FS NUENDO SYSTEM [Archive] - AudioBanter.com

John L Rice

March 6th 04, 06:29 PM

Polyline Corp is a good outfit :
http://www.polylinecorp.com/productlist.asp?OPT=075021000110001100

John L Rice

"Remixer" > wrote in message
...
> Mitsui gold in jewel cases.
>
>
> "Ty Ford" > wrote in message
> ...
> > Hi,
> >
> > My CD-R supplier says Taiyoyuden Gold in jewel cases will be out of
stock
> > until April. I'm paying .60/ea in jewel boxes now in lots of 100 and
have
> > found them to be very reliable.
> >
> > Does anyone have an opinion on what to use as replacements in the
> meantime?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Ty Ford
> >
> >
> >
> > For Ty Ford V/O demos, audio services and equipment reviews,
> > click on http://www.jagunet.com/~tford
> >
>
>

Mike Rivers

March 6th 04, 06:44 PM

In article > writes:

> My CD-R supplier says Taiyoyuden Gold in jewel cases will be out of stock
> until April. I'm paying .60/ea in jewel boxes now in lots of 100 and have
> found them to be very reliable.
>
> Does anyone have an opinion on what to use as replacements in the meantime?

The only CDs I ever had trouble with (and those were only in my TASCAM
CDRW-5000 recorder) were a stack of bargain ones that I bought at
Micro Center. They had the HP brand name on them. I decided to try one
of the "professonal" brands based on the recommendations of a few
folks in this newsgroup, and particulalry one nice gentleman who sent
me a few samples to try.

I bought Taiyo Yuden silver disks from Media Supply, 34 cents a
piece. Got good service. They're in Pennsylvania and ground shipping
gets here the next day. They probably sell disks in cases too, or you
can buy the cases separately, either from Media Supply or locally at a
computer store. There's a hamfest coming up in Timonium on March
27-28, but I haven't found that vendors there ever beat even Micro
Center's prices on cheap media.

I got a couple of samples of Mitsui gold disks (about a buck each) but
I don't know how to tell if they're any better than the silver ones.
As far as I know, either they work or they don't, and none of that
batch of HP disks worked in the TASCAM recorder. Have you found a
particular reason to use the gold ones, other than a good feeling?

--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

hollywood_steve

March 6th 04, 08:53 PM

Dave Miller

March 6th 04, 09:46 PM

(Ty Ford) wrote in message >...
> Hi,
>
> My CD-R supplier says Taiyoyuden Gold in jewel cases will be out of stock
> until April. I'm paying .60/ea in jewel boxes now in lots of 100 and have
> found them to be very reliable.
>
> Does anyone have an opinion on what to use as replacements in the meantime?
>
> Regards,
>
> Ty Ford

Why bother with these expensive but no different recording quality
CD's? I burn thousands with no problems (single and multiple burners)
and use almost anything available on sale at $.20 ea. Sony, Memorex,
Fuji, Maxell, even non branded. Go to your local CompUSA, BestBuy,
OfficeMax, OfficeDepot, find the weekly bargain and be happy. Much of
the time you can even get a significant rebate deal where they wind up
costing next to nothing. And they're always available. Jewel cases
cost $.15 in lots of 200.

Dave Miller
Miller Analog Studios

>
>
>
> For Ty Ford V/O demos, audio services and equipment reviews,
> click on http://www.jagunet.com/~tford

hank alrich

March 6th 04, 10:40 PM

Dave Miller wrote:

> I burn thousands with no problem

What kind of error rates are you getting? How are you determining those?

--
ha

Dave Miller

March 7th 04, 04:15 AM

(hank alrich) wrote in message >...
> Dave Miller wrote:
>
> > I burn thousands with no problem
>
> What kind of error rates are you getting? How are you determining those?

Haven't worried about error rates. I listen carefully, of course, to
my masters either for replicating myself or sending off to my
manufacturer for glass mastering. If I hear what I expect to hear,
the dupe process begins. The manufacturer does his checking as well,
but I've never asked whether they do an actual error rate test.

