Hi Don:

The way you describe it is how I've always understood it. My personal experience has been, for
years, that 16x is a reliable burning speed for almost all CDR media. My Plextor drives have been
known to just not burn certain cheapo media so I never buy it. T-Y and MAM-A media burn great at 16x
and I too have found very low error rates using Plextor's software. I don't have a client with
sophisticated analysis equipment like Richard's client but I did have one tell me that the audio
CDR's I sent him play perfectly on his finicky older CD machine, a unit that usually won't play CDR
media.

Richard, if you have time, run your tests at 24x, too. I wonder if 24x is perfectly acceptable with
modern media and could be a time-saver.

As for Don's comment about 1x, I agree with this in most cases. T-Y blue-dyes seem to work OK at 1x
in my Tascam CD recorder, exhibiting low but not zero error rates when checked with Plextor
software. I should note that they exhibit lower error rates, in general, than commercial audio CD's
tested with Plextor.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 8:10 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] CD-R error rates


> On 07/01/08, Richard L. Hess wrote:
>
>> While one CD does not make solid test, this indicates that the higher
>> speed produces more errors.
>>
> Burning a CD is a photographic process. There will be an optimum
> exposure for each batch of CDs.
>
> The stated maximum speed is the least exposure that could possibly give
> acceptable results, like the stated speed rating of a traditional
> black-and-white negative film in a camera.
>
> A couple of stops more exposure, corresponding to one quarter the
> maximum speed, is more likely to give good results. There will be a
> range of speeds over which error rates are low. The intensity of the
> laser affects this, and is I believe adjusted by the burner to some
> extent after doing a short test burn at the start.
>
> I would expect error rates to rise with very low speeds such as 1x on
> current CD-Rs, as these have been optimised for higher speeds. They
> would be over-exposed at 1X, unless the laser intensity is reduced
> enough to compensate.
>
>
>> So, looking at it this way, what is an acceptable C1 rate for audio?
>>
>> I was pleased not to get any C2 errors which Plextor showed in their
>> documentation as being acceptable at a low rate.
>>
>> What are others getting?
>>
>> I had a client ask me how I was burning CDs earlier this year. They
>> have some flavour of Clover analyzer and my CDs were showing lower
>> error rates than their in-house CDs--that was a pleasant surprise!
>> They are burning HHB blanks in HHB audio burners at 1X. Up until
>> tonight, I had burned at 16x ever since I got the Plexwriter CD/DVD
>> burners several years ago.
>>
>
> Regards
> --
> Don Cox
> [log in to unmask]
>