Burning a CD

Memeboy: It's controlled by the software you use. I'm using Nero, and there's a box that allows you to select the speed. By the way, I've had much better results with Nero than I ever did with Adaptec. It really is a remarkable program (but I must warn those with Windows XP--it's not that easy to get it working--it will work but it takes time due to burn rights security issues and a few other glitches I went through). I did just buy a new burner as well. It the Yamaha CRW-F1 available at buy.com. So far I'm very impressed with it--it can burn very fast and I'm starting to experiment with higher speeds for personal use. For masters--I will still do 1x.

I use Easy CD Creator 5 with Memorex blanks. I have burn over 100 with only a handful of failures. I burn at 2x speed which is the slowest Easy CD Creator allows.

I remember reading a review somewhere which compared a number of CD blanks for data drop out. It says Yamaha blanks are the best but I have never been able to find any on the market. Anyone knows of any source?

I looked for Yamaha blanks too but to no avail. I read perhaps the same thing you did, stating Yamaha was the best. I think Fujifilm was #2 or so and you can only find those at CVS(!?). Easy CD creator is what I also use and never have any problems. Great little program.

I am going to try using 1x or 2x in the future and see if this solves the issue. The CD's started out sounding good and ended up sounding bad after as little as 6 months, but I was recording and burning at 8X. Also, my experience with the real cheepo CD's such as the $10 for 100 varieties were that they are totally un-useable. Thanks for all the helpfull suggestions.

I'm a fairly astute computer user but not a techie by any stretch of the imagination. I use a Hitachi DVD drive for the master and a Sony burner with the Spresa software that came with it. I don't copy directly but rather make a temporary image on my hard drive prior to burning. I do burn at the maximum speed. I use the cheapest media I can buy since I make so many CD's for photo distribution for my customers. My best guess is that I have made 300 CD's of various stuff, mainly photos, and have yet to have a failure.

I have a question regarding drop-out that is mentioned in another post. Some background first. I also rip my CD's into my computer for listening while I work. Winamp uses fewer system resources than playing the original CD through the DVD drive and since this is just background music, I'm not concerned with playback quality. The earliest form of copyright protection seems to be the addition of errors in the original CD which makes a computer confused during the ripping process. There are songs which I can't successfully rip into my computer based mp3 library. I can successfully copy and burn these discs however for use in my truck. If drop-out is real, wouldn't the computer get confused by the missing information (sorry about the non-tech language here) and fail to rip the song from a recorded CD? I just did an experiment with my burned CD's to see if they rip like the originals. They do, exactly. The experiment was done with 3 year old CD's that stay in my truck 24/7/365. The disc manufacturer is Prodisc Technology, Inc. for my media, is bought at Compusa for $15 per 100 and are so cheap that they don't even have a mat finish on the top side. These are finger print nightmares. I also label them with a Sharpie.

Can someone give me some insight into why so many people are having problems doing this? Perhaps put in a better way: do the people that are having problems with drop-out also experience a lot of failures during the burning process? I have yet to make a coaster.