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Burning a CD

I recently made copies of several hard to find CD's (Lyrita Label) loaned by a friend using my home computer CD burner. I have noticed over a several month period that the recordings seem to be degrading; I am getting a jittering sound. I am using what I think are decent CD's (Imation), and wondered if this is a common problem and what it's cause might be. I am pretty sure it is not my CD player as all commercially made recordings are playing flawlessly. In general I prefer to buy either new or used CD's so I have the liner notes etc, but sometimes that's not an option and I really would like to be able to do this without problems arising later when I no longer have access to that hard to find recordings. Any ideas of where to start.
bioman

Showing 2 responses by lugnut

lugnut
1,190 posts
 
I mainly use the most generic of media purchased for $15 per 100 from Compusa. I've never had any of the problems I occassionally read about in these forums. I admit to not listening to many CD's in my music room often, preferring that medium in my truck. I did a test after reading this thread by retreiving my oldest (3 or 4 year) CD's and playing them in my system, comparing them to the originals. I have none of your complaints. Beyond storage and handling changes, I can offer no suggestions.
lugnut
1,190 posts
 
I'm a fairly astute computer user but not a techie by any stretch of the imagination. I use a Hitachi DVD drive for the master and a Sony burner with the Spresa software that came with it. I don't copy directly but rather make a temporary image on my hard drive prior to burning. I do burn at the maximum speed. I use the cheapest media I can buy since I make so many CD's for photo distribution for my customers. My best guess is that I have made 300 CD's of various stuff, mainly photos, and have yet to have a failure.

I have a question regarding drop-out that is mentioned in another post. Some background first. I also rip my CD's into my computer for listening while I work. Winamp uses fewer system resources than playing the original CD through the DVD drive and since this is just background music, I'm not concerned with playback quality. The earliest form of copyright protection seems to be the addition of errors in the original CD which makes a computer confused during the ripping process. There are songs which I can't successfully rip into my computer based mp3 library. I can successfully copy and burn these discs however for use in my truck. If drop-out is real, wouldn't the computer get confused by the missing information (sorry about the non-tech language here) and fail to rip the song from a recorded CD? I just did an experiment with my burned CD's to see if they rip like the originals. They do, exactly. The experiment was done with 3 year old CD's that stay in my truck 24/7/365. The disc manufacturer is Prodisc Technology, Inc. for my media, is bought at Compusa for $15 per 100 and are so cheap that they don't even have a mat finish on the top side. These are finger print nightmares. I also label them with a Sharpie.

Can someone give me some insight into why so many people are having problems doing this? Perhaps put in a better way: do the people that are having problems with drop-out also experience a lot of failures during the burning process? I have yet to make a coaster.
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