I'd be interested in knowing if you or others can hear differences in
sound quality due to particularly high or low error rates. Being a
dyed-in-the-wool analog guy but one who has to record both ways
depending on the circumstances, I continue to consider the digital
conversion process itself one big error. But we don't need to open
that can of worms, so let's stick with the issue of being able to hear
what the range of error rates do to audible sound quality.

Regards,

Dave Miller

Benjamin Maas

March 7th 04, 07:10 AM

"Ty Ford" > wrote in message ...
> Hi,
>
> My CD-R supplier says Taiyoyuden Gold in jewel cases will be out of stock
> until April. I'm paying .60/ea in jewel boxes now in lots of 100 and have
> found them to be very reliable.
>
> Does anyone have an opinion on what to use as replacements in the
meantime?
>
> Regards,
>
> Ty Ford

I'm using the TY silver 80 min. CDRs on a spindle here... On the Plextor
Premium drive burned at 4x, I'm getting BLER rates that are almost
non-existent. With the Plextor's error checking, my C1 error rate averages
at about 1 (sometimes even less), with 0 C2 errors on an entire CD. Peak C1
reading, about 8...

--Ben

--
Benjamin Maas
Fifth Circle Audio
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.fifthcircle.com

Please remove "Nospam" from address for replies

Paul Stamler

March 7th 04, 09:57 AM

I also used to use whatever was cheapest. About three months ago I
discovered quite a few of my year-old discs from Office Depot (house brand)
were becoming unplayable, or needed a lot of tricks to make them play. Since
then I've stuck with Taiyo Yuden. I get 'em from CD planet, typically $0.38
apiece including shipping, sometimes a few cents less when they're on sale.
I get jewel cases at CompUSA because if they're busted in the box I can take
'em back.

Peace,
Paul

Scott Dorsey

March 7th 04, 01:50 PM

Dave Miller > wrote:
(hank alrich) wrote in message >...
>> Dave Miller wrote:
>>
>> > I burn thousands with no problem
>>
>> What kind of error rates are you getting? How are you determining those?
>
>Haven't worried about error rates. I listen carefully, of course, to
>my masters either for replicating myself or sending off to my
>manufacturer for glass mastering. If I hear what I expect to hear,
>the dupe process begins. The manufacturer does his checking as well,
>but I've never asked whether they do an actual error rate test.

They should, and you should request an error report from them whenever
you do this, so you have some idea what your error rates are.

>I'd be interested in knowing if you or others can hear differences in
>sound quality due to particularly high or low error rates. Being a
>dyed-in-the-wool analog guy but one who has to record both ways
>depending on the circumstances, I continue to consider the digital
>conversion process itself one big error. But we don't need to open
>that can of worms, so let's stick with the issue of being able to hear
>what the range of error rates do to audible sound quality.

Depends on the errors. At some point interpolation starts kicking in
and that is definitely audible. Also, it only takes one E32 for the
pressing plant to return the disc to you.

Because the S/N coming off of a CD-R is fairly poor, you will often
get discs that just aren't playable on cheaper players but play fine
on better players. The right way to do this is to measure the eye
pattern instead of the error rate, but that's generally harder to do,
so we confine ourselves with worrying about error rates.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Carey Carlan

March 7th 04, 03:26 PM

"Paul Stamler" > wrote in
:

> Since then I've stuck with Taiyo Yuden. I get 'em from CD
> planet, typically $0.38 apiece including shipping, sometimes a few
> cents less when they're on sale.

Those same CD's are $27 a spindle plus shipping at Tape Warehouse.

Ty Ford

March 7th 04, 04:17 PM

In Article >,
(hollywood_steve) wrote:
(Ty Ford) wrote in message
>...
>> Hi,
>>
>> My CD-R supplier says Taiyoyuden Gold in jewel cases will be out of stock
>> until April. I'm paying .60/ea in jewel boxes now in lots of 100 and have
>> found them to be very reliable.
>>
>> Does anyone have an opinion on what to use as replacements in the meantime?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Ty Ford
>
>This seems painfully obvious, but how about a spindle of Taiyo Yuden
>Gold without the jewel boxes and then a separate case of jewel cases?
>You get the exact same product for about half the price you are paying
>to have each CD already mounted in a case.
>
>steve

No question is too stupid Steve. I'm not sure my supplier has ANY Tai gold.
It's worth a double check though.

