I just did a double blind sonic comparison of Mitsu, Maxell, Sony, Imation and Phillips Cd-R's and the Mitsu beat em all. (yes, there is a sonic difference. If you don't hear any differences then either your playback system has flaws or your recorder is not very good.)
Something else that is not well known is that there are a couple of burners that can actually produce CD-R copies that are better sounding than the original. How can this be? Well, some burners use a buffering circuit that strips out the inherent jitter on the original cd and keeps it from getting to the copy. A good CD-R blank is also easier to read on your playback system with it having better optical qualities than the original cd and the tracks are already layed down in a pre-spiraled condition that has the playback machines' laser servo-focus mechanism not working as hard. I know all of the above sounds a little to good to be true, but this is the case. FYI: My deck, which is one that makes better sounding copies is the Pioneer pdr-739. A group of audiophiles tried a bunch of different decks, and this is the only stand alone audio burner that we found produces a better sounding copy.
BTW : If your phillips is a consumer stand alone (read: non computer burner) , then get the Mitsu SILVERS. According to Mitsu corporation, the golds for consumer audio are not available, just the gold cd-r's for computers. (I found out the hard way by ordering 100 golds and then realizing that these only work with computer burners). Don't worry though, the silvers are fantastic!
