Will burning music CDs at faster rates reduce quality?

[ghaynes]

Wanting to make a couple of music backups for the car and work and was wondering with CD writers getting faster and faster if burning at the maxiumum speed can anyway to detoriate the sound quality from the original CD. I remember when burners first came out that it was generally suggested to burn everything at 1x or 2x and that the faster speeds to will make you lose quality.

Is this still true today? What speeds does everyone else burn at nowadays? Can you tell a difference from a CD that was burned at 1x compared to 52x?

 

[BlueWeasel]

I've burned a few CDs at 52x and really can't tell a difference between speeds. I usually choose a speed in the middle like 16x or 24x, but I don't know for a fact if it matters.

I used to get alot of random "clicks", but found out it was a problem with the media, not because of the burning speed.

 

[screw3d]

Burning it at higher speeds does not reduce quality as compared to lower speed. The only problem is that older readers cannot handle discs burned at higher speeds, hence the recommendation to burn everything at 1x or 2x to ensure compatibility.

 

[KH85]

i allways burn mine at a lower speed, just because i have allways done it...

 

[Psych]

If the writable media is correctly certified for a certain digital burning speed, its quality should be the same (hopefully 100% accurate) as any other speed. I always burn my CDRs with 52x and I have no problems. But I haven't checked hashes on the burned copy and the original, though.

 

[EarthwormJim]

I heard 24x was the maximum for optimal quality (it's what my Plextor originally defaulted to too, when burning music before I upgraded the firmware). But I've burnt plenty of CD's at 40x and find no difference between them and the originals.

 

[EeyoreX]

Burning it at higher speeds does not reduce quality as compared to lower speed. The only problem is that older readers cannot handle discs burned at higher speeds, hence the recommendation to burn everything at 1x or 2x to ensure compatibility.

^^^ Yeah.

\Dan

 

[RhythmAddict]

I've never noticed a difference in quality when comparing high (48x) to low (1-2x) burning speeds, personally. There was some speculation that burning at a higher speed though, reduces the logevity of the CD. This was on slashdot a while ago, linked here
THere is a link to the original article form there, but I don't know swedish :-/

What I can say, though - is that the CD's I've burned (MP3 Data CD's, not straight Audio) and play in my cars MP3 player don't have that long of a life. I've used two brands, mainly - TDK and Imation. Both of these produce "chirps" when played after a few months - The Imations almost instantly. However, I"ve never been a fan of Imation products (be it CD or Floppy Disk) Also, I store all my CD's in a CD case at all times - So while it is still possible for CD's to get damaged, I don't attribute the chirps being produced in all my MP3 CD's to just storage/heat/etc. Of course, I suppose anything is possible.

Anyone have any insight into the speed vs. reliability issue?

Cheers.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Originally posted by: RhythmAddict
I've never noticed a difference in quality when comparing high (48x) to low (1-2x) burning speeds, personally. There was some speculation that burning at a higher speed though, reduces the logevity of the CD. This was on slashdot a while ago, linked here
THere is a link to the original article form there, but I don't know swedish :-/

What I can say, though - is that the CD's I've burned (MP3 Data CD's, not straight Audio) and play in my cars MP3 player don't have that long of a life. I've used two brands, mainly - TDK and Imation. Both of these produce "chirps" when played after a few months - The Imations almost instantly. However, I"ve never been a fan of Imation products (be it CD or Floppy Disk) Also, I store all my CD's in a CD case at all times - So while it is still possible for CD's to get damaged, I don't attribute the chirps being produced in all my MP3 CD's to just storage/heat/etc. Of course, I suppose anything is possible.

Anyone have any insight into the speed vs. reliability issue?

Cheers.

Before I got my MP3 player, Memorex media always had those "chirps" immediately after burning, regardless of the burning speed. This was only with true audio CD's that I played in my Ford market CD player.

I've since moved to an Alpine MP3 unit, and I use Memorex every now and then. The MP3/data CD's don't have the same annoyances as the audio CDs when using Memorex.

 

[drag]

From what I understand it's fine to burn at higher speeds.

Always depending on the quality of the media of course.

Older CDROM's just kinda sucked. Newer ones have nice things like buffers built into them.

You see a CDROM isn't random access media (at least when it's being written) like a harddrive or a floppy disk. The information has to put down in one continious line like a old LP. If a cdrom is burning at a rapid speed and the harddrive that your burning from is unable to supply information at a fast enough speed then the cdrom will begin to use the buffer and try to slow down so that the harddrive can keep up.

Eventually though when the buffer is completely empty then it will have a underrun and just have to stop burning because it ran out of information to burn.

But the cdrom just can't STOP, it has to keep turning and turning so the burner loses it's place on the cdrom surface, that one line of information is broken. Once the HD catches back up and begin supplying enough info the the burner tries to find were it left off, but it's not perfect and often you end up with imperfections as a result.

They end up doing the same thing as scratches do pretty much.

However if you have a fast enough harddrive then it's actually better to burn at a rapid speed because modern CDROM's are designed to go fast, not slow. So the motors may not quite be able to keep the cdrom at a constant pace at slow speeds.... So it's possible to end up with subtle jitters. At least that's what I've been told.

Probably the best bet is to go about half-way the fastest the media allows, that way if you end up with a subpar cdrom out of a fluke then it won't mess up any... I don't know that for a fact though.