• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

put to rest for me plezz, burn @4x vs @40x quality

V

Vad3r

Senior member
Have this arguement all the time with friends. I have Plextor 12x W / 10x RW, I burn EVERYTHING at 12x. Burner has BurnProof.
I've yet to make a coaster burning anthing, data, music,.....
I just put together a system for a buddy, I choose the 40x PlexWriter for him, and told him to burn at 40x. Another friend says, you get better quality burner slower.
He's saying a music CD burned at 4x will sound better than one burned at 40x. I say this is BULLSH!T, I cannot hear a difference on my home Stero, computer, walkman, portalble cd player......
I think this myth was started by someone who does not have a fast burner, and this makes them feel better about it.
- example - (ya well u can't really burn at 40x, cause my 4x burner sounds better)

Is there some kind of tool that I could use while playing a CD burned at both speeds to really determine if one is of better "quality" than the other.

A link to some "Audio" tech site would really help too.

thx for any info, this needs to be put to rest for me. This arguement going on much to long now.
 
the only difference in burning at 40x and 4x (in terms of quality), is the fact that the 40x is more likely to burn a coaster, since it needs data faster, but since modern drives have burn-proof technologies, this is no longer an issue. so, there is no real difference between the two, except for speed. you have to remember, data burned onto cds is digital (that includes audio), so there is no variation from one copy to the next (unless the drive has some kind of an error).

by the way, i would recommend getting your friend a 40x12x48x lite-on instead of the plextor. it burns just as fast (sometimes faster) as the plextor, and the quality of the drive itself is just as good. it also is much cheaper (you can find it for about 70 bucks shipped at newegg.com)

-wfbberzerker

EDIT: and if your friend thinks that 4x drives are so superior, ask him why no one makes 4x drives anymore, yet 40x and 48x drives are made all over the place?
 
thx for the info. Should have mentioned that, I put together his system for him, and he's had it now 2 weeks. I was there yesterday, and this other friend was saying he should burn slower for quality.
Also, forgot to ask, CDs record speed. He had CDs he had bought a while ago that said 24x or 16x supported. For his 1st burn to test the drive, I said to him "phuk it, burn at 40x, worst that can happen is you make a bad cd". Well, CD works fine. Now I did choose 40x, perhaps the drive in turn went ahead and burned at supported speed of the CDR (didn't time it or anything). Do you really have to burn at the speed the CD says it was made for ?
I just know from reviews I've read on Plextor and Burnproof, that it's difficult to make a coaster.
My advice to him was burn it all at 40x. He has been now for 2 weeks and no coasters.
 
Originally posted by: Vad3r
thx for the info. Should have mentioned that, I put together his system for him, and he's had it now 2 weeks. I was there yesterday, and this other friend was saying he should burn slower for quality.
Also, forgot to ask, CDs record speed. He had CDs he had bought a while ago that said 24x or 16x supported. For his 1st burn to test the drive, I said to him "phuk it, burn at 40x, worst that can happen is you make a bad cd". Well, CD works fine. Now I did choose 40x, perhaps the drive in turn went ahead and burned at supported speed of the CDR (didn't time it or anything). Do you really have to burn at the speed the CD says it was made for ?
I just know from reviews I've read on Plextor and Burnproof, that it's difficult to make a coaster.
My advice to him was burn it all at 40x. He has been now for 2 weeks and no coasters.
Click to expand...

there is a program that well run a test on a given cd-r or cd-rw and will tell you up to what speed your burner can burn it at. the only reason they are rated why they are (i believe) is because if you go to fast, you are more likely to burn a coaster. but thats total speculation on my part. if hes been burning at 40x for 2 weeks and no problems, i say let him keep doing it, and there should be no problems.

EDIT: here's the program
 
Don't remember where I read this but when you burn slower the burner has time to make a deeper pit where if you burn faster the pit will be shallower where some drive will have a harder time reading it. I would have to say it has something to do with longevity and not quality since it's digital after so 0's is 0's and 1's is 1's. Sorry for my English
 
you aren't the same paldo over on the minidisct forums are you?

anyway, i will sorta agree w/ your statement. I don't know how much validity it has tho, but burning at slower speeds a few years back would help w/ players that were older. at least, w/ a lot of the players i ran across.
 
I have noticed that with VCD's. There is more skipping, freeze frames in ones burned at 12x compared to one burned at 1x or 2x..
 
My experience shows that a good burner at 24/32/40x will burn just as good as a crappy cheapo burner can burn at 4x.

Media also makes a BIG difference. Good quality media will work at 40x in a majority of things where cheap media low quality stuff will not work in some CD players even at 4x.

