Impossible to tell without an analyzer. There are media burner combinations that work better at higher speeds and some that work better at lower speeds. But the only way to tell is to have it analyzed.

To have it analyzed by what?

There are a few options to do this with. 1 is let the plant analyze it and they'll kick it back if it's not up to spec. 2 if you have a plextor premium drive, they have software that will analyze the CD and give you a log of errors, pc only. 3 stand alone analyzers like clover or stagetech, cost about $5000. 4 do nothing, cross your fingers, and pray to the CDR Gods that everything is alright.

If you create masters on a regular basis, then it's wise to invest in something that can analyze your discs. If this is a onetime shot, then the plant can do it but you have to request an analyzation report of the disc. This may or may not cost extra and it will only give a report for that disc. won't tell you if it could have been better or worse at different speeds or with different media. Having your own analyzer will constantly tell you how everything is burner. I've caught many bad batches of CDR's.

one other thing. If you choose option 4, be sure to have a good apology at hand in case the plant rejects the disc and the client doesn't get the product in time for their CD release party.

The vast majority of current burners are optimized to burn at their middle speeds - so choosing the slowest option will actually result in a disc with more errrors!!

fwiw - with all my tests on discs burned using the Plextor Premium drive (using both Plextools Pro & the Eclipse workstation - http://www.eclipsedata.com - which is used by the glass mastering dept in the plant which houses the mastering studio I work in) I've found that best results were actually had by burning at 32x

At $100 the Plextor Premium drive which includes error checking software - http:// - is really a no brainer to me.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

8-) Plextor PlexWriter Premium. The rest are just disc spinners.

I'm getting very good results with a NEC mechanism at 2x.

It seems to me that purchasing a Plextor drive would be the most reasonable option for me.
But, for the current master I will have to rely on the plant's analyzing.
Also I will give them several options of discs burned at x8,x16 & x32 speeds or so.

Burn at 8x and use Taiyo Yuden media (FujiFilm disks, if you're buying retail). Plextor Premium drives are going for about $65 these days - just picked up two of them.

I would expect (based on my personal experience and tests) that a 16x disk would have a significantly higher error rate.

Hi !

I'm burning my masters using a Teac cdr drive on a pc , i can't remember the model , but i think it's their latest (x52 writing speed , internal ide device ) does someone here use it? do you know what's the best speed to burn masters with it ?

thanks !

Again, Burn speed completely depends on the media and the shape of the drive. Even then it's hard to tell because the media changes so often and companies have different brands. You have to be specific like TDK 80 min music CDR's with the white writeable face, or something like that. I have very good results with these by the way and they are available in a lot of places. I get 1/4 the error counts with these as opposed to the TDK 52x Data CDR's. Maybe at 32x they do better than the music CDR at 32x, I don't know, I don't burn any higher than 8x, mostly 2x. One batch is different from another batch, there are a lot of factors and that's why it's good to get something like the plex premium if for nothing else than to analayze discs. It's limited in it's analazation capabilities but it will give you decent feedback. I have a clover which is a stand alone unit and it works great, doesn't tie up my system and it's a completely different unit than the one that burned the disc so I feel it's a little more objective.

Burning media

I tried HHB TDK SONY MAXELL and other one
but after trying so many the CDR 80 P blank face from infinity
was giving the best result at 32 X great sound minimal error
play on anything even on a 15 years old portable CD
I thing its better to make many test on what gear you have
and trust you ears
media was burned with sequoia and plextor cd burner
I hope this can help
Later
Chris
http://www.audioplexus.co.uk
info@audioplexus.com

zemlin wrote: Burn at 8x and use Taiyo Yuden media (FujiFilm disks, if you're buying retail). Plextor Premium drives are going for about $65 these days - just picked up two of them.

I would expect (based on my personal experience and tests) that a 16x disk would have a significantly higher error rate.

And again - in the case of the discs I've burned on my Plextor Premium - all of the tests I've done have shown the opposite!!!
Surprised the heck out of me...

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Rushy wrote: It seems to me that purchasing a Plextor drive would be the most reasonable option for me.
But, for the current master I will have to rely on the plant's analyzing.
Also I will give them several options of discs burned at x8,x16 & x32 speeds or so.

