Re: [microsound] cd burning speeds and audio

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 07:43 PM 2/8/01 -0500, taylor deupree wrote:
> i've been wondering lately, just out of curiosity.. what the latest 
> "rules" are for cd burning speeds and audio. i remember in the old days it 
> was a general rule to not burn audio masters at anything greater than 4X 
> speed.. as it would have a higher rate of error...
> now that we've hit the future, with 2001 and all.. and G4s exist, and cd 
> burner technology has moved along.. do these same rules still apply?

I moved up from the Powerbook 520 to the G4 last year, and a few months 
later the QPS firewire burner (with a Plextor 12/10/32 inside) came to give 
it a bit of company.  The Plextor as far as I can tell does not even allow 
2x burning speeds (and for me the old rule was 2x, no slower, no faster), 
so I am mastering at 4x with no problems of recognizable errors in the data 
or of readability in CD players.  I have friends using the same burner and 
creating perfect audio masters at 12x, although I have not yet tried this 
speed for audio, and 1x works perfectly as well.  The rule still applying, 
however, concerns the burning method:  the software and hardware must 
support disk-at-once (DAO) and must be set to burn in this way if one 
wishes the CD to be recognized by all CD players.  In the past Toast did 
not support DAO, causing major difficulties with disc recognition, but now 
Toast 4 has a "prefer DAO" checkbox in its preferences (do check this box!) 
and works across firewire without problems.  (Adaptec / Roxio's Windows 
equivalent, Easy CD Creator, has included a DAO option for a while now.)  I 
also use high quality 74-minute blank media (some drives have trouble with 
the 80-minute discs), with Kodak's both-sides-gold Infoguard (advance-aged 
to about 100 years if I recall correctly) being my preference.

np - Kandis "1996-99" (more deliciousness from the Karaoke Kalk kitchens)