Plextor 48/24/48A Burn Speeds

[Ringmaster]

I've been checking out "burn-speeds" for the Plextor Drives....don't know exactly where I got started, but thought the following info. was interesting for posting.


From: John J. Anderson [mailto:janderson238@comcast.net]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 6:59 AM
To: support@plextor.com
Subject: Plextor 48/24/48A


I have the Plextor 48/24/48A PlexWriter, and there is some debate about the best burning speed for "Audio". I have been setting my drive for burning at 48X, and the burn speed is "topping out" at 33X.

WaveLab tells me that their software is currently limited to 16X. On the CuBase Forum, I am advised that mastering houses only recommend burning at 1X to 4X burning speed, stating that there is a definite difference in the audio quality.

I feel that manufacturers, such as Plextor build the units to burn at 48X, advertise that the drives will perform at the faster speeds, and they compensate in the design stages to focus the lazers & increase the lazer power, (or do whatever you do), so they can perform at the various burning speeds advertised. Also, my logic is: we want faster speeds, manufacturers are designing faster drives, and making the devices that perform at the speeds advertised. If this were not the case, why are we searching for, and designing drives that provide faster burning. In addition, there is no data cited in the drive specification that differentiates between "Audio" and "Data" burning speeds; in fact, if there should be a difference in the quality of Audio versus Data burning speeds, It seems that we would be prompted to select either "Audio" or "Data" settings prior to any burn application.

Incidently, my drive is burning at approximately 33X using the WaveLab software the discs sound great (to me), and they are playing fine on my friends "Audio" CD players!

Even though I am satisfied at 33X speed (for the present), I really wouldn't mind burning multiple CD's at 48X, so I don't have to wait any longer than necessary to burn CD's.

Can I have your comments.

Thanks, John Anderson

-----Original Message-----
From: Plextor Support Team [mailto:support@plextor.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 11:39 AM
To: janderson238@comcast.net
Subject: RE: Plextor 48/24/48A


The 'old wives tale' about mastering at slow speeds has been debunked many times. Most modern burners acutally burn _better_ at higher speeds, as they are not optimized for such slow speeds as 2x. Most won't even record at 1x at all anymore!

The way this myth got started was with older burners from companies that didn't pay attention to the BLER rate like Plextor does. Those recorders often had fewer errors with some media at lower speeds.

The media is actually as important, or more so, than the drive itself in many cases. It's a combination of quality media and a quality CDRW drive that make the best recordings. Speed isn't really something that enters into this very much.

The BLER rate at the fastest speeds Plextor records at is very low, and many CD's have been 'mastered' at that speed with no problems on Plextor drives with suitable media.

The CD-R Primer site has a lot of good information on using your CD-R recorder and explains how this whole technology works. You might find some interesting help there.

http://www.mrichter.com/cdr/welcome.htm

Plextor America Support Team - Jack
-----Original Message-----

[Doug]

Re: Burn Speeds

Originally when I started I was using a HP CD writer with a max burn speed of 16x. The fastest I could burn at was 4X before my failure rate hit ~80%. In my new computer I have a Lieton 52X burner and it is excellent. I've been able to burn at 52X on CD-Rs designed for a max rate of 48X with no problems (I've done this ~21 times). I've also found that even though I've been burning at this high speed, the burnt CDs are working in a greater range of CD players than those CDs I burnt at 2 and 4X using my HP CD writer. (I know this because of feedback from friends).

The only thing you have to make sure of is that you have enough ram (at least 512MB of high speed DDR RAM). The most a CD can hold is 700MB, and if your hard drive can't keep up or you don't have enough ram, the CD burn fails. My first CD writer couldn't go fast because I didn't have enough ram to supply the CD burner with a large amount of information at medium/high speed.

[BigAl]

Re: Burn Speeds

I suggest you read the Media Sciences page on High Speed CD-R Risks. On the Advanced CD-R list, Jerome Hartke (of Media Sciences) noted that many of his clients use 12x as max writing speed. Mike Richter concurs with this.

