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The Wonderful World of CD-R's

I realize that for most members here "burning" CD-R's is an archaic practice; but I still do it, as Father Beldar used to say, in "mass quantities." Regular old "Verbatims" were my go-to's until they started to not "complete" in the burner, and even when they did they would sometimes not be read by one of my transports. The ones that would play sounded a bit grainy as if not all the data had been correctly read. The distortion was actually a bit novel for awhile - sort of like a CD version of "euphonious distortion" but finally it became tiresome. Could have been a bad batch. Whatever, it set me to ordering and playing with other CD-R's.

The "Plexdisc for Music" CD-R's behaved well, but there was a strange lumpening of bass. Apparently, ones and zeroes can be skipped, glossed over or whatever to an extent that you can hear the mistake in sound even though the sound keeps on playing. These discs are a bit thicker than most, and I wondered if their increased mass might somehow be taxing my desktop burner.

Next I tried "Maxell for Music," and these have been better in every regard. They burn with no rejection and play in both of my transports, and they sound good.

There is this reviewer on Amazon (3rd from the top in linked page) who goes on at length about CD-R's in general and seems to know what he is talking about. He rather ruefully concedes that Maxell might be the best choice we have left. Does his lament on the subject ring a bell with anyone on the forum?

Maxell Reviewer

 

 


 

 

bolong
tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,538 posts
 

I have used MAM-A (formerly Mitsui)  in the past.  They are made in Colorado and are supposed to be high quality cd-rs.  They have gold and silver discs.  The golds are pretty expensive.

I haven't had any trouble with them myself, but I haven't burned much recently.  They are worth a google search so that you can make up your own mind about them.

bolong OP
379 posts
 

Since I am not archiving anything the gold discs, which are indeed expensive, seem overkill for what I do. Based on what I have read they can have problems equal to the regular CD-R's as far as write/read problems. However, it may be the case that discs that spendy may have a higher chance of being scrupulously made.

The Taiyo Yuden discs were considered top of the heap years ago, but the original factory quit making them and word is that the CMC version of these are not as well made. I have seen some original ones available from Japan on Ebay, but again very spendy.

It may be that I should stockpile discs I know to be ok while I can before CD-R's become a scarce commodity. It sounds like the archival quality may be the last to go since there are still entities such as governments that specify archival quality CD-R's for important data backup.

sid42
301 posts
 

I've used Mamm-A and TaiyoYuden discs, but have occasional problems with them. Then I went to HHB discs and these are fantastic, although hard to find. Then another company took them over (sorry, I don't remember the name) and claim they are the same quality as HHB. I should mention that two of my burners are HHB machines. Love em!

tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,538 posts
 

I have always been told to stay away from anything made by CMC.

bolong OP
379 posts
 

That HHB suggestion is much appreciated. They are now under the brand "Burlington." which can be found on Amazon and Ebay. 1x-12x record speed (even as slow as 1x-8x.) This could prove interesting. I think the slowest record speed on my Dell desktop might be that slow.

Also discovered that the "black bottom" CD-R's are still being made which could bear on a subject we got into on Audiogon awhile back concerning blackening the rims and and hubs of CD's to block "incident laser reflections" that might interfere with integrity of the laser reads in our players.

Black Bottom CD-R

 

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