks For the good advice. :Coolio:

No problem :very happy:

[Bob Olhsson]

.. as long as it plays and you don't hear any noise, clicks or pops, you hear what was intended...What's left out here is "as long as it plays on other peoples' players."

Most burners will play anything they burn but that isn't really the issue.

[archtop]

I once bought the more expensive "better for music"
cd-r's, many out of the spindle were full on distortion.

I only but the cheappies now