Reagrds,

Ty

For Ty Ford V/O demos, audio services and equipment reviews,
click on http://www.jagunet.com/~tford

Ty Ford

March 7th 04, 04:19 PM

In Article >,
(Dave Miller) wrote:
(Ty Ford) wrote in message
>...
>> Hi,
>>
>> My CD-R supplier says Taiyoyuden Gold in jewel cases will be out of stock
>> until April. I'm paying .60/ea in jewel boxes now in lots of 100 and have
>> found them to be very reliable.
>>
>> Does anyone have an opinion on what to use as replacements in the meantime?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Ty Ford
>
>Why bother with these expensive but no different recording quality
>CD's? I burn thousands with no problems (single and multiple burners)
>and use almost anything available on sale at $.20 ea. Sony, Memorex,
>Fuji, Maxell, even non branded. Go to your local CompUSA, BestBuy,
>OfficeMax, OfficeDepot, find the weekly bargain and be happy. Much of
>the time you can even get a significant rebate deal where they wind up
>costing next to nothing. And they're always available. Jewel cases
>cost $.15 in lots of 200.
>
>Dave Miller
>Miller Analog Studios

Thankd for the thoughts Dave. I just like getting a good night's sleep and I
know the Gold works. I never want to have any of my clients come back to me
because of defective media.

You've never had any failures?

Regards,

Ty Ford

For Ty Ford V/O demos, audio services and equipment reviews,
click on http://www.jagunet.com/~tford

Dave Miller

March 8th 04, 01:58 AM

(Ty Ford) wrote in message >...
> In Article >,
> (Dave Miller) wrote:
> (Ty Ford) wrote in message
> >...
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> My CD-R supplier says Taiyoyuden Gold in jewel cases will be out of stock
> >> until April. I'm paying .60/ea in jewel boxes now in lots of 100 and have
> >> found them to be very reliable.
> >>
> >> Does anyone have an opinion on what to use as replacements in the meantime?
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >> Ty Ford
> >
> >Why bother with these expensive but no different recording quality
> >CD's? I burn thousands with no problems (single and multiple burners)
> >and use almost anything available on sale at $.20 ea. Sony, Memorex,
> >Fuji, Maxell, even non branded. Go to your local CompUSA, BestBuy,
> >OfficeMax, OfficeDepot, find the weekly bargain and be happy. Much of
> >the time you can even get a significant rebate deal where they wind up
> >costing next to nothing. And they're always available. Jewel cases
> >cost $.15 in lots of 200.
> >
> >Dave Miller
> >Miller Analog Studios
>
>
> Thankd for the thoughts Dave. I just like getting a good night's sleep and I
> know the Gold works. I never want to have any of my clients come back to me
> because of defective media.
>
> You've never had any failures?
>
> Regards,
>
> Ty Ford
>
> For Ty Ford V/O demos, audio services and equipment reviews,
> click on http://www.jagunet.com/~tford

Ty,

Not sure whether you mean burn failures or play-back failures. I've
had burn failures with all brands but only when using my multiple
burner rigs in which case say maybe one of four will drop out usually
early in the process with the remaining three finishing fine. I've
determined, however, that this generally has nothing to do with the
brand of CDR, but is an anomaly of the multiple burn process/selected
burn speed/number of burners working at once, etc. All my burners are
Plextor SCSI models and these failures are, in any case, very rare.

Regarding play-back failures, haven't ever had a complaint about those
produced by my manufacturer using the glass master process. Have had
a complaint or two about those I burn here in my studio, but I've been
doing this now for 10 years (started with the first do-it-yourself CDR
kits from Turtle Beach in the mid 90's - a Ricoh 2x Burner, Turtle
Beach Tahiti Sound Card, and some software called Waves SEII), and as
noted have produced 1000's using all manner of media during this
period. The only specific complaint I recall was from a fellow band
member who said the CDR I gave him worked OK on his house system, but
not in his car - a stock Chrysler Minivan - and this was maybe 5 years
ago.

