The Wonderful World of CD-R's


I realize that for most members here "burning" CD-R's is an archaic practice; but I still do it, as Father Beldar used to say, in "mass quantities." Regular old "Verbatims" were my go-to's until they started to not "complete" in the burner, and even when they did they would sometimes not be read by one of my transports. The ones that would play sounded a bit grainy as if not all the data had been correctly read. The distortion was actually a bit novel for awhile - sort of like a CD version of "euphonious distortion" but finally it became tiresome. Could have been a bad batch. Whatever, it set me to ordering and playing with other CD-R's.

The "Plexdisc for Music" CD-R's behaved well, but there was a strange lumpening of bass. Apparently, ones and zeroes can be skipped, glossed over or whatever to an extent that you can hear the mistake in sound even though the sound keeps on playing. These discs are a bit thicker than most, and I wondered if their increased mass might somehow be taxing my desktop burner.

Next I tried "Maxell for Music," and these have been better in every regard. They burn with no rejection and play in both of my transports, and they sound good.

There is this reviewer on Amazon (3rd from the top in linked page) who goes on at length about CD-R's in general and seems to know what he is talking about. He rather ruefully concedes that Maxell might be the best choice we have left. Does his lament on the subject ring a bell with anyone on the forum?

Maxell Reviewer

 

 


 

 

bolong

Thank you for this thread. I'm still a fan of the shiny discs, and plan to never own a vehicle that doesn't have a CD player in it. One of my best audio purchases ever was for my SONY CDR-W66 CD recorder (so I'm still one of the few that still purchases CD-R's). This CD recorder puts out the most amazing sounding CD's. 

In my previous response to this thread of 7/30/23, I mentioned I had HHB recorders. Since then I purchased the Tascam CD-RW900SX and I find this machine to be a fantastic recorder, even better than HHB recorders. Took a bit of a learning curve to adjust to, but since then it has worked flawlessly time after time. Anyone considering the Tascam won't be disappointed!

The Jay's Audio CDT3 MK3 CD transport I am using contains the Tuned Philips CDPro2-LF Mechanism with the hold down puck that is covered in a thin layer of black foam on the CD side for grip and vibration damping. This, in effect, is the same as blackening the top side of the CD with black marker. If you think this makes a difference in playback by eliminating incident and perhaps conflicting laser reflections then it is a desirable feature of this transport. I do still ink blacken the rim edges of my CD's even if it might be only a "good luck" gesture. It only takes a few seconds.

Still using the PlexDisc Taiyo Yuden CD's with nary a hiccup. These are about 11% thicker than most other CD's - take that for what it's worth.