Advice Please---Should I burn discs at 4x or 8x?

Glitches & errors can be induced by nothing other than good old fashioned ancient mechanical technology - the bearings these things spin on. These cheap commercially sold burners do not have expensive, hi-tech wear resistant spindles and bearing surfaces, so given the high speed they run at, theres going to be loosening up as they get worn. Throw in normal household dust and other common little contaminants as well, and you can see why these things wear out. Luckily they're cheap. When the CD begins to float around and/or vibrate during the burning theres going to be an effect.

 

Rob,

Have you been able to burn regular CD-Rs with this burner (not MP3s)? If it won't burn CD-Rs without errors then it may be time for a new drive. If it's just MP3s, then it may be a software problem. Sounds like a real techie issue, so maybe someone with more knowledge could chime in here.

 

Yes, the static-y ticks/pops happen whether I'm just making a copy of a store bought CD, or trying to burn mp3s to disc...the music burns, but the ticks make it sound like I'm recording everything from bad vinyl....any situation, they're there.....no matter what brand CDrs or which burning program I use. This has happened since the computer was brand new....it's actually my roommates computer......I kept telling him he should tell Dell about it while it was still under warranty, but that never happened.....I think he partly figured I was doing something wrong when burning, and that the burner was fine...but I've tried every which way.

 

Before buying a new burner, you should check to see if there is updated firmware for your existing one because that can make a big difference. Let us know the model of your burner and we can see if there's an update available. If you're using Nero as your burning software, you can check the model number and firmware version by clicking on Recorder and then Choose Recorder. If not, you can check the model number in Device Manager.

 

Just using the burner that came with the Dell computer....

Samsung CD-R/RW SW-248 F

 

Burning at 8x on most blanks is probably the best way to go. If you use the "music" blanks, you can safely go for 4x, as they are optimised to be burned slower.

Most current burners will not burn at 2x or even 1x.

 

Slow-ER speeds. A 1x burn with current blank media, for example, will yield the best audio results, but will also result in increased errors that may eventually affect playability.

For my Lite-on and Yamaha burners, I don't hear sound degredation until I go past 8x. On my wife's older Plextor, I can't go past 4x without hearing the sound degrading.

 

When you start to hear that glassy, unfocused sound on a CD-R that was burned fast, you should drop the speed. The fastr you go, the worse the sound gets.

Computer technology does not take musical reproduction into account. The philosophy in computers is "faster is better".

 

Actually, Mark, if you're getting glitches on faster burned CD-Rs, it may be due to the transfer rate of your hard disk or that you are running other processes that is using up CPU cycles.

Do you have an older computer?

 

First, perform a disk cleanup and system defrag on your computer. Then you should be able to burn safely at a middle-rated speed of your burner, not the slowest, not the fastest. Sounds like you are using the right media.

 

I've run jitter and error scans, using Plextools, on discs burned at various speeds. It totally depends on your setup, but with today's drives (I'm talking 48x and 52x) and media you'll often find that somewhat faster speeds like 16x and 24x are totally superior to 1x, 2x, 4x, etc. Unless you like errors and high jitter.

 

I use the following rule for audio CDs: If the burner is capable of 32x, I burn at 16x. If the burner is capable of just 8x, burn at 4x. Always half the maximum speed.

For data CDs/DVDs, I use the highest speed, of course.

 

Exactly! Middle speed.

 

Two things I suggest trying:

1.) clean the lens on your burner
2.) do not use labels on the discs

 

Yes, defrag often. If you run NTFS and have good HD seek times, it isn't that critical, but it's still a good idea.

I partition my drives so I keep all of my music on the physical and logical drive G. Having just music files on one partition makes it easy and fast to defrag often.

 

The Nero burning program includes some tools to analyze drives and media.

I note that Nero reports the following CPU usage with the following speeds for my Samsung drive:

1X – 12%
2X – 2%
4X – 3%
8X – 100%

This is some information obtained from the Nero (v5.5) “Help” files which might be of use.

Audio CD's

Checking the quality of audio cd's is a bit more difficult.
Data discs have an extra level of error detection/correction which makes the data stream much more reliable.
The problem with audio CD's is that drives behave differently when there are errors in the audio sectors.

A drive can use different strategies to handle errors in audio sectors.
This is demonstrated by running the CD Quality Check with different drives.

1) Drive ignores the errors and keeps reading at full speed.
If a drive uses this strategy it is highly recommended to use audio extraction tools with a verify option (such as Nero CD DAE) to extract audio tracks.

2) Drive slows down when errors are detected.
Drives who use this strategy will give better results when extracting audio.

3) Drive reads the sector with the errors again and slows down if necessary.
When a drive uses this strategy you usually don't have to worry about the quality since the drive will try very hard to return the requested sectors without any errors


DAE Speed

Digital audio extraction speed and quality is very important if you're using your CD-ROM drive in combination with a recorder.
To make direct CD to CD copies the reading speed should always be higher than the writing speed.
For data this shouldn't be a problem. However, most CD/DVD-ROM drives extract audio much slower than their rated speed.

More information on DAE problems can be found in the extensive DAE Test. .

If you're looking for a drive who [sic - which] can handle damaged discs well, check the Advanced Error Test Top Ten.

 

I would not recommend doing this. Always extract and burn independently. Avoid extracting and burning on-the-fly.

 

I agree. I use EAC to rip to wave and then Nero to burn.

 

Okay, the latest firmware for that drive is R605. It's easiest to check what firmware you have in Nero as I mentioned in my previous post. If you have WinXP though, you can double click on the drive in Device Manager and then click on the Details tab. After the model number, it should list the firmware version. In your case it will probably be something between R600 and R605. If it's below R605, you can download R605 and the flashing tool (and the instructions on how to flash your firmware) here:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?B37A1390C

Be careful when doing a firmware update. Do a fresh reboot of your PC and make sure you don't have any other programs running while you do it. Don't interrupt the process or your drive will probably become a paperweight. It usually takes less than a minute to complete. You can get a great CD burner for $20-30 these days and a top notch DVD/CD burner for ~$40 so that might be the easier route to take.

One other thing that will make a HUGE difference is to make sure the drive is operating in DMA mode. In Device Manager, double click on Secondary IDE Channel under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers and click the Advanced Settings tab. Your CD-RW is probably Device 0 if you have a Dell. Under Current Transfer Mode, you want it to list a DMA mode of some sort. If it is PIO mode, click on the drop down box above and select "DMA if available". You'll have to reboot for the change to take effect. Once you've rebooted, go back into Device Manager and make sure the change took hold.

 

PMJI, but I'm partial to Taiyo Yuden's.

Derek

 

I agree and was going to mention Plextools until I saw your post. There is no benefit to burning at 1x, unless of course you enjoy errors.

 

Yes, this is an important point. It is FAR more likely that errors would occur during extraction than during burning. Burning is a far more perfected process than is extraction, and it shows.

Everyone is worried about burning when we should instead be worrying about extraction.