Scott Dorsey mentions in his post that I should or could be getting an
error report from my manufacturer. Maybe I'll ask them next time. In
only one of many projects have I ever had a CDR master rejected by
them and this was probably due they said to a spec of dust which got
burned into the surface - not anything to do with digital errors. The
company I deal with is a large one with all their own equipment and
would certainly be advising if the masters I'm sending are in any way
not up to spec.

So all this experience continues to indicate to me that I don't need
to lose any sleep over CDR media choices and I don't think you would
either if you decided to give the standard brands a try. Forgot to
mention Imation in my first list. Their stuff is fine also.

Good luck.

Regards,

Dave

Luke Kaven

March 8th 04, 08:12 AM

(Dave Miller) wrote:
[...]
>
>Regarding play-back failures, haven't ever had a complaint about those
>produced by my manufacturer using the glass master process. Have had
>a complaint or two about those I burn here in my studio, [...]
>
>Dave

There might be a difference depending upon whether you are talking
about your own archive, or whether you are talking about your clients'
work. I have a growing archive of my own master recordings, over 500
CDs worth and growing. So I'm looking at my own maintenance costs.
Presumably the session discs that you give your clients are maintained
by them, and they have backup copies. But if you are archiving your
own work all put together, and you knew you had to maintain it over
the long term, would you still want to go with the bulk bargain
special of the week? Isn't the bet that the phthaloncyanine media
will outlast the other, and that the lacquer-coated media are more
durable?

Luke

Ty Ford

March 8th 04, 02:12 PM

In Article >, (Scott Dorsey)
wrote:
>Because the S/N coming off of a CD-R is fairly poor, you will often
>get discs that just aren't playable on cheaper players but play fine
>on better players.

S/N poor? What sort of figure as compared to "real CDs?"

Regards,

Ty
For Ty Ford V/O demos, audio services and equipment reviews,
click on http://www.jagunet.com/~tford

Mike Rivers

March 8th 04, 02:30 PM

In article > writes:

> There might be a difference depending upon whether you are talking
> about your own archive, or whether you are talking about your clients'
> work.

Why should there be a difference. You don't want your archive to be
unreadable. You don't want a product you deliver to a client to be
unreadable. You may not discover that your archive copy is bad until
years later. Your client will probalby tell you right away if there's
a problem and you can make him another disk. Hopefully it won't be a
disaster situation, but disasters happen from time to time, no matter
what.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Scott Dorsey

March 8th 04, 02:49 PM

Ty Ford > wrote:
>In Article >, (Scott Dorsey)
>wrote:
>>Because the S/N coming off of a CD-R is fairly poor, you will often
>>get discs that just aren't playable on cheaper players but play fine
>>on better players.
>
>S/N poor? What sort of figure as compared to "real CDs?"

I was seeing something like 12 dB poorer S/N coming off the phototransistor
on a typical CD-R, compared with a pressing. This means the discriminator
that generates a digital stream from the analogue phototransistor output has
a much harder time of it, and so the error count is higher.

This, though, was with recordings made to generic media with a Pinnacle
drive back in 1994 or so. The newer hardware might be a good bit better,
but it's been a long time since I have gone and done actual measurements.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Bob Olhsson

March 8th 04, 03:12 PM

"Mike Rivers" > wrote in message
news:znr1078750051k@trad...
>...Hopefully it won't be a
> disaster situation, but disasters happen from time to time, no matter
> what.
Digital disasters are lots worse than analog. In fact if you look at it from
a black & white standpoint of playable vs unplayable, digital media is lots
less reliable than analog even though analog often deteriorates more easily.
Digital technology is also lots more expensive than analog and anything
digital that isn't currently subsidized by consumer products is too
expensive to even think about manufacturing.

