Reply-to: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx>
At 11:34 AM 2006-12-08, Elliott Hancock wrote:
I am curious what the experts on this list have to say about the
information in the following link which rates discs. It places MAM-A
and archival discs in the "sham" category.
Well, this is certainly interesting. It's presented as hard facts,
but without much documentation.
My experience: I started using T-Y gold discs in 1998 when I got a
333 MHz Dell computer. I had good results, but the long-term dye
stability and 1-2% reports of incompatibility with some audio players
caused me to switch within the year to Mitsui gold CD-Rs. My 1-2%
reports of non-playability went away.
I have used a variety of DVDs, but only when the MAM-A gold ones
became available, did I consider using them for archival storage for
client projects. So far, I've had no complaints in the year that I've
been using them other than two clients who asked for them and then
didn't know what to do with them.
(I want high resolution digital files--OK, I can provide them on a
DVD--fine--shipment--I can't play the disc you sent me--much later--I
finally got it to play but my editor won't accept the files--mail him
CDs at a loss). So that's certainly not a disc problem.
I've had NO media returns since 1999. Kodak chose MAM-E to make their media.
And it stands to reason that gold is more stable than silver or
aluminum as a reflective layer.
The other side of this is if I do have a problem with the discs, no
one can point and say that I tried to cheap out. I chose what many
people thought were the best available discs and I periodically check
them (probably not as often as I should).
I have NOT seen Charles Lawson's damaged disc rate but I did have one
spindle of gold CD-Rs that a few didn't burn for what appeared to be
disc reasons, but changing the burn rate solved that. I now burn at
16x and that seems to be reliable. I burn at 4x for DVD-R although I
would consider the 8x discs.
Obviously, I wouldn't use a product for perception alone if I were
having trouble with it, but what has been good for me over time
coupled with the premium perception of the product in many areas is a
good choice for the work that I do.
My choice was to buy the gold CD-Rs in jewel cases from American
Digital, but now I buy them in spindles as no one that I can find is
importing MAM-A jewel-cased CDs from the U.S. to Canada. I try to be
very careful and close the cake boxes quickly to keep dust out.
While the ratings page cited in the quoted message seems to like
Maxell discs, I have heard of problems with them from multiple
sources, although I am a great fan of their tape products.
Finally, I started out with a Yamaha CD burner and it worked well,
but when it failed after probably fewer than a thousand discs, I
purchased a Plextor drive and haven't looked back. I have three
working Plextor CD writers and four working Plextor DVD/CD writers
here. I use the DVD writers in my production machines in the studio
as I'm delivering as many DVDs these days as CDs it seems with many
institutional clients then copying those files into their digital repositories.
For very large projects, I prefer hard drives as a delivery mechanism.
Cheers,
Richard
Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.