The FAQs on the Media Sciences site may also be of interest, especially those concerning unbalance.

[firekat]

Re: Burn Speeds

I have a Yamaha 22X cd burner that I have had for a while. So far, knock on wood, I have yet to 'burn one coaster. I burn using Nero 5.5 and I will occasionally have a change of write speed due to "media" and the burn speed will drop to about 12X. I do not know if it is in fact the media though I might suspect when you buy CD-R's in bulk in this case Memorex, supposedly good for 25X they might just throw anything in the package, after all how can you tell the difference from a disk that can burn at 8X vs 24X? I have not seen any marked in any way.

One of the benefits of using the Yamaha burner is that it supports CD text. I use this function as I have a Sony 400 disc CD player that will read the text and scroll it on the display. This is handy as the name of the CD and the name of the track is instantly recognized.

Has anyone else here been using CD text?

[Dan McDonald]

Re: Burn Speeds

I use cd text on all my cds. I have a car player that reads it and displays it, as well as the 400-cd changer (probably the same one you have) at home. I wish commercial CDs used CD-text.

Dan

[BigAl]

Re: Burn Speeds

[ QUOTE ]
after all how can you tell the difference from a disk that can burn at 8X vs 24X? I have not seen any marked in any way.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is marked in the ATIP region of the CD-R. It's almost irrelevant these days as this is embedded in the stamper used to press the CD-R and the stamper is "shared" between manufacturers. Aging of the stamper reduces write speed of the CD-R.

CD Text does not conform to the original Phillips standard and all commercial audio CDs are expected to conform to this standard (hence the hooHaa about the new copy protected audio CDs).

[firekat]

Re: Burn Speeds

Thanks. That also explains why even some brand new CD's do not have CD text. I just recently bought a Cold Play, Rush Of Blood To The Head CD, popped that baby into the CD player and voila' - No CD Text, Arrgh! I had to fix that. It's hard to say which CD's will have text and which do not, at least from the outside packaging. Maybe I am missing some detail.

As to the copy protected CD's if I remember correctly aren't they supposed to be marked as such here in the states? I also found on the web that some individuals are able to defeat the copy protection with the use of a black felt tip marker. In the end, if you can play it through a speaker, it can be copied, it will just take more time for the criminals to do it.

I can understand the concern of some publishers of music wanting some kind of protection from piracy. It is just not fair to the consumer, why do we always have to take it on the chin?

I have done some traveling to Hong Kong last year and I never availed myself to the mountains of counterfit CD's and DVD's. I knew some other crewmembers that did. They told me that some of the DVD's were actually video taken of a movie being shown in a theatre. No one showed me any of these, but it sounds really strange. I don't care if you can buy that stuff for a couple of bucks a piece. I want quality, I am not going to squander any amount of my hard earned money on junk.

[Doug]

(The angry face is just a joke) High Burn Speeds

I'm sorry, but I don't agree with the negativity of high burn speeds for the following reasons:
1. If the laser loses focus due to vibration, then any burn program will abort and notify the user so - choose a lower speed that your computer hardware can handle.

2. Nero (and maybe others) allow you to choose an acceptable level of mistakes in audio CDs (from one error to many - your choice).

3. All CDs (Data or Audio) have Check-Sum information mingled in with the data that guards against read errors

3. I would have thought a disk spinning at high speed is less likely to wable due to the higher rotational momentum at high rotational speed. (The same reasons why a cyclist can let go of the handle bars and ride in a strait line at 30mph on a bumpy road! - Ya cant do that easily at say 0.5mph!). Also, the CD is clamped tight from below and above. Where can it go???

4. I just tried this on a CD I just burnt at 52X (on a TDK
CD-R recomended for no more than 48X):
I filled the CD with audio tracks (it burnt in ~3min)
I then ejected/placed it back in the CD-Rom and proceeded to "rip" the songs back off at random using Cool Edit Pro. I then opend up (at random) songs from the begining/midle/end of the disk. I inverted them, and then I added the inveted wav files from the CD to my originals stored on the computer (minus the 2-3 second pause - the program removes that automatically). The final product was a noise signal that was less than -200dB (Infact, cool edit pro could not detect any difference between any of the originals and the CD tracks!)

