I love my music, and one of the most important ingredients to enjoying it is the quality of it. I’ve read lots of posts, and made a few of my own (problems with CDR’s & playing them in my vehicle). A lot of you really know your stuff. Yet the stuff you know in lots of cases is different. I think if we all put down our personal experiences, we can all come up with a solution that will lead to less frustration and a more enjoyable listening experience. What I want to know (and I’m sure would be useful to others) is: 1. What CDR’s have you had the most success with? 2. What speed did you burn them? 3. What software did you use (that gave you the best results)? 4. Is there any software that can enhance the music (allow you to edit it), like adjusting the Bass & Treble before you burn it? 5. What size were the CDR’s? 6. Where did you find them? 7. What was the best price and most reliable source? I suppose you’re wondering why I didn’t ask what burner you used. I figured that info is up to you to give if you want to share it (cause there are so many manufacturers and some of the distributors put there own name on different manufactured drives). You Guys, & Gals are the best Thanks & God Bless Uncle Bob
Good idea starting this thread... 1+6.: This information is not very useful IMO since you can't tell the manufacturer from the name/brand of CD-Rs as this often changes or is different between countries (similar to rebadged CD drives) 2. I'm still using a 12x plextor burner and burn audio CDs at 8x speed, some playback problems with el-cheapo CD-Rs with some of my standalone players were solved when lowering to 4x speed (but not all). Generally if I buy a new box of CD-Rs I burn the 1st audio CD I burn at 12x speed and test it with all standalone players I have. If everything works fine I continue burning at 8x speed with these media. If there are problems, I use the CD-Rs for something else e.g. backup and get another brand. 3. For ripping Exact Audio Copy, musepack (mpc) @ "insane" quality for pc storage/listening of CDs I own, lossless (monkey's audio/flac/wavpack) for PC listening of CDs I've borrowed from friends and for backup. For portable use (Car stereo, portable mp3 CD player) I transcode these sources to mp3 with lame 3.90.3 (quality depending on encoding speed I need) For burning I've used ExactAuidoCopy, Nero, foobar2000 (uses Nero burning engine) and Burrrn. I've never had any unsolvable problems with those programs. Recently I only use Burrrn as it's free and does all I need - and foobar2000 if I want to apply DSPs/replaygain/etc. before burning. (For mp3 CDs Nero.) 4. Foobar2000. Most important: replaygain, especially to create mixed CDs with equally loud tracks. Sometimes I use a DSP plugin called foo_dsp_hrtf to convert stereo to binaural for headphone listening. (http://uberfast.ece.ucsb.edu/~mgrund/ )Its high quality resamper is also useful for converting audio from DVD-V to CD. 5. 700MB/80minutes - Other sizes are hard to find here and I don't have a real reason to use other sizes 7. I just buy at local stores (supermarkets mostly) I don't trust in CD-Rs very much anyway (most will contain read errors after 5 years, no matter how they're stored), so I use HDDs for backup. If a CD-R becomes bad/gets lost, I just burn a new one from the backup.
I've had very good luck with CD-Rs by Mitsui- they're all tough as nails and very high quality. Taiyo Yuden discs seem to be pretty good, too, IMO, but not as scratch resistant. My luck with Maxell & Memorex hasn't been so good over the long haul, but YMMV. I use Nero at 8x-16X for the bulk of my burning, also with excellent results.
1. Like Memorex, seem to get fewer bad ones in a stack, also like maxell and sony, both work well with my burner. 2. Usually 40x, which is the max speed on by drive, but sometimes 24x for important backups. 3. Hands Down Nero, 5 to be more detailed, give me the fewest problems, (almost none). 4. Usually use soundforge for mastering, i.e. removing pops and clicks from a vinyl recording, dont know about badd and treble or dsp's, sure it possible though... 5. 700mb 80 min, the only way to burn... 6. Walmart sells them for 15 a 50 stack, but i got lucky once at officemax and got 2 100 stacks of memeorex for 15 each. (after some instant rebate stuff) 7. I ususally buy memorex for perosonal and avergae stuff. Buy Maxell Pro's and sony's for backup, and teon for cheap burns and what not.
1 - i buy cdr's as throw away media. Playing them in my car they often get thrown around and trashed very quickly so i buy cheapo ones. currently using a brand name "strand" which was a very cheap move and seem to be proving excellent value and play in all stereos, personal equipment and car. 2 - burn speed is restricted to the cd speed for me, i have done tests with different speed burning and with the cheapo cdr's i use there is no real difference. 3 - i use nero but have also used Burrrn (which is free) and have never had much problem with either. 4 - for wav editing i use adobe audition cutting music and so forth 5,6,7 - what ever - shop around and test
