Recommendations for a red hot burner

Posted by: Rockingdoc on 12 July 2007

I have discovered that some CD burners burn deeper than others. My old Sony internal burner produced CDRs that would play on any CD player. My OEM PC burner's products play on modern players but not old ones. My new PC's internal burner produces discs that are only recognised by computer drives, so I bought an external burner and that is no better.
Are newer CDR burners operating at a lower level of "burn". It would seem so. Looking at the recorded CDRs, those from the old machine have easily visible "grooves", while the newer burns are much fainter.
Can anyone recommend a burner, internal or external, that will melt some serious pits in my blanks, so that I can play them in the car again.
Posted on: 12 July 2007 by Deane F
I thought that CD "burners" really only change the properties of the dye on the CD blank. No burning involved.

From Wikipedia

"A CD recorder writes data to a CD-R disc by pulsing its laser to heat areas of the organic dye layer. The writing process does not produce indentations (pits); instead, the heat permanently changes the optical properties of the dye, changing the reflectivity of those areas."
Posted on: 12 July 2007 by JWM
I have certainly found that some BRANDS of CD-R are better than others (the least successful being Phillips, the most PC World own brand) - formulation of the dye?

(Now someone's going to tell me all CD-Rs are made in the same place...etc, etc...)

James
Posted on: 12 July 2007 by Deane F
quote:
Originally posted by JWM:

(Now someone's going to tell me all CD-Rs are made in the same place...etc, etc...)


No, there's several different manufacturers. Some are better than others.

Mitsui Chemicals - HP, Mitsui, Philips & Sony

Taiyo Yuden Company Limited - 3M, Sony, Philips, Boeder & Imation

TDK Corporation - 3M, Pioneer, TDK & Yamaha

Kodak Japan Limited - BASF & Kodak

There are some freeware programs that will spin up a disk and tell you which factories made the blanks.

Try this site - it's where I found the info above.
Posted on: 12 July 2007 by Deane F
I looked into the media quality thing when I was having a lot of trouble with DVD blanks.

Personally, I buy Verbatim now - and Sony if I can't find Verbatim.
Posted on: 12 July 2007 by Rasher
I thought this was going to be a thread about the morning after a good curry.
Posted on: 12 July 2007 by Rockingdoc
I haven't changed from Verbatim blanks, and these still burn fine in my old Sony drive. I know they don't really "burn", but the changes to the blank's sensitive layer definitely varies with different drives, which makes me believe some operate at a higher power of laser.
Posted on: 12 July 2007 by fatcat
Before the drive starts to burn the disc, it optimises the laser power to suit the media. It burns a small amount of data, analyses it, and adjusts the power.

Also, drives are able to identify media. If the drives firmware contains information on the media being burned, it knows the optimum power settings.


Maybe you’re old drive doesn’t have these features.


You should able to identify the manufacture and model of the OEM drive from the device manager. Check on the manufactures website for recommended media type.

Both myself and my son use LG GSA 4163B internal DVD burners. The only media we’ve found it doesn’t like is TDK DVD’s. My son uses cheap and cheerful media, without a problem.
Posted on: 13 July 2007 by Rico
If you're burning to listen to music, you need to trial a lot of media to find one that sounds right (with your burner). I kid you not. back in the day when I could be arsed with this stuff, I trialled the same disk burned at same rate on same drive, to philips, verbatim, sony, fuji, TDK. The fuji was better by a country mile. the TDK was close. The verbatim was abysmal. If you care about how your disks sound, you'll need to do this.

FWIW these days I use an LG GSA4167-B. Seems better than the last couple of drives I had. I no longer listen critically to CDs from it (on the rare occasions they're made). This whole 'finding the right compatibility' thing is too much hard work. Now I just scratch my head and wonder why I bothered. Life is short - I buy CDs with the music already on them. easy.

if I really want a mix, I can plug in the nakamichi and use tape. sure it's old skool; it sounds good on the factory deck in my car, and sounds magnificent through my hifi.