CDR media - What would YOU buy?

[Muse]

My supply of CDR's is dwindling and I'm looking to buy some more. 90% of what I burn to CDR is music, and I want the disks to last a long time. I'm not rolling in dough, so I look for bargains. What's good, what's very good and what's junk?

 

[Goi]

Taiyo Yuden stuff are the best. Mitsubishi dyes are good too, especially the Sonic-AZO and Super-AZO stuff. Prodiscs are ok too and are generally cheaper.

 

[Rhin0]

I've never had any problem with imation CD-r's. I've burned over 200 1x-16x 700mb discs at 12x and have been very satisfied.

 

[DyslexicHobo]

I use the CD-Rs that I buy on sale... Usually I can pick up ~100 for $10. I use em all the time for transferring small picture/files (only a couple megs each). It's just as cheap as using a foppy drive.

 

[mwmorph]

imiAtion tend to refuse to play in my sony FDR200 cd player. every other cd player/drive works though.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Goi
Taiyo Yuden stuff are the best. Mitsubishi dyes are good too, especially the Sonic-AZO and Super-AZO stuff. Prodiscs are ok too and are generally cheaper.

What are the brand names these are sold under? I have Fuji's made in Japan (TY) but am running out. Will keep my eyes open for sales. What other brands are good? Again, what my infodisc utility says after I get the disks home I won't know when I'm in the store.

I have Imation's too, and so far so good.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Ritek from www.rima.com is cheap (for non-rebate blanks) and has worked well for me.

 

[Rip the Jacker]

I don't think a Memorex has EVER failed me and I've burned at least 400 times.

 

[gw186]

Never had a problem with GQ(great quality) disk.

 

[walkure]

Stick with the Fuji (made in Japan) TY's. I would assume that same for DVD media (btw the DVD-R and DVD+R Fuji's are $9.99 this week at Best buy for a 25 pack -- great deal).

Avoid Maxell, Memorex. I have had better luck with K-Hypermedia than Imation, in the cheap discs category (for audio discs that I can toss around without worrying about them... meanwhile everything important is backed up on TY's).

 

[KoolDrew]

I just go to Office Max and buy w/e is there. Sometimes you can get them for free.

 

[dev0lution]

I've never had any problems with the Fuji media. You can usually find them on sale pretty regularly somwhere...

 

[CraigRT]

any brand.... you never know whats good anymore.... used to be verbatim/maxell, but now i am not so sure.

 

[Tostada]

Most brands these days have both good and bad media. It's best just to get TY that says TY, not Fuji that you hope will be TY.

TY (both 8X -R and +R) is $26 for a 50-pack at Rima and cheaper the more you get. I can't think of any justification for getting worse media when the best is so cheap. I've used Ritek G03s and G04s that were supposed to be great stuff. Never burned a coaster, but after a two years of sitting around many of my G03s are dead, and even some of the newer G04s are getting read errors. There's stuff that I worked on very hard and burned on Verbatim discs that was unreadable 2 years later, too.

Get some TY discs and flex them a little bit. They're more rigid than anything else I've seen. Look at the dye and the way they're bonded together. TY is just 100% better quality than any of the other stuff I've seen.


EDIT:

OK, nevermind. I'm an idiot. CD-Rs are different. Get whatever's cheap.

If you really want to archive stuff, DVD-Rs are cheaper per MB. Are you talking about just burning audio CDs? Any CD-Rs around will generally last a long time, but audio CDs aren't really the best way to archive stuff. You don't want to have to be super careful with things you're taking with you and tossing around your car. If you want a backup of legit CDs, rip them with EAC and encode them with FLAC, then you'll be able to fit about 15 CDs with lossless compression on one DVD-R and keep it in a safe place. If you're just talking about MP3s, the same thing goes. If you want something really secure get QuickPar or the newest WinRAR and make recovery data for your backups.

 

[Ken90630]

Has any computer magazine or Web site ever tested discs? I've never seen any, but then I've only been 'into computers' for a couple years. I'd be interested to read some test reports if anyone knows of a link or magazine reference.

I would guess that the quality of the burner, and also the speed the discs are burned at, would affect disc performace on at least some level. Using cheapy burners from unremarkable companies that claim to burn discs at 52X speed is prolly not a recipe for data/disc integrity, no matter what media you feed it.

 

[Terumo]

Originally posted by: Ken90630
Has any computer magazine or Web site ever tested discs? I've never seen any, but then I've only been 'into computers' for a couple years. I'd be interested to read some test reports if anyone knows of a link or magazine reference.

Check out....

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/

They specialize on DVD/CD/RW and media previews.

