Prince

I've read some mixed info on this one, so I thought I'd ask the gurus here.

A lot of my audio cd-r's get scratched really easily, and then the player skips a lot. Would burning them at a lower speed (I usually burn at 16x) help make the cd last longer? Does that make any difference at all, or does lower burning speed only help to ensure better data integrity?

The same goes for some data cd-r's. I have them for a while, and then all of a sudden one file cannot be read here and there, and I get a read error, even if the disc isn't scratched.

Thanks for your input.

MPower

That may be due more from the quality of the cds you are using than the write speed. As long as you have plenty of memory to buffer, I dont belive thet a higher write speed will adversely affect writing. If you are having a lot of burn failures then turn the speed down. Otherwise buy better cd-r s.

giblfiz

Mpower is pretty much right. The single most important factor in how long CDRs last is the quality of the Media. if you arn't getting burn failures then you don't need to do it any slower.

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The_Dude

i always burn at 52x cuz my pc can support that speed.

and i also burn lots of cd's and in my experience, i had 2 corrupt cd's that i think were caused by high speed burning. that's a very very small percentage.

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Khyronian

Overall I personally always burn at a low speed though my computer can handle a 56x.

I too have heard mixed reports on this, but if you have the time then why not? Also I use Memorex CD-Rs, if that helps any.

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Prince

I use Maxell's 700 MB cd-r's. Is that a good brand, because I have no clue about the brand diffs.

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mpedrummer2

Hey, me again...thought I'd chime in here...

One of the biggest factors in the burnspeed issue is what speed the media is designed for. I got a chance to tour a CD-Mastering facility, and they have this kickass machine that can actually count burn errors, etc. They told me that they found that Taiyo-Yuden 1x media burned at 1x yeilded the lowest error rate they had ever tested, but that #2 on the list was somethign not quite expected...I believe it was some random generic brand burned at 32x.

I avoid Maxell when at all possible...it's more of a personal grudge than anything really concrete in my reasoning. My old discman wouldn't play Maxells, but it had no trouble with pretty much anything else I threw at it...now I have a grudge against Maxell

MPEDrummer

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Prince

Maxell doesn't seem like a very good brand for overburning, in my experience.

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madsenj37

The faster you burn, the more likely you are to get errors. Anything past 4x can be bad for data integrity and audio quality. I dont know anything about scratchability with different speeds. Overburning is very likely to affect quality also.

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macmanmike6100

Yet another take on it:

There are no inherent advantages to a lower burning speed except that you are more likely to avoid <a href="http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintasksstd/tutorials/tutorial1/">buffer underruns</a>.

That is, your hard drive cannot feed your burner with data fast enough, so your burner burns blank space.

So, the problem that you are experiencing is most likely due to the quality of your blank media. The poorer quality of the media, the poorer guarantee of data integrity.

Good luck, and don't skimp on media! :-)

hobo

Most generic CD's I find work very well. I have a tendecy to hate big name CDs because they cost way too much. I burn less important things at higher speeds, and things like music or video at lower speeds.

Lasereth

With my experience, I have to say that I'll never burn over 48x. My burner is 52x, but I've never completed a CD going that fast before.

It completely depends on the CD-R you're using as well as the CD-Burner. There's a ton of burners out there that won't even read the correct burning speed of CD-Rs unless they are the highest quality (Memorex, Verbatim, etc.). My brother burned 10,000 mp3's onto nearly 50 CD-Rs, and none of the different CD-R's he used would read above 32x, even though his burner AS WELL as the CDs were 52x.

Same thing happened with my friend. He has a 52x Burner as well. He burned about 18 consecutive CDs at 52x, and then realized that none of them worked after he was done. The CDs were 52x, but they simply wouldn't burn that high using his burner.

There's all sorts of little issues that happen when burning CDs, even down to which IDE cable your hard drive and burner is on. I usually burn at 48x, but if I was burning something important I'd go at 32x max. The slower the safer in most cases!

-Lasereth

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MSD

I have a 24x burner, 2x CD's, an I've never made a disc at anything less than max speed. I've never had problems.