CD-R's...any advice?

Thanks Michael. That's VERY good to know.

Anyone ever compared the highly touted Kodak Gold with the Mitsui Gold?

Those two would seem to be the ones to beat. And with the difficulty in obtaining the no-longer-produced Kodak Gold, Mitsui would seem to stand at the top of the heap.

 

When the Philips first introduced their Home Standalone CD Recorder, blanks were $10.00! Well, someone goofed on purpose or a design fault in the recorder let one FOOL the machine into accepting PC CDR's!, which were $2.00 each back then ...still a far cry from $10.00. I saved a bundle. I now use my PC and my CDR Standalone is standing alone on the shelf...LOL! Occasionally I use it for analog transfers. Just love that machine!

 

Uh, it's on the package. I've never seen a Fuji made by Taiyo Yuden. But if they are now, i'll sure start buying them again.

 

Ignoring the issue of some CD-Rs not playing on some machines and addressing the instability factor only, one would think that there would be sufficient empirical evidence now, after several years of production, to state with some authority which manufacturer's blanks are most reliable. So far, no one here has provided any evidence that could possibly substantiate a claim that Kodak discs are best or Fuji's suck. No offense intended, but this discussion smacks just a little of urban myth making.

 

My experience is that I cannot predict which discs will play without fail a few years after they are burned. I have had a number of "failures," but they have been with a variety of brands. At the same time, other discs of the same brands bought at the same time and burned on the same burner around the same time still play fine. Fortunately the failure rate is small and I've never lost any music because I mostly burn compilation discs using various cd's I actually own.

I don't own a car so these discs are never sitting in a particularly hot environment. I have on occasion left some discs sitting on top of shelves next to windows. Perhaps it's direct sunlight that is causing premature aging of some of the discs. I'm merely guessing because I haven't tried any controlled experiments. Maybe I will, though: Record the same program on every brand of disc I have at the moment and then let them all sit on a windowsill for the next year, with corresponding copies sitting in a dark closet.

I've never had any problems actually burning any brand of disc, with one exception: My old Yamaha burner would NOT burn Yamaha discs (but burned every other brand I threw at it)! The Yamaha discs worked fine in my Plextor. I thought this was particularly amusing, particularly since the Yamaha disc tray states, "For use with Yamaha CDRW drives or other high-speed recorders." Perhaps the discs should have had a disclaimer, "Not for use with Yamaha 4260 CDRW drive."

 

Did you not notice the link in the third post (by hadi·blues) in this thread? It takes you to a site where they test CD-R quality. No urban myths there.

 

Grant, in Canada all Fuji's sold are made in Japan (I believe by Taiyo Yuden).
I know that a lot of U.S. Fuji's are made in Taiwan. Anyhow the Canadian Japanese made Fuji's have proven very dependable. I have some that are 4 years and counting and still play perfectly.

Maybe stay away from Taiwan Fuji?

 

After reading Tangents posting I have to say that I've had really good luck with the Made In Japan, as opposed to the Made In Taiwan, Maxell's. Still going after 2 years. Heck, even the Maxell rep. knew that what I was after and couldn't find for a while was better than the current MI Taiwan ones.

 

Just a note: HP disks are often Mitsui in disguise - but not always. I bought a batch that were the same model number, same packaging, but were obviously different dye, and would not play on my cheap portable (which likes Mitsui disks).

 

I'm rather surprised that you all seem to be guessing about the actual manufacturers of your CD-R disks. You do know that there are programs available on the internet that can read a blank CD-R disk and tell you who made it and what type of dye it uses, don't you?

 

Then I replied:

I should check before writing these things! Verbatum is the one made bt Mitsubishi Chemical, not Fuji. Still, if Fuji is now made by Taiyo Yuden, I can start buying them again. It's just that I have havd very bad experiences with every Fuji I ever used. But I have has excellent results with all Taiyo Yuden-made blanks from Memorex and Sony.

 

I know that until they stopped making Kodak, Roger Nichols used the gold ones exclusively because of the archival properties.

