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Re: [ARSCLIST] Fw: [AV Media Matters] High Speed CD-R
At 10:22 AM 1/31/2003 -0500, Steven Smolian wrote:
I'm taking the liberty of forwarding this information just posted to the A-V
media listserve.
Forgive me if you have already seen it. I'm trying to distribute it as
widely as I can.
With some newer CD software, it's sometimes difficult to get it to run as
slowly as it needs to. It's a programming problem. Had it here. See your
technical person.
Jerry's material at http://www.mscience.com/ should be reviewed by anyone
interested in quality of CD recording. If you take advantage of his offer
to test a disc, you may be surprised (or disappointed) to discover how much
more there is to say about recording quality than you had expected.
My problem in general is explaining to those who want ultimately simplistic
answers ("What's the best medium") that there are none. Thus, I reduce the
story to: "There is an optimum speed for any combination of burner and
medium - a speed at which the error rate is lowest." If that has not turned
my audience away, I tell them that when I get a new batch of media, I test
in my writers and measure crudely (but reasonably effectively) by counting
errors on the discs - both correctable and uncorrectable. There is software
to do that job. I prefer Arrowkey's Inspector with its graphic display -
Diagnostic lacks that display but tests in the same way; and CDSpeed and
Exact Audio Copy can be used similarly. None is as good as BLER testing let
alone the level of test Jerry uses, but any is better by far than leaving
the disc untested or relying on the mastering program to tell you the write
failed.
I am finding few media today which write well at 4x. Since my maximum write
speed is 12x, I can only say that most of the blanks I have tested work
best for me at 8x or 12x. For those needing to write below 8x, I am
suggesting paying the royalty for DigitalAudio discs. Because of their use,
they must be writable at 1x - assuming that your burner offers that speed.
(Few modern CD writers do offer 1x; some I have seen have a minimum of 4x
and even that may be gone by now on the fastest machine.)
Mike
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/