--
Bob Olhsson Audio Mastery, Nashville TN
Mastering, Audio for Picture, Mix Evaluation and Quality Control
Over 40 years making people sound better than they ever imagined!
615.385.8051 http://www.hyperback.com

Mike Rivers

March 8th 04, 07:51 PM

In article > writes:

> Digital disasters are lots worse than analog. In fact if you look at it from
> a black & white standpoint of playable vs unplayable, digital media is lots
> less reliable than analog even though analog often deteriorates more easily.

Digital disasters are also less predictable, but also sometimes less
finite. Just this morning I put a CD in the player in the living room
(a Magnavox, well over 10 years old) and it wouldn't play. The player
got as far as displaying the number of tracks on the disk, but no
music when I pushed the Play button, nor would it stop or reject I had
to power off the player, restart it, and eject the disk before I tried
playing it again. No apparent damage to the disk. Tried it in two
other players and it played fine. Tried two other disks in the
Magnavox and they played fine. These are all commercial disks, not
CD-Rs.

To a client who had only one CD player, or who wanted to pass the disk
around for others to listen to, this would have been a disaster
(assuming there was no time to get another copy). For me, it was just
an annoyance.

The trouble with digital disasters, or even digital interfacing
problems in the studio, is that often there's just not anything you
can do to fix them other than to haul out another piece of equipment.
Sure, things break, and some things that break can be repaired, but
not easily, not by typical maintenance-competent people like you or I,
and often a repair isn't a good economic decision - you can buy a
replacement that's better than thne original and for less money than a
repair or even the cost of service documentation. It's one thing to
pay $75 for the service manual for a $20,000 recorder and another to
spend half a day on hold with a manufacturer only to find that the
service manual for your $150 CD player is no longer available.

> Digital technology is also lots more expensive than analog and anything
> digital that isn't currently subsidized by consumer products is too
> expensive to even think about manufacturing.

This is why we so often make do with consumer-oriented products, and
why products that started out with pro applications have moved into
the consumer market.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Monte P McGuire

March 8th 04, 09:20 PM

In article >,
Scott Dorsey > wrote:
>I was seeing something like 12 dB poorer S/N coming off the phototransistor
>on a typical CD-R, compared with a pressing. This means the discriminator
>that generates a digital stream from the analogue phototransistor output has
>a much harder time of it, and so the error count is higher.

I've found that most CDRs range from 50% to 85% of the output of a
typical pressed aluminum metallized CD. (as an aside, those
audiophile gold metallized CDs do actually have more output than
aluminum CDs).

The annoying thing is that the new pale yellow dyes (and CDRs in
general) seem to have less and less output compared to older media,
and it's certainly a problem with some ancient CD recorders and cheapo
CD players.

For really old machines, the Verbatim 'Digital Vinyl' CDs seem to work
the best, and for slightly newer machines and data CDRs, the Verbatim
Data Life + work well for me. Both of these use the darker blue Azo
dyes, and these seem to work across a much wider variety of players
and recorders in my experience.

IMHO, the cost of using a cheap blank is more than offset by the time
it takes to redo a failed CD. And, if that CD is part of an archive
of valuable data, the cost savings are negative when using cheap, poor
quality media.

Regards,

Monte McGuire

Luke Kaven

March 8th 04, 10:20 PM

(Mike Rivers) wrote:

> writes:
>
>> There might be a difference depending upon whether you are talking
>> about your own archive, or whether you are talking about your clients'
>> work.
>
>Why should there be a difference. You don't want your archive to be
>unreadable. You don't want a product you deliver to a client to be
>unreadable. You may not discover that your archive copy is bad until
>years later. Your client will probalby tell you right away if there's
>a problem and you can make him another disk. Hopefully it won't be a
>disaster situation, but disasters happen from time to time, no matter
>what.

