Hi,

Can you guys tell me the a good CD burner to burn perfect audio cds. Price
range is about US100. I have checked various PCguide and magz but hoping to
hear from anyone who has done perfect audio cd burning.

Is there any difference between a cheap CD burner and an expensive one?

Thanks.

"Chelvam" wrote ...
Can you guys tell me the a good CD burner to burn perfect
audio cds. Price range is about US100. I have checked various
PCguide and magz but hoping to hear from anyone who has
done perfect audio cd burning.

Define "perfect". Even molded commercial CDs have errors that
are corrected by the player. Or perhaps you mean disks that are
playable on the widest variety of players without any visible (or
audible) problems. From what I have seen around here, that is
more dependent on the particular kind of disk (and the burning
speed to some extent) than anything to do with the drive.

Is there any difference between a cheap CD burner and an
expensive one?

Design innovation. Feature list. Build quality. Vendor support.

OTOH, there have been some relatively inexpensive drives that
have had almost "cult" status and were in high demand (when
they were available), while others (even very expensive ones)
were considered dogs.

"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...


Define "perfect". Even molded commercial CDs have errors that
are corrected by the player. Or perhaps you mean disks that are
playable on the widest variety of players without any visible (or
audible) problems. From what I have seen around here, that is
more dependent on the particular kind of disk (and the burning
speed to some extent) than anything to do with the drive.

Almost exact copy of the original audio cd. And is possible that a $30
writer is as good as say $200.?

in article , Chelvam at
wrote on 6/18/04 9:10 AM:


"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...


Define "perfect". Even molded commercial CDs have errors that
are corrected by the player. Or perhaps you mean disks that are
playable on the widest variety of players without any visible (or
audible) problems. From what I have seen around here, that is
more dependent on the particular kind of disk (and the burning
speed to some extent) than anything to do with the drive.

Almost exact copy of the original audio cd. And is possible that a $30
writer is as good as say $200.?

Go back and re-read the whole response. It answers this and your initial
questions dandy. It's all there.

If you MUST have a 'strong confindence level" then get something from GLYPH
or one of the newer systems that use special trick write techniques to
improve readability. Pay the money. Get to work.


--
John I-22
(that's 'I' for Initial...)
Recognising what's NOT worth your time, THAT'S the key.
--

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 21:10:09 +0800, Chelvam wrote:

"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...


Define "perfect". Even molded commercial CDs have errors that
are corrected by the player. Or perhaps you mean disks that are
playable on the widest variety of players without any visible (or
audible) problems. From what I have seen around here, that is
more dependent on the particular kind of disk (and the burning
speed to some extent) than anything to do with the drive.

Almost exact copy of the original audio cd. And is possible that a $30
writer is as good as say $200.?



Is this important to you?

If it is, get a Plexwriter. Period. Built like an M1A1.

The CD burners are cheap now that the "bleeding edge" is DVD burners.

Lite-On (made by Mitsumi, iirc) is Good Enough for most purposes, but if
you're doing it a lot you'll appreciate the lower vibration and sturdier
construction of the Plexwriter.

Any CD burner will make an accurate digital copy of its input. The
input may be flawed for any number of reasons, but CDR is considered
Good Enough for basic data backup, which has a much greater requirement
for accuracy than audio. Dropping a hi-hat hit is much less important
than dropping a zero from your tax bill...

If you're doing commercial-sized runs of CDs, the cost of media will
rapidly outstrip the savings of a cheap writer, and you should explore a
commercial production facility.

Chelvam wrote:

Hi,

Can you guys tell me the a good CD burner to burn perfect audio cds. Price
range is about US100. I have checked various PCguide and magz but hoping to
hear from anyone who has done perfect audio cd burning.

Is there any difference between a cheap CD burner and an expensive one?

Thanks.

In Europe I'd suggest going for just about any Plextor drive which comes
with Plextools software. Elsewhere, only the Plextor Premium includes
Plextools so that would be my recommendation. Plextools includes various
read strategies which can be used to ensure accurate extraction of
difficult to read discs. It also allows detailed error checking when it
is used with the Premium drive. Most mastering engineers (whose
reputations depend on knowing how to handle audio properly) use Plextor
drives.

If you don't want to splash out on a Plextor drive then I'd suggest
using EAC with one of the LiteOn drives.

Cheers.

James.

"Chelvam" wrote in message


Can you guys tell me the a good CD burner to burn perfect audio cds.
Price range is about US100. I have checked various PCguide and magz
but hoping to hear from anyone who has done perfect audio cd burning.

My definition of a perfect copy of an audio CD would be one that when
ripped, produces files that are bit-for-bit identical, which a rip of the
origional. Perhaps ironically, this test usually turns out to be more of a
test of the quality of the CDROM being used to do the rips that a test of
the burner used to make the copy.

Is there any difference between a cheap CD burner and an expensive one?

Much more so in the past than now. It used to be that there were few drives
that were capable of making good copies or origional burns of audio CDs,
that weren't branded "Plextor". Slowly, the quality of competitive drives
improved. Other posters have pointed out that Liteon drives are now often
very good, and my experience agrees with that. If you look at the prices of
CD drives, particularly burners, the Plextor brand does not command the
premium prices they once did. Liteon has IMO made a few turkeys in years
gone by, but not lately.

IMO, burning audio CDs is much more about media and process parameters than
it is about the quality of the burner, once a fairly basic level of quality
has been met. I have found that buying drives that are appreciably cheaper
than Liteons can be risky.

When you are burning audio CDs, the particular audio CD player that you want
the discs to play on becomes a very important part of the process. I
sometimes find that I have to select brands of media and burning speeds to
keep a particular player happy.

In article writes:

Can you guys tell me the a good CD burner to burn perfect audio cds. Price
range is about US100.

Nothing is perfect, but even cheap CD-RW drives do as good a job as
any until they wear out - and even expensive ones wear out. I bought
one under the Norcent brand name recently which, after two rebates,
cost $17. I've made about 25 CDs with it so far and it hasn't make a
coaster yet.

A lot of people like the Plextor brand because they have a reputation
for reliability, good compatability, and at least one model comes with
a program for Windows that does a pretty good analysis of the recorded
disk's errors (there are always some).



--
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 he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

A lot of people like the Plextor brand because they have a reputation
for reliability, good compatability, and at least one model comes with
a program for Windows that does a pretty good analysis of the recorded
disk's errors (there are always some).

With respect to software... I got Exact Audio Copy (which is freeware), and
though it has 50 squazillion options, is extremely easy to use.