Hello,

this may be a bit of a silly question, but I've heard it repeated
numerous times that audio CDs burned at high speeds (eg 24x) will sound
poor in comparison to CDs burned at, say, 2x.

Intuitively this makes no sense to me, as I have no problems burning
non-audio data at high speeds without any data loss whatsover. Is this
concept another audio myth? Or is there some basis for this that I've
overlooked?

I know that it's easy enough to perform some kind of ABX on music burned
at different rates to see if I can hear a difference (which I haven't
done), but I'm wondering if there is some theoretical basis for these
claims.

Thanks

Bill

I don't find it to be true that fast burns are worse than slow burns.

I do use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to burn CD's. This is an excellent
free program. With provisions to ensure you get good results.

Dennis


"Bill Riel" wrote in message
...
Hello,

this may be a bit of a silly question, but I've heard it repeated
numerous times that audio CDs burned at high speeds (eg 24x) will sound
poor in comparison to CDs burned at, say, 2x.

Intuitively this makes no sense to me, as I have no problems burning
non-audio data at high speeds without any data loss whatsover. Is this
concept another audio myth? Or is there some basis for this that I've
overlooked?

I know that it's easy enough to perform some kind of ABX on music burned
at different rates to see if I can hear a difference (which I haven't
done), but I'm wondering if there is some theoretical basis for these
claims.

Thanks

Bill

this may be a bit of a silly question, but I've heard it repeated
numerous times that audio CDs burned at high speeds (eg 24x) will
sound
poor in comparison to CDs burned at, say, 2x.

There is some limited truth to this: CDs are burnt with a laser. The
faster the recording speed, the less time the laser spends on each
"dot", so the lighter the alteration to the substrate. Some
_conventional_ players do not have as strong a laser as the burner, as
well as the fact that the laser output lessens somewhat with age. So,
some players will have difficulty reading some CDs burnt on some
machines at high speed. This may manifest as the CD not playing at all,
dropping off in some cases, or simply being spotty. But as a digital
medium is all-or-nothing at that moment, you need to define the term
"poor". If your player reads anything at all, it will be exactly what
was recorded. The question is how much does it read, not the quality of
what is read.

I hope that this helps.

Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA

In article ,
"Dennis Moore" writes:

"Bill Riel" wrote in message
...
Hello,

this may be a bit of a silly question, but I've heard it repeated
numerous times that audio CDs burned at high speeds (eg 24x) will sound
poor in comparison to CDs burned at, say, 2x.

Intuitively this makes no sense to me, as I have no problems burning
non-audio data at high speeds without any data loss whatsover. Is this
concept another audio myth? Or is there some basis for this that I've
overlooked?

I know that it's easy enough to perform some kind of ABX on music burned
at different rates to see if I can hear a difference (which I haven't
done), but I'm wondering if there is some theoretical basis for these
claims.

Thanks

Bill

I don't find it to be true that fast burns are worse than slow burns.

In my car CD player, fast burned CDs play poorly. They have a sound
like static during low level passages. I don't notice it in my wife's
car or in any other CD player.

I do use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to burn CD's. This is an excellent
free program. With provisions to ensure you get good results.

That's been my solution to the above problem. EAC uses Smart-Burn and
adjusts the speed to get an optimal burn. It cured my problem.

--
David Bath - RAHE Co-moderator

In article , says...

There is some limited truth to this: CDs are burnt with a laser. The
faster the recording speed, the less time the laser spends on each
"dot", so the lighter the alteration to the substrate. Some
_conventional_ players do not have as strong a laser as the burner, as
well as the fact that the laser output lessens somewhat with age. So,
some players will have difficulty reading some CDs burnt on some
machines at high speed. This may manifest as the CD not playing at all,
dropping off in some cases, or simply being spotty. But as a digital
medium is all-or-nothing at that moment, you need to define the term
"poor". If your player reads anything at all, it will be exactly what
was recorded. The question is how much does it read, not the quality of
what is read.

I hope that this helps.

Thanks Peter,

that was a helpful and detailed response. All the CD players that I use
are fairly modern and multi-format (including the one in my vehicle) so
I've never noticed a problem.

But a friend of mine used to use quite an old Sony CD player - he once
told me that CDs burned at any speed greater than 1X simply wouldn't
play on it, and now I understand how that's possible.

Bill

In article ,
says...
In article ,
"Dennis Moore" writes:

[...]

I do use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to burn CD's. This is an excellent
free program. With provisions to ensure you get good results.

That's been my solution to the above problem. EAC uses Smart-Burn and
adjusts the speed to get an optimal burn. It cured my problem.

Thanks for the recommendation - I'll look that up.

--
Bill

In article , wrote:

this may be a bit of a silly question, but I've heard it repeated
numerous times that audio CDs burned at high speeds (eg 24x) will
sound
poor in comparison to CDs burned at, say, 2x.

There is some limited truth to this: CDs are burnt with a laser. The
faster the recording speed, the less time the laser spends on each
"dot", so the lighter the alteration to the substrate.

It should be noted that the burners adjust laser power to compensate for
this effect (and to adjust to the sensitivity of the media being burned,
since there are a wide variety of dye compositions used in CD-Rs with
different sensitivity). Some burners do a better job than others.

It is actually sometimes the case that burning at a low speed can result
in lower quality results than at high speed. Take a modern burner whose
firmware was mainly tested at high speed and doesn't make correct power
compensation at low speed, or media designed for high speed burning
which doesn't do well at low speed, and you can get reduced burn quality
at low speed. I've seen highly technical CD burner reviews which
measured burn quality by C1/C2 error rate (C1 and C2 are the two layers
of error correction codes) where error rates rose substantially when
burning samples of the same media at lower speeds than the nominal
possible speed.

So long as there are no uncorrectable C2 errors, however, there will be
no audible difference, as you noted...

--
Tim

More good information, thank you!

It all comes down to "no recorded medium is perfect" and "no playback
medium is perfect".

Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA

There are actually two issues here. The bler (block level error rate)
may well be minimized at some relatively high speed for a given CD
burner. However, the ability of some CD players to play such a disk may
well be degraded. I have burned hundreds of audio CDs for sale on CD
Baby and elsewhere and have spent considerable time and effort to
minimize customer problems. Blanks from Taiyo Yuden (including
inexpensive Burnmaster disks) seem to work in just about any player
when burned at 12X or 16X. Note that these disks have a blue appearence
on the data side. Ritek blanks have produced less reliable results and
I have stopped using them for CD sales. A real issue here is how well
can a given CD player read burned disks given thier lower reflectivity
compared to replicated disks.