Mike,

To simplify the story a bit: If I give 1000 clients each one disk,
then each person has a trivial maintenance task. Make 1-2 backup
copies upon receipt, then again each year or so thereafter. Total
investment of each person's time on MY account is ten minutes. It
doesn't much matter what discs I use. If I make 1000 discs of my
master recordings, which I then have to maintain, then I bear the
entire burden of the decision, and my investment in time and expense
for maintaining the archive is multiplied times one thousand. Whether
I use the right or wrong CDs makes more of a difference in that one
sense.

Luke

Mike Rivers

March 9th 04, 02:05 AM

In article > writes:

> To simplify the story a bit: If I give 1000 clients each one disk,
> then each person has a trivial maintenance task. Make 1-2 backup
> copies upon receipt, then again each year or so thereafter.

But do they do this? Maybe your clients are computer-hip, can easily
make a couple of backup copies on receipt, and understand backup
strategy well enough to refresh backups annually. Most people get "a
CD" and put it in the stack with all their other CDs.

> If I make 1000 discs of my
> master recordings, which I then have to maintain, then I bear the
> entire burden of the decision, and my investment in time and expense
> for maintaining the archive is multiplied times one thousand. Whether
> I use the right or wrong CDs makes more of a difference in that one
> sense.

I guess we just see this differently. I would want my clients to have
a CD that will play when he first gets it, and play years later even
if they don't think to back it up. Frankly, I think that reliability
should be good enough so that there's no need for backup under normal
circumstances. I'd be sure to have a safety copy of an analog master
tape before sending it off with a client or to the cutting lab, but
that wasn't a hedge against failure of the tape (we know better now
that we've experienced sticky shed) but in case it was lost in the
mail or damaged when out of my control.

Everyone will tell you that you MUST back up digital media - three
times - (and tell you that ten times) and some of us even believe it
and do it. But it sure would save time, documentation, and storage
space if we didn't have to do it. After all, it's digital. It's
supposed to last forever and work perfectly.

Frankly, if you've got an archive of over 1000 CDs of your projects,
either you have a very good filing system or you're keeping too much
material. What are you going to do with it all, really? Frankly, I don't
want to be responsible for my clients' project materials after the CD
is pressed or the radio show is broadcast. I'll hand over the material
and let the client deal with archiving and storage. Sure, I'll keep track
of it and back it up while a project is in the works, but once it's done,
I want it out the door. If the client wants to rework something, let him
bring the material back to me.

But that's a different subject.

If giving him the material on $1 CD blanks improves his chances
of having something usable if he wants to revisit it, then it's worth
it to use the dollar blanks instead of the dime blanks. He's the client,
he's paying for the service and for the trivial cost difference, why
not give him a better chance? Of course if there's no conclusive
and convincing evidence that the more expensive blanks make for
more robust disks, then it doesn't matter. And I'm not sure there
really is.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Monte P McGuire

March 9th 04, 02:42 AM

In article >,
Dave Miller > wrote:
>So all this experience continues to indicate to me that I don't need
>to lose any sleep over CDR media choices and I don't think you would
>either if you decided to give the standard brands a try. Forgot to
>mention Imation in my first list. Their stuff is fine also.

Not in my experience. Two summers ago, Imation was making some
positively horrible stuff, so bad that Retrospect couldn't get through
a backup without choking on bad media. This was with a Yamaha
CRW2100S burner, a relatively nice one. When a freshly made backup
set won't read back without errors on the same machine that wrote it,
you have serious problems. Sure, the failure rate may only be a
handful of discs out of a spindle, but that's more than I need. FWIW,
something like Retrospect uses the entire data surface, so maybe it's
more apt to find problems. But, whatever the cause, it was not a
usable type of media.

I've been using Verbatim since then, and having no problems. I don't
know if the Imation stuff works now or not, but I'm not wasting any
more time on it.

Regards,

Monte McGuire

Ryan

March 9th 04, 03:39 AM

(Scott Dorsey) wrote in message >...

> Because the S/N coming off of a CD-R is fairly poor, you will often
> get discs that just aren't playable on cheaper players but play fine
> on better players. The right way to do this is to measure the eye
> pattern instead of the error rate, but that's generally harder to do,
> so we confine ourselves with worrying about error rates.