The vast majority of plants will not spend time analyzing your various discs - they'll just take the one you say is the master out of the batch and will analyze that - and if it passes the tests they will use it. They'll only go to the other discs if the 1st one fails the tests for it to be in spec for glass mastering. One thing you can do is request them to fax or mail a copy of the test analysis though for future reference.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Michael Fossenkemper wrote: I'm getting very good results with a NEC mechanism at 2x.

Hey Michael -
I have a couple of older Sony 900e burners at the studio that work great at 2x also - but pretty much they don't get used! It just doesn't make sense to me to burn slower when you can get discs that actually spec out better 16x quicker.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

cd-r burn speed

For the last two years I've been using the Maxell-PRO (Taiyo-Yuden) CD-R discs with Yamaha F-1 burners, burned at 4x, with no plant returns... through about 800 cd projects.

For the preceding ten years I used Verbatim blue azo discs with "classic" Yamaha CD-100 SCSI burners, at 2x, with excellent results

Jerry Tubb
http://www.terranovamastering.com

I'm using those music CDR media that are certified at 1x for realtime burners. I think they are 1X-8X. anyway, they are pretracked and I get very good results with them and I can still find them accross the street if I need some. Burning faster than about 6X and the error rates start to go up. So far, the plextor and NEC drives are giving me about the same with the NEC drive being slightly better. If I go with different media then higher speeds are necessary to keep the errors down but but still isn't as good and Music CDR at 2X-4X.

TotalSonic wrote: [quote=Rushy]It seems to me that purchasing a Plextor drive would be the most reasonable option for me.
But, for the current master I will have to rely on the plant's analyzing.
Also I will give them several options of discs burned at x8,x16 & x32 speeds or so.

The vast majority of plants will not spend time analyzing your various discs - they'll just take the one you say is the master out of the batch and will analyze that - and if it passes the tests they will use it. They'll only go to the other discs if the 1st one fails the tests for it to be in spec for glass mastering. One thing you can do is request them to fax or mail a copy of the test analysis though for future reference.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

I always give the plant several Master CDr burned with different speeds, in fact, they suggest that to me so I dont see a problem there, of course you better call about it first

This seems like a lot of waisted time giving several masters. why not just give one good one? I bet all they are doing is randomly picking one and if it passes they go with it. I seriously doubt they run tests on all of them and pick the best one.

Michael

Which pregrooved music CD-Rs (1x cert) are you referring to? ...which brand? I'm always curious to what pro MEs are using for media.

waiting for Apple to fix WaveBurner OSX... soon I hope !

p.s.

just bought the new Plextor 716uf 16x DVD-R burner, using memorex 8x media, cuts the burn time down to 12-15 minutes for Toast DVD Data backups. so far so good, no coasters. The "Compare" utility in Toast sez the verification is good. Gonna try same unit with Disc Welder Bronze for DVD-A refs for 5.1 surround ...maybe it'll cut the burn time to a reasonable length.

not pregrooved, but it's pre tracked for those stand alone consumer burners. Any MUSIC CDR is done this way And they have to be certified for 1X as they record in realtime. I'm still old school I guess when it comes to burning, the highest I go is 8X and that's for refs. I figure the less stress I put on the whole through put of the system, the better. For DATA stuff, I'll burn as fast as it can on another drive which is like 32X. Data has another layer of error correction.

Michael Fossenkemper wrote: not pregrooved, but it's pre tracked for those stand alone consumer burners. Any MUSIC CDR is done this way And they have to be certified for 1X as they record in realtime. I'm still old school I guess when it comes to burning, the highest I go is 8X and that's for refs. I figure the less stress I put on the whole through put of the system, the better. For DATA stuff, I'll burn as fast as it can on another drive which is like 32X. Data has another layer of error correction.

Same thing here, maybe it is in my head :? but I did not have any returns.

OK, ...those "MUSIC" CDRs,...there's something in the header for consumer CD dupers, along with a built-in fee that "in theory" makes its' way to royalties for songwriters.

Very clever of you to use those to burn masters!
Questions: Hows the QC analysis on those?
Anything in that special header that conflicts with red-book replication?

I'm also VERY old school when it comes to burning, nevermore than 4x for masters, 8X for refs.

I paid 5k for my 1st burner in 93'... the 3M blanks cost us $35 each!

I'm getting about 1-1.5 per second ave with them on my clover analyzer. nothing on the disc conflicts with the redbook spec.

i use mainly an old sony 160e with verbatim azo media and 1x - max 4x speed with good results, works for me, though.

have discovered or better say experience of data loss over longer time periods with high write speeds on discs.