Try it yourself using DC-Art - You to should get the same result if your CD burner is working correctly...
The fact that this method worked (even though there are inherrant problems in ripping audio off a CD at 48X, and manipulating the files by inverting them) demonstrates that burning a Audio/Data CD at 22,42,48,52X makes NO difference.

Sorry, I'm critical of everything!

Even if there were errors (which I asure you there are not!) they would have to be at least ~-40dB in loudness before you could hear them anyway.

High CD burn speeds weren't released only for professional duplicators/criminals, (like it suggests on that web page), otherwise companies wouldn't make them! Even more so, Sony, Teac, TDK and others wouldn't make high speed CD-Rs for the same reason! - They don't want their good names bagged because burning CD-Rs at high speed doesn't work.

Don't forget, My HP-CD writer from the year 2000 (it was a 9100 series) couldn't do faster than 4X (even though it was designed to go up to 16X). ALL the abortions were because of my hardware. AND, my new CDs made at 52X work BETTER than those burnt at 2X & 4X on the HP writer.

Thats my 2 + 2 + 2 bob.

PS, if a CD shatters at the spindle, then it's because there was a manufacturing error, not the rotational speed. I.e. it would have caracked at a later stage anyway. It's a solid piece (well multiple layers) of plastic - complain to the manufacturing company.

[BigAl]

Re: (The angry face is just a joke) High Burn Speeds

[ QUOTE ]
Even more so, Sony, Teac, TDK and others wouldn't make high speed CD-Rs for the same reason! - They don't want their good names bagged because burning CD-Rs at high speed doesn't work.

[/ QUOTE ]
Most of these manufacturers don't make CDs anymore. They badge the boxes.

Just like your HP CD-writer - HP have never made a CD-writer, they only rebadge them.

[Ringmaster]

Re: (The angry face is just a joke) High Burn Speeds

Doug,

Don't put yourself down, you are being completely objective, which some of us able to do (not on purpose, maybe not having an open mind). I am using TDK 80 Min, 48X, and burning (topping out) at 33X, with absolutely no problems, getting 2-3 min burn time. Using Wavelab 4.0g
hey guys don't feel afraid to go there.

[firekat]

Re: (The angry face is just a joke) High Burn Spe

Ringmaster, 2-3 minutes for a CD? Is that completely full? (700mb) or is that an LP's worth? It takes me just about the same amount of time (LP's worth) with a 20X burner and Nero. Mind you I have two drives and I have the cache set up on the second drive. I don't know if that makes it any quicker as the wav files are also on the second drive.

[Doug]

Re: High Burn Speeds

Hi guys,
Maybe a better comparison would have been a childs spinning top or tradle. It remains almost vertical when spinning at high speed. But when it slows down, it becomes UNBALANCED.

I think the major problem with burning at high speed is the fact that the burning program must be able to inform the CD-Burner to "Spin-up" first to the correct speed prior to burning. - All modern high-speed burners do this as a precortionary mechanism these days anyway. This prevents the unbalancing associated with speed variation during start up.

PS, there's nothing wrong with 20 or 33X speed, 52X speed only saves like a minute or less (It should be theoretically faster, but the computer still has to load the info [up to 700MB] from the hard drive to the RAM and CD-burner underburn buffer-protector 1st). Usually I choose to burn somewhere around 30-40X, otherwise there's no time to walk away from the computer to do something. 48-52X burners were probably made for those of us who leave saving backup files till the last minute...Me!

Thank God for CD burners!

[Ringmaster]

Re: (The angry face is just a joke) High Burn Spe

Firekat, I try to get as close to 80 minutes of music on all of the CD's that I burn. I almost always get 2 LP's on 1 CD.