"Eye pattern?"

Kurt Albershardt

March 9th 04, 07:26 AM

Luke Kaven wrote:
>
> To simplify the story a bit: If I give 1000 clients each one disk,
> then each person has a trivial maintenance task. Make 1-2 backup
> copies upon receipt, then again each year or so thereafter. Total
> investment of each person's time on MY account is ten minutes.

And herein lies the secreat of digital archiving: It's the repetetive re-copying (with verification) that ensures the life of a file. Add up the facts that (a) All popular digital media have pretty sketchy reliability and life figures, (b) digital media hardware formats change at least thrice per decade, and (c) recopying and verifying are now easy, cheap (almost free) and automatable. The result is that in order to be preserved these days, information needs to exist in the network rather than on a specific medium.

Luke Kaven

March 9th 04, 09:24 AM

You aren't quite seeing my point.

The subject I'm addressing is Dave Miller's apparent suggestion that
it doesn't much matter which brand of CD-R one uses. The experiences
he reported, however, consisted in large part in supplying masters to
his clients. I'm saying his clients tend to bear responsibility for
their own masters after a reasonable amount of time. So Dave isn't in
a position to hear back in the long term (unless he's sought up for an
emergency backup). I'm contrasting this with my case, in which I'm
making master recordings for my record label, and I have a growing
archive of masters on CD-R media. I am saying that to me, it *does*
matter which CD-R I use, if I have any reason to think that the
lacquer-coated phthalocyanine gold disc (i.e., Mitsui, Taiyo Yuden)
will last longer at all. It matters because my tasks are multiplied
by thousands.

You mistook my view for kinda the opposite of what it was. I'm all
for buying the gold CDs. When I've done projects for others, I've
always given them archival CD-R media. You also suggested I had too
many CDs, but you might have forgotten that I own a record label, and
these are my masters. I'm afraid that I'm married to them, and to
thousands more to come. I've definitely got an interest in how this
problem is to be solved.

Luke

James Perrett

March 9th 04, 01:08 PM

Benjamin Maas wrote:
>
> "Ty Ford" > wrote in message ...
> > Hi,
> >
> > My CD-R supplier says Taiyoyuden Gold in jewel cases will be out of stock
> > until April. I'm paying .60/ea in jewel boxes now in lots of 100 and have
> > found them to be very reliable.
> >
> > Does anyone have an opinion on what to use as replacements in the
> meantime?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Ty Ford
>
> I'm using the TY silver 80 min. CDRs on a spindle here... On the Plextor
> Premium drive burned at 4x, I'm getting BLER rates that are almost
> non-existent. With the Plextor's error checking, my C1 error rate averages
> at about 1 (sometimes even less), with 0 C2 errors on an entire CD. Peak C1
> reading, about 8...
>
>
These rates are actually high compared to the rates I get with older
Mitsui silver discs - the best drives will consistently give a C1 error
rate of 0.1. I haven't been able to get error rates below 0.3 with T-Y
discs (but I haven't tried the gold ones). Of course, as Scott points
out, error rates aren't everything and I know of at least one CD broker
whose CD checker doesn't like the Mitsui discs but is happy with the T-Y
discs so I have to use T-Y for anything I send him.

Cheers.

James.

James Perrett

March 9th 04, 01:15 PM

Dave Miller wrote:

>
> So all this experience continues to indicate to me that I don't need
> to lose any sleep over CDR media choices and I don't think you would
> either if you decided to give the standard brands a try. Forgot to
> mention Imation in my first list. Their stuff is fine also.

As you've found, most of the time you'll be OK with most brands -
especially if you are using decent drives like the Plextors. However,
I've found the cheaper brands to be much less consistent from batch to
batch - sometimes they'll work fine on everything while sometimes some
drives will refuse to record them or drop out part way through. I only
use the cheap brands now for copies of rough mixes or short term
backups. It is still possible to buy discs that will only last a few
months but you'll probably only find out about it when you go to
retrieve something in a few months time.

Cheers.

James.

