What's the best blank CD-R for highest quality sound reproduction?

[blownsi]

Whoa! sorry if I wasn't clear on that. I'm keeping the ones I record to CD-R and selling the Original MOFI and DCC's.

 

[for_p1]

I can't tell one cent from one brand to another

Wait 5, or better 10 years. Then try again.

 

[JP]

Agreed, but scolding someone on the internet for it is about like scolding them for driving above the speed limit.

'Twas a simple statement of fact for the benefit of someone who didn't appear to understand the law. I don't bother with people who clearly know they're stealing copyrighted material anymore; that scenario would've fallen under scolding.

 

[Mitkraft]

Wait 5, or better 10 years. Then try again.

That's really the crux of it there: Longevity. Unfortunately, like many other products, only time will tell. And unfortunately when that time comes it will probably be too late as your originals are long gone. I'm also not sure there is a relation between cost and longevity when it comes to boutique blank disks. The real smart thing to do is have a magnetic backup as well. Better yet, a fault tolerant magnetic backup (i.e. mirrored or raid hard drives) just in case the CD should fail some day. But you already have a fault tolerant backup system for all your data don't you?

 

[gary62]

I don't know if the OP was talking about sound quality or longevity. I used to use TDK music CD-R's which are no longer available. I switched to MAM-A and can't tell any difference in sound quality.

People have been burning CD's for well over 20 years now. Does anyone have any real experiences of one brand failing vs another when they're stored properly - away from heat, out of sunlight, etc?

 

[KrisM]

I don't know if the OP was talking about sound quality or longevity. I used to use TDK music CD-R's which are no longer available. I switched to MAM-A and can't tell any difference in sound quality.

People have been burning CD's for well over 20 years now. Does anyone have any real experiences of one brand failing vs another when they're stored properly - away from heat, out of sunlight, etc?

I'm not sure if I do, to be honest.

I can say that a few years ago I had one of those CD wallets loaded up with CDRs with MP3 files on them in my truck.
It got really hot, and I didn't bother to bring them inside. Every one of them survived just fine, except those from one brand in particular. All of the Sony ones had the label side stick to the plastic part of the wallet and peel off.
I'm going on memory here, but I think I also had Maxell, TDK, Verbatim, and another brand in that wallet.
Now, I'm not complaining about the Sony discs, I'm the one who screwed up and left them in the heat, but I found it interesting that they were the only ones that failed.

 

[Mitkraft]

People have been burning CD's for well over 20 years now. Does anyone have any real experiences of one brand failing vs another when they're stored properly - away from heat, out of sunlight, etc?

I have had "bad" discs for various reasons over the years (and I've been using them fairly regularly since about '97) but I can't honestly say for cetain if any of them were long term stability issues (except for some really cheap ones that had the silver surface on the top side flake off) or just bad burns/disks in the first place. As happpens with most discs they are either burned and forgotten or used so frequently that the issue could have been wear.

I will say that I've had the best luck with silver colored CDr/DVDr as opposed to the gold colored ones. The gold ones that I've used tended to have a higher frequency of not being read in certain devices. Also for longevity its better to use "R" media instead of "RW".

 

[mfrench]

I've been burning discs since around 2000 or so. The amount of failures is minute, countable on one hand.
This cabinet, below, is loaded with my live recording masters, (all the drawers are overloaded; more space needed). I burn a music CD-R, a DVD-A disc, and, FLAC DVD-R_data-discs of all recordings.
I fear that the drives/players will disappear before the discs go bad.

 

[runnin']

Just to be clear, one CD will not "sound" any better than any other. Short of missing data (which would not color the sound but manifest as dropouts or errors) the only difference is errors and longevity. So to the original question of "sound quality" they all pretty much sound the same after you reach normal levels of error-free.

I've got a cd burner that was considered pretty respectable at the time, a Pioneer PDR W839 that I used to make mix cds back in the day. Now, 12 year old mix cds are starting to skip, and not play properly. These cds have minor wear only, and are in good shape for their age. I suspect that because I burned them at the highest speed possible, and bought bargain brand cdrs, they are now becoming harder to read. Had I used best quality cdrs to burn on, and burned them at normal play speed, I'm sure I wouldn't be facing this issue.

 

[Mitkraft]

I've got a cd burner that was considered pretty respectable at the time, a Pioneer PDR W839 that I used to make mix cds back in the day. Now, 12 year old mix cds are starting to skip, and not play properly. These cds have minor wear only, and are in good shape for their age. I suspect that because I burned them at the highest speed possible, and bought bargain brand cdrs, they are now becoming harder to read. Had I used best quality cdrs to burn on, and burned them at normal play speed, I'm sure I wouldn't be facing this issue.

Yep, BITD higher speeds caused a lot of coasters for me. I usually burn audio CDs at no more than 8x and have had pretty good luck at that speed. I haven't done a lot of burning in the last couple of years and haven't used my burner with SATA interface much (previously USB and IDE/PATA) so I can't say if they improve on the reliability at higher speeds. But the blank media matters also. Certain older blanks were only designed for certain speeds. I generally stay a few notches below the max of the drive or blank whichever is lower.

Also not mentioned here is the software. Over the years I've had some software be more reliable than others. I never use any windows native burning and have had hit and miss with Roxio over the years. When I switched to 64bit operating systems I tried InfraRecorder which was one of the few free 64bit authoring applications at the time and I've had really good luck with it.

 

[dodog]

I always use burrrn and have never made a coaster. It lacks in looks but works like a champ. And it's free. Great if you have TB's of flac and cue files, but it handles many other formats as well. You can set the speed as well.