Burning Audio CD's

[Sopman]

A friend told me that the music would be clearer if you burn at a slower speed. This didn't make sense to me since it's a digital signal. Can someone make a comment?

Thanks
Sopman

 

[carrr]

Actually, you'll be sitting there waiting longer if you burn at a lower speed.

You can, potentially burn too fast for one drive to keep up with the other ... if you're disc to discing it, but speed isn't going to impact your clarity.

I'd recommend burning from disc to drive to disc, however, simply to minimize problem.

 

[carrr]

To be more elaborate, you can have situations where one dic is throwing data too fast at the receiving disc and you get a buffer overrun. You can avoid this by burning at a slower rate or by sending a copy of the source disc to your hard drive, then cranking it out to the recording disc at whatever rate makes you happy.

 

[spool]

sopman,

"YOU CAN WORK TOO FAST WHEN YOU'RE BURNING CD'S
Burning CDs can be a real drag. I've burned them at 12X, and it's like
watching paint dry. Modern burners are much faster than that, running
at speeds up to 52X. But CD makers warn that high speeds can contribute
to problems. They say (sometimes off the record) that slower speeds are
more likely to work properly. Personally, I hold my speeds to 16X.
That's not very fast, but the results are good."
From Kim Komando Show 02/08/2003.

spool

 

[Newposter]

I hold my speeds to 16X.
That's not very fast.

Really? That's a CD in about 4 minutes. Sounds fairly fast to me. Newposter
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

 

[drdebit]

consider that some posters in the forum are talking about 48x drives.

 

[cdogg]

Back to the main topic:
"A friend told me that the music would be clearer if you burn at a slower speed"

This is simply not true. Whether you burn at 24x or 2x, the clarity of the music is going to be the same.

However, it's quite possible that your "friend" may have meant to use a different word other than "clearer". Burning at a slower speed may improve compatibility on older CD players, when trying to playback. Older CD players, as I have found, sometimes will not work with CD's that were burnt at speeds higher than 4x or 8x.

But as you have stated it, the idea is simply not true.


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[DeanBaxx]

Ive done alot of CD burning , from my experience the clearity is not affected ..but slower speeds help with player compatibilty and programs seem more dependable.. and slower speeds are needed with some CD-R's ,there basically rated by color ,gold being best ,silver then blue. ..I burn all my Music at 8x ..(i have a Player in my car that is very finicky)
Lite-On 24x 10x 40x

 

[Sopman]

I would like to thank everyone for their comments. It's very helpful.

Sopman

 

[tmCCNA]

I burn my audio CDs at 24x and never have trouble with them but when I burn SVCDs I have to burn them at 4x or they won't play in my DVD player. I think it is better to burn slower, but it if works in all your CD players, then who cares. Travis McGuire
CCNA, Network+, A+

 

[pctek11]

If you are making CD's to be distributed throughout your company or to a large audience, it's best to burn them at 8x or slower. This helps with compatibility.

Other than that, there's no real advantage with a slower burn. It's all about your audience. If you're making it for yourself, test it and make sure fast burns work on your players.

 

[ANFPS26]

I've only run into one problem with speed. I tried to copy a CD that was scratched (audio) and that played fine, but if I copied it at max speed the burned cd was very noisey. It sounded like an old worn out record. I burned it at a much slower speed and it worked fine. All other times I've had no problems burning at max speed. Jim

Please come back and let us know if your
problem is fixed and what fixed it!!

 

[euston]

If you burn at higher speeds, there may be more errors that won't stop an audio CD from working but will make the error correction system work harder and this will impact on nd quality. Audio CDs are far more error tolerant that data CDs.

On my audio system, using an ancient but excellent Arcam 170 CD transport, I use an Audio Technica aluminium disc to damp CDs. Use of this results in audibly better sounding music, e.g. clarity and perceived realism of soundstage. I deduce that damping the disc reduces errors and less error correction means more of the original sound getting down the signal path.