 

[Cerb]

Good MCC (Verbatim Datalife Plus) or Taiyo Yuden.
If you're serious about archiving, anything less is going to be wasted money (and come on, worst case will be $0.40/disc).

 

[Blain]

For great quality, I always buy the Mitsumi MAM-A CDRs with Phthalocyanine (tha-lo-cy-a-neen) dye from CDR Planet.
If they were corporate bonds, they would be rated AAA. :laugh:

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Tostada
Most brands these days have both good and bad media. It's best just to get TY that says TY, not Fuji that you hope will be TY.

TY (both 8X -R and +R) is $26 for a 50-pack at Rima and cheaper the more you get. I can't think of any justification for getting worse media when the best is so cheap. I've used Ritek G03s and G04s that were supposed to be great stuff. Never burned a coaster, but after a two years of sitting around many of my G03s are dead, and even some of the newer G04s are getting read errors. There's stuff that I worked on very hard and burned on Verbatim discs that was unreadable 2 years later, too.

Get some TY discs and flex them a little bit. They're more rigid than anything else I've seen. Look at the dye and the way they're bonded together. TY is just 100% better quality than any of the other stuff I've seen.


EDIT:

OK, nevermind. I'm an idiot. CD-Rs are different. Get whatever's cheap.

If you really want to archive stuff, DVD-Rs are cheaper per MB. Are you talking about just burning audio CDs? Any CD-Rs around will generally last a long time, but audio CDs aren't really the best way to archive stuff. You don't want to have to be super careful with things you're taking with you and tossing around your car. If you want a backup of legit CDs, rip them with EAC and encode them with FLAC, then you'll be able to fit about 15 CDs with lossless compression on one DVD-R and keep it in a safe place. If you're just talking about MP3s, the same thing goes. If you want something really secure get QuickPar or the newest WinRAR and make recovery data for your backups.

Thanks for the detail. Very helpful! My own concern is to copy audio CD's for the most part. Sure, I do copy installation CD's and reliability (lasting reliability) can be just as important as for audio CD's. I copy all my audio CD's if for no other reason than to add CD Text, which is a supreme rarity in audio CD's, at least for the ones I get. All my CD players support CD Text and I have a 300 disk changer and a 60 disk changer and keeping track of things without CD Text is difficult. Besides, it provides the wonderful advantage of being able to see track titles, either already on the display or with the press of a button. I usually find myself wondering when I want to make a CD Text supporting CDR copy of an audio CD just how long that disk is apt to last. That's why I want to buy media that's recommended for long-term reliability.

As well, I do make CDR backups of MP3's, and I do it to CDR instead of DVD+-R because I have a couple of portable CD players that support MP3's. If I back up to DVD+-R, I won't be able to play in those players.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Ken90630
Has any computer magazine or Web site ever tested discs? I've never seen any, but then I've only been 'into computers' for a couple years. I'd be interested to read some test reports if anyone knows of a link or magazine reference.

I would guess that the quality of the burner, and also the speed the discs are burned at, would affect disc performace on at least some level. Using cheapy burners from unremarkable companies that claim to burn discs at 52X speed is prolly not a recipe for data/disc integrity, no matter what media you feed it.

You can check out www.cdfreaks.com for forums (CD Freaks Forum) where people post many many of their own personal test results in great technical detail. I, personally, do not comprehend them! I don't think it's rocket science, though. Educate yourself in the terminology and issues and you can appreciate what's going on there.

 

[Rodney Anonymous]

I get the spool of 100 GQ (Great Quality) discs from Fry's Electronics for 9 bucks from time to time. Cheap and mostly reliable. Sure I get a few bad ones once in a while, but that happens when I get TDK or Memorex as well.

 

[jagec]

I buy Taiyo Yuden. Considering that I don't burn all that many CD's, I'd rather have what I do burn last a decent length of time.

 

[DN]

I got some 4x Mitsumi DVD-R's at Futureshop and my LG 4040B will only burn on them at 2x.. Very frustrating since I bought 100 of them.. Yes, I do have the latest firmware installed..

 

[HappyCracker]

I've been using Memorex Blacks for quite some time. The last batch I got were Taiyo Yuden. They've changed the design on the top for the current batch I have but I would assume they are Yuden as well. Never had a bad burn with any of these.

 

[Rodney Anonymous]

Originally posted by: DN
I got some 4x Mitsumi DVD-R's at Futureshop and my LG 4040B will only burn on them at 2x.. Very frustrating since I bought 100 of them.. Yes, I do have the latest firmware installed..

I had the same problem with some GQ DVD+Rs, but once I installed the latest Roxio EMC7 update, it was able to burn them at 4x just fine.