Hi there! My Burner: 8x Matshita ("Panasonic") CW-7586 I tried the CD-Identifier out about a year ago, but was warned in a web-article that the ATIP information was not always very reliable because the glass masters (from which the plastic discs are made) are produced by only a handful of (mostly Asian) manufacturers who make the stampers for a whole slew of well-known, and not-so-well-known local brands. Also, the dye used in your disc may-or-may-not have anything to do with the reported manufacturer. A major Asian manufacturer can supply stampers to any number of other manufacturers, who can use any type of dye they want. So, how useful is CDR-Identifier? More useful are your comments, though; i.e. 1) Taiyo Yuden - very high quality 2) Ritek - very high quality 3) TDK - sometimes these give problems I just tried the program out for fun on a whole batch of cdrs I have (about a million) and I get such *varied results*! (Won't get into that here) but, I noticed something else I hadn't seen before. A well-known, slightly-more expensive cdr brand gave NO manufacturer information to CDR-Identifier! Specifically: Disc Man: "Unknown Disc Identification Code" This was from those new, sexy all-black Memorex 24x discs you may have seen. Despite their premium price, I find they work no better or worse than usual. I am just guessing at why CDR-I can't identify them. Since CDR-I is no longer being 'updated' (suppoted) by its authors, maybe it *can't* identify newer manufacturers (?) Or, is the actual manufacturer's name embedded in the ATIP itself? Why would it report 'Unknown Disc Identifier Code'? Perhaps the manufacturer is being sneaky (?) and doesn't want to be known (?) Fortunately for me, it seems that any brand/type of cdr I use to make white-book vcds (with their inferior error-correction scheme in comparison with data cds) has still never given me any playback problem. That may be because I always use only 2x speed to record them. Also, I expect that some-sort-or-other newfangled super duper new-&-improved dye layer is coming out all the time. CDR-I's reporting of either "Long" or "Short" strategy seems a bit redundant. What matters it *what* it reports when, just as in the old analogue cassette era, new coating formulations were being invented every day? I don't have a DVD-Recordable drive yet but when I do get one, I hope that *its* ATIP (if there is one) will be more detailed in the info it gives than present-day cdrs. Much obliged for letting me ramble on, and WELCOME to the After-Dawn Forums! -- KlingonAgent --
My personal experience is that ATIP information has been quite accurate. There is this one article on the interenet where this "expert" claims that ATIP information is unrealiable. However, this expert happens to be a bulk CD-R retailer and it is not his interest if people start snooping around for the manufacturer info. If you look at my old forum (www.audiofora.com - CD-RW.ORG sections are CLOSED), you can see that we can build a quite nice knowledge base with ATIP info & user experiences. I am hoping that OC-Freak will drop by to post his extensive list of CD-R media performance.
Yo! OC-Freak! I will eagerly wait for your evaluations/list (& print it out!) - Thank you. Really short question: I bought a Walmart (ugh) 10-pak of plain-jane "generic" no-name discs the other day. For 'Disc Manufacturer', CDR-I reported.... "Disc ID Not Allowed" (Oh, how sneaky). Perhaps this disc was made by the slippery guy(s) cd-rw.org refers to above. -- K.A. --
Klingon, Open a thread with the brand name of your disc and post the ATIP information. Freak is also able to identify discs based on other characteristics, like printed serial numbers and such, so they may help too.
