CD Burner write speed?
Moderator: Wiz Feinberg
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George Kimery
- Posts: 3690
- Joined: 23 Feb 2002 1:01 am
- Location: Limestone, TN, USA
CD Burner write speed?
I have a Sony Spressa CD burner and wonder if it makes any difference on the write speed selected. It defaults to 4X, but I can also select 1X or 2X. Is there any noticable difference in quality if I record at 4X vs. 2X or 1X? Thanks for any help.
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Brad Sarno
- Posts: 4958
- Joined: 18 Dec 2000 1:01 am
- Location: St. Louis, MO USA
Great topic. I'm an audio mastering engineer so I'll jump in here. So many people ask if burning a CD at different speeds makes a difference. Short answer is yes. Which speed is best? It depends on the burner and the media quality. The Sony you mentioned sounds like an older model because the speeds are so slow. On an old Yamaha or Sony that will only do 4x maximum, they seem to do the best job at 2x. At 1x the laser tends to overburn. At 4x with good disks you're probably just fine too.
Now on new models that will burn at say up to 16x, you may find that burning at 12x or 16x creates CDs that are hard to read by car stereos and jam-boxes. Generally 2x or 4x for important stuff and 8x - 16x for non-crititcal music.
The issue with burn speed is NOT about writing errors or bad information. When you burn an audio disk, generally all the data is there with full integrity, BUT at high burn rates the data becomes harder to read by cheap players, even though it's all there.
Also, dont buy the cheapo disks, it's worth the extra $0.25 to have a reliable quality disk that will last a long time. For professional masters we use Taiyo Yuden. The major name brands are fine; Sony, TDK, Fuji, Maxell, Verbatim, etc. Stay away from Imation and the cheap generic ones.
Brad Sarno
Angelfish Mastering
Now on new models that will burn at say up to 16x, you may find that burning at 12x or 16x creates CDs that are hard to read by car stereos and jam-boxes. Generally 2x or 4x for important stuff and 8x - 16x for non-crititcal music.
The issue with burn speed is NOT about writing errors or bad information. When you burn an audio disk, generally all the data is there with full integrity, BUT at high burn rates the data becomes harder to read by cheap players, even though it's all there.
Also, dont buy the cheapo disks, it's worth the extra $0.25 to have a reliable quality disk that will last a long time. For professional masters we use Taiyo Yuden. The major name brands are fine; Sony, TDK, Fuji, Maxell, Verbatim, etc. Stay away from Imation and the cheap generic ones.
Brad Sarno
Angelfish Mastering
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Ken Lang
- Posts: 4708
- Joined: 8 Jul 1999 12:01 am
- Location: Simi Valley, Ca
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Ken Lang
- Posts: 4708
- Joined: 8 Jul 1999 12:01 am
- Location: Simi Valley, Ca
Brad: I'll add a question of my own. I just bought and installed a TDK "velocd" rewriter I bought from Costco. 48X, $99. Impetus was to B/U my computer files, but it has cd/mp3 software as well. The burnable CD's at costco run from 10X to maybe 32X. How does that relate to the 48X capability of this unit?
The software package is Nero (not the full version) After backing up files, I will play with burning audio stuff. Does your recommendation of 2X or 4X still stand for a general playable CD? Any suggestions? Ken
The software package is Nero (not the full version) After backing up files, I will play with burning audio stuff. Does your recommendation of 2X or 4X still stand for a general playable CD? Any suggestions? Ken