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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
2,588 posts
 

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

bolong OP
602 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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mkgus's avatar
mkgus
324 posts
 

Yes, there’s still a community of CD-R users, for whatever reason. I’ve found that when you can’t beat the sound of your CD player with other digital sources, you’re almost forced to burn your own CD-Rs. MAM-A Silver Digital Audio CD-Rs are excellent. Use their gold CD-Rs if you want your music collection to last longer than you. Make sure whatever you use will play fine in your CD players. I have ran into issues with playback with the gold CD-Rs on an older CD player. For archival purposes, that’s not a huge deal as you can probably still get the data off clean with a computer CD drive. I have never had an issue with the MAM-A silver CD-Rs. Make sure you find a good CD burner and determine the best burn speed by making several copies at different speeds and listening to the each one. MAM-A Silver Digital Audio CD-Rs get along really well with a MacBook running iTunes/Music and the Apple USB DVD burner running at 4X burn speed.

jafant's avatar
jafant
19,604 posts
 

bolong

Another +vote for MAM-A or Taiyo Yuden.

 

Happy Listening!

bolong OP
602 posts
 

Thanks for your suggestions. I have currently landed on the Plexidisc Taiyo Yuden which are performing very well. Looking at the write side, a very clear reflection of my face appears unlike many other discs which send back a cloudy reflection. Whether this has any bearing on actual quality recording I do not know. I will probably try the MAM-A silvers next.

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