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lorenzo gerace 20 July 2004

Hi

I've recentely come across a dealer that would be able to provide me a supply of Taiyo Yuden CDr at a really good price; I've red several times about that brand being recommended by mastering engineers and such, so if it really is that good I'd get them and start using them; I've been using Sony and TDK up to now, is the difference in quality really noticeable in terms of coasters and error percentage?

Thanx for your opinions

L.G.

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anonymous Sat, 07/31/2004 - 22:09

Massive Mastering wrote: Give me a stack of Taiyo Yudens and a Plextor PlexWriter Premium drive (there is NO substitute) and I'm a pretty happy dude.

I'm with you on that.....
although TY's error rate have slagged a bit now a days.
for a while fujifilm were TY's & super low error rates. They were also prodisc & some other manufacturer I forget. Their error rates are getting higher now too.
Ed

Ammitsboel Mon, 08/02/2004 - 01:20

The Plextor Premium is not capable of realtime burning.
The lowest speed is 4x on their site!! That's not good enough for me!

The PlexWriter 40/12/40Se external burner I have is capable of burning 1x and is the best burner I've tried.
The PlexWriter 40/12/40Se is build specially for those who is going to use it for Audio Masters, hense the 1x speed option.

Best regards,

Massive Mastering Mon, 08/02/2004 - 09:59

I was all about 1X, but the studies I've read over the last several years (including some that I've performed myself) show a far better BLER at 4X than at any other speed (including 1, 2, 4, 8, 12 & 16X) with modern drives.

Don't get me wrong - 3 years ago, every disc I wrote was at 1X unless it was strictly for reference.

I'm certainly not qualified to be a "techie" in this matter, but it was explained to me that most modern writing drives actually have a harder time trying to stay at 1 or 2X than they do "cruising" at 4X and higher. That could be a load of BS also, but the tests I've seen and performed confirmed (at least in my case) that 4X was the speed to beat. If I can rummage some of this info up, I'll post it here ASAP.

Your Mileage May Vary.

Michael Fossenkemper Mon, 08/02/2004 - 21:42

It really depends on the burner media combination. a lot of the media now is optimized to burn at higher speeds and will perform worse at lower speeds. but I've found that if you find the proper media, you will get better error counts at lower speeds. This is getting harder by the month as most new burners will not burn at 1X . So if you have a brand new burner that won't burn slow, best to choose media for the higher speed. But If you do have a burner that burns 1X, find the media that will go with this burner and you'll get better specs.

anonymous Wed, 08/04/2004 - 23:13

One great thing about the Plextor is Plextools, but unless something has changed that is a PC-only utility.

I ran some tests using my Plextor Premium and TY 80m and the lowest BLER rate (Max/sec and avg) was at 8x by a very slight margin. As I recall, the redbook spec is 200/sec max, and the most I have seen is 14/sec.

Yes, I was surprised-- I had been burning at 4x assuming slower was better. This was an issue only for jobs that I duplicate 100 or so in-house-- certainly don't want to compound the errors if I can help it. It is very media/burner dependent, however.

If you are sending a yellowbbok DDP 2.0 disc image to the replicator it is a moot point, as you can verify the data by burning a disc image rather than audio.

Rich

anonymous Fri, 08/06/2004 - 22:32

Thank you Michael! That is good to know. Since so many rave about the Plextor drives, I'd like to have one.

I guess the next logical question is whether there is a Mac equivalent of the Plextor software-something than can check BLER and error rates on burns. If anybody knows of such a program, I'd love to know.

By the way, I've been reading and visiting a lot here, and I really enjoy this site; the quality of information AND the maturity and civility are outstanding! Thanks again for the swift answer!

Michael Fossenkemper Sat, 08/07/2004 - 04:35

Unfortunately there is no software like that for the mac. So it's either get a cheap PCee or a stand alone. You could probably build a Plextor error checking station for a few hundred bucks. Error checking with plextools is helpful but not reliable. If you run the same disc 5 times, you'll get 5 different results. But It will catch if something is really wrong or if something has changed. Stand alone's are much more reliable due to the mechanism used. Unfortunately they also run in the thousands.

anonymous Sun, 08/08/2004 - 22:49

I agree that Plextools is not the ultimate in consistency, but we have progressed significantly from the first page of this thread where the standard of acceptablility seemed to be "coaster/no coaster"

I also agree that that the media/burner/write speed will vary every time you change one of the pieces of that puzzle. For MY Plextor, the winning combo is TY at 8x (!!). Generally the BLER avg is 0.2/sec, and the max is 12/sec.

However, I'll repeat that the best solution is to write a DDP 2.0 disc image to the CD-R, verify the data, then sleep peacefully! When you exceed 72 minutes the image and associated files won't fit an 800MB CD-R. so you must write it to data DVD.

Rich

anonymous Sat, 08/14/2004 - 21:26

Yamaha burners?

I use a Yamaha cd-r writer. It has a mode called Audio Master Quality in which it writes larger pits and lands (at either 1, 4, or 8 x's). According to Yamaha this technology reduces jitter significantly. I haven't tried to A/B the difference. But, in Tape Op magazine this past year a reviewer mentioned that his wife always picked the AMQ burned CD-R over the other CD-R not using that method... in a completely blind test. Hmmm. However, Yamaha no longer makes CD-r writers. I'm glad I got mine before they stopped making them. By the way, I never burn coasters--ever! (knock on wood). I primarily use TY and sometimes the Maxell Music Pro with the scratch protective coating, etc...

Michael Fossenkemper Sat, 08/14/2004 - 22:13

Depends on what is defined as coaster. I've never burnt a CD that didn't play. Occording to the redbook spec, you are allowed 200 BLER errors a second. That's a lot but it'll still play and can still be manufactured from. In the redbook spec there are 3 classes of errors, the first are correctable, the second class is correctable, the 3rd is not. as a CD is reading there are errors that are generated in the first class, if they can't be corrected there, they are bumped up to the second, if it can't be corrected there, then you get an E32 error. The disc will still probably play but can't be manufactured from.

How I define coaster is with my clover tester. In the simplest read out it classifies the disc with a grade, grade a,b,c,d,f. Grade A is first class errors below 6 per second with no class 2 and no E32 errors. I don't remember the error counts for the other grades because if it's not Grade A, it gets tossed, Or the client gets it as a free extra CD to give to their parents. If I get any class 2 errors on a disc, I check the whole stock to make sure it's not just that 1 disc. Although still acceptable by redbook standards, I'll toss it.

This is how I define coaster, Any disc above 6 BLER (C1) errors a second. In general I like to see my Masters Go out with 1-2 errors per second average over the disc. I'm sure using Plextools on a disc burnt in the same drive is going to read pretty well, the real test is in another drive.

iznogood Tue, 08/17/2004 - 14:19

"But, in Tape Op magazine this past year a reviewer mentioned that his wife always picked the AMQ burned CD-R over the other CD-R not using that method... in a completely blind test. Hmmm."

the wife test is the ultimate test !!

if women who don't give a f... about audio can hear it .... then it's there!!!

did the same with a modified cd player once...

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