Scott Dorsey

March 9th 04, 02:11 PM

In article >,
Ryan > wrote:
(Scott Dorsey) wrote in message >...
>
>> Because the S/N coming off of a CD-R is fairly poor, you will often
>> get discs that just aren't playable on cheaper players but play fine
>> on better players. The right way to do this is to measure the eye
>> pattern instead of the error rate, but that's generally harder to do,
>> so we confine ourselves with worrying about error rates.
>
>"Eye pattern?"

The eye pattern is the signal coming directly off the phototransistor
(or off the output of the amplifier on the phototransistor) of the CD
player, before it's sent to the detector and a nice digital signal made
out of it.

It's called the eye pattern because when you look at on a scope, it looks
like a sequence of eyes.

Looking at it on a scope, you can tell what the S/N of the analogue signal
coming off the disc is, and you can get a rough notion of what the phase
error on it is.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Jedd Haas

March 9th 04, 03:29 PM

In article >, (Scott
Dorsey) wrote:

> >S/N poor? What sort of figure as compared to "real CDs?"
>
> I was seeing something like 12 dB poorer S/N coming off the phototransistor
> on a typical CD-R, compared with a pressing. This means the discriminator
> that generates a digital stream from the analogue phototransistor output has
> a much harder time of it, and so the error count is higher.
>
> This, though, was with recordings made to generic media with a Pinnacle
> drive back in 1994 or so. The newer hardware might be a good bit better,
> but it's been a long time since I have gone and done actual measurements.
> --scott
>
> --
> "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

I had one of those Pinnacle drives back then. Boy, what a piece of crap!
The thing barely worked; with luck, it worked maybe half the time. Modern
CDR drives are far more reliable.

--
Jedd Haas - Artist
http://www.gallerytungsten.com
http://www.antijazz.com
http://www.epsno.com

Mike Rivers

March 9th 04, 05:04 PM

In article > writes:

> These rates are actually high compared to the rates I get with older
> Mitsui silver discs - the best drives will consistently give a C1 error
> rate of 0.1. I haven't been able to get error rates below 0.3 with T-Y
> discs (but I haven't tried the gold ones).

As they say about a lot of things today, "They don't make 'em like
that any more." Consumers who buy the majority of the CD blanks don't
want to wait 20 minutes to copy a Red Book CD - in fact they rarely
copy CDs in Red Book format any more, they convert them to MP3 format
and that's what they put on their CD-Rs. To them, files is files and
if the drive is capable of 40X speed, that's what they use. If there
are errors, they don't know it.

Experience with writing audio CDs leads us to use lower writing
speeds, and the modern "high speed" disk coatings seem to work better
at higher speeds. When I was searching for blanks to use in my
stand-alone (real time) CD recorder, only Mitsui offered a product
that was designed for 1x to 16x writing speed, and they said that the
demand was shrinking and they didn't know how much longer they'd
continue to make disks using that formula.

I suppose one can stock up and hopefully you'll run out of disks about
the time you need to buy a new recorder. Anyone still got a good stock
of 3M 226 tape?

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Norbert Hahn

March 9th 04, 05:45 PM

(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

>I was seeing something like 12 dB poorer S/N coming off the phototransistor
>on a typical CD-R, compared with a pressing. This means the discriminator
>that generates a digital stream from the analogue phototransistor output has
>a much harder time of it, and so the error count is higher.
>
>This, though, was with recordings made to generic media with a Pinnacle
>drive back in 1994 or so. The newer hardware might be a good bit better,
>but it's been a long time since I have gone and done actual measurements.
>--scott

Some months ago while cleaning my audio CD player (Denon DCD-3520) I checked
the eye diagrams of various CD-R:

While the Mitsui SG series and Kodak Ultima had about the same voltage level
as a pressed CD the noise was about 6 dB higher. Quite different were the
results of Azo disks, Mitsubishi (Verbatim) and some Sony CD-R had about 80%
voltage but as little noise as pressed CDs. All CDs tested were burned with
different burners at their rated speed. I couldn't find any differences between
the burners used.

Norbert