I once did an experiment. I placed a recorded Mitsui CD-R and a Ritek-made Memorex CD-R, made under the exact same conditions, play side up in the back of my car, for the month of June. Here, the air is fairly dry in June, but temperatures reach into the 100's. The results of this unscientific test? The Mitsui played perfectly in my portable Panasonic CD player. The Memorex skipped and stuttered.

There is the issue of some brands of burners working better with some brands of blanks better than others. Nowadays, with great burners like Yamaha and Plextor, the incidence of any mismatch is dimminished. Sure, most burners that are at least five years old will do laser adjustments, but they are usually not as axact as the newer burners allow. One of my burners is an old Sanyo-made HP. It works just fine with most brands except TDK. The TDK's have problems in some Sony CD players. No, it doesn't make sense, but...

 

Oh yes, I have one. BUT, I read where the info is unreliable because some manufacturers buy machine parts from other manufactures. For instance, if you check a Ritek blank, it may come out as being manufactured by CMC Magnetics. The type of dye may also be wrong.

The only real way to tell what type of dye is used is to look. Most of the big producers now use Ptylocyanine because of it's superior UV resistience. It has a very light gold color. Cyanine has a green. or light green color. Azo usually has a dark blue color. There are also two types of Cyanine. The older one is a deep green, and the other is a lighter green. It has been my experience that the colored ones use Ptylocyanine.

 

That doesn't help you tell which type of disk is inside the sealed container before you buy it.

 

No, but most people were still speculating about the maker of disks that they had already purchased. And at least you would know whether to rush back and buy some more from the same stock.

 

Hey Mick,
Care to post a link?

 

Dyes: Usually.
Manufacturer: Highly unlikely to be stone accurate. CD-ID doesn't really know all the time.

 

I don't know how accurate it is but Exact Audio Copy shows manufacturer and dye if you go into tools/ write cd then cd-r/ display cd-r information.

 

Well, I stand corrected. But as "brands" change manufacturers with real regularity, it becomes rather difficult [futile?] to determine who's making what. With EAC one can determine the manufacturer, but that's kind of after the fact [as in after having bought it].

 

Actually, that particular Media World page that hadi-blues linked to hasn't been updated in two years (that I've seen) but it may be about three or four years. A lot can change in that amount of time.

I'd like to know of a reliable way of confirming the brand and dye because all of the programs that I'm aware of (including EAC) use the same method of retrieving their data (reading the ATIP information), which is so flawed that the company that made the CD Identifier program stopped their development a few years ago and are no longer supporting it.

As Grant stated, the problem comes when a large company sells their old CD stampers to a smaller company, which happens quite a lot. The stamper has embedded in it the original manufacturer's name and the type of dye that was used, which may or may be not be the dye used by the purchaser of the stamper. To my knowledge, only Mitsui does not sell their stampers.

 

Robert's post, in a way, brings the thread full-circle. So, if forced to choose, which CD-R would you guys recommend, overall? I was just buying them at whim, piecemeal as needed, and didn't give a thought as to 'quality,' since I mistakenly assumed they were 'the same,' which apparently is not the case.

BTW, Robert, congrats on hitting 1,000! Small milestone in the sands of time, and I had to resist the urge to start a thread.....otherwise, in years to come, half the current forum posts would be kinda like....Grant hits 30,000 posts(I figure that one for around the middle of 2004 ).

ED

 

Contrary to what others may have experienced I have been using TDK for a while with no problems yet.

 

My TDKs with the white label side, are starting to give me uncorrectable errors in the way of clicks and skips.

The TDKs that are coloured on the top or are silver, made by Ritek, won't play in some Sony CD players. They won't play in my wife's later model changer, and people I sent stuff to on the silver TDK say they won't play in their Sony players either. It seems the only CD player that will play the silver ones is my Sony CDP C545 changer. What a mystery!

I have five-year-old Sony and Imations that are still playing perfectly. I have not changed my recording method. I always record at 2x DAO with CD Creator. All of my recorded CD-Rs are stored in the same room in their jewel cases...

 

Perhaps I should make a backup of the ones that I can't replace on a different brand. Just to be sure.

 

I sure would. For time-consuming projects like dubbing from vinyl, especially if there was a lot of manual de-clicking, I always make a back up [sometimes two] and use a CD-R with a different manufacturer/dye configuration than the original.