With Nero it won't let me burn above the rated speed of the CD...at least with CDRW it refuses to allow me to burn 12x with a 4x CDRW.
 
Regardless of media quality, 40X cd's on my car's player will not work, but 24 below will. There is a difference, and I've verified this with other friends and car players. Whatever the difference is, it's there, however minor.

As far as quality, there is nothing perceptible that I or my family has detected.

DC
 
Originally posted by: Vinny_N
Hey, this is an interesting read...

CD Mastering - The Digital Myth It was written at the end of November 1999, but was last modified this June.

Hmmmm. Presents the view that burning at 1x and 2x even sound really different.
Click to expand...

Taken from the article:

You know that a copy of files on a hard drive makes a 100% identical copy! How can the sound change?

It baffles us somewhat. My Sonic Solutions dealer informed me that a MAJOR film sound editor could hear the difference in hard drives. When I have more time, I'll do some blind tests with some other engineers. There are some highly respected mastering folks that agree whole heartedly with you! But for now, here's more...

Q) My PC can produce a bit-for-bit copy of any CD (in good condition), including audio-CD, in 5 minutes. Less, if the copy is just on hard disk, rather than on CDR. The error-free state of this can be verified. If this is the case, how can an audiophile claim that a digital copy degrades the sound quality, that a green protective sleeve over the CD, or a stroke on the edge with a 'magic' red pen can reduce errors to the point of audible increase of sound quality? How can anyone claim that certain CDRs 'sound better' than others?

Dramatically better in some cases. I've listened to many many many cds. Every mastering engineer I know is FUSSY about what brand of cdrs we use, because.... they sound different. Different cdrs in different cd burners make different errors and there's more here http://www.digido.com/chart.html

Then be sure to click on Katz' article on Jitter. Here's an excerpt:

"When I started in this business, I was sceptical that there could be sonic differences between CDs that demonstrably contained the same data. But over time, I have learned to hear the subtle (but important) sonic differences between jittery (and less jittery) CDs. Clients were ... complaining about sonic differences that by traditional scientific theory should not exist. But the closer you look at the phenomenon of jitter, the more you realize that even minute amounts of jitter are audible, even through the FIFO (First in, First Out) buffer built into every CD player."

"CDRs recorded on different types of machines sound different to my ears. An AES-EBU (stand-alone) CD recorder produces inferior-sounding CDs compared to a SCSI-based (computer) CD recorder. "

"I've also observed that a 4X-speed SCSI-based CDR copy sounds inferior to a double-speed copy and yet again inferior to a 1X speed copy."
Click to expand...

This guy is smoking something. I declare this BS.


 
I waiting for someone to say something.

I thought the article was weird but I figure people can speak for themselves 🙂
 
nobody except a computer specifically designed to pickup the flaws or patterns in sounds could tell the difference. And the computer would probably find that 99% of the time it was a perfect match. BS all the way. Digital medium is made so it is always a perfect copy if there is no interruption in the actual copying.
 
There will be jitter on the output from the soundcard. There will NOT be jitter in the stored data. If there was, it wouldnt be digital.

Burning fast can lead to errors, CDs might not be able to handle the burnproof gaps, but the actual sound will the same.
 
Can't you scope the soundwave from a 1x recording and a 40x recording. See if there's more distortion. Keep everything the same just the recording speed is different.
 
When buring at faster speeds the pits may not be as deep or as long when compared to discs burned at slower speeds. This may induce errors because the pits may be interpited as something other than what was intended. This is where the theory of discs made at slower speeds are of better quality than discs made at faster speeds. Error correction is supposed to take care of this but if it is also different from the original then you may get something different from the original. This is all what if's but I guess that it could conceivably happen.
 
When buring at faster speeds the pits may not be as deep or as long when compared to discs burned at slower speeds. This may induce errors because the pits may be interpited as something other than what was intended
Click to expand...
What pits?! CD-R's don't have pits like regular cd's do. CD-R's work by a chemical reaction in dye caused by the laser. Buring at faster speeds may cause less of the dye to "burn" and may cause the bits to have blurry boundaries. It seems to me that some audio artifacts may occur if the cd audio player is having a hard time of reading data and even the error correcting isn't enough to fix the problem. But so long as this doesn't occur, there's going to be 100% fidelity since this IS digital we're talking about and not analog.
 
Originally posted by: wfbberzerker
Originally posted by: Vad3r
thx for the info. Should have mentioned that, I put together his system for him, and he's had it now 2 weeks. I was there yesterday, and this other friend was saying he should burn slower for quality.
Also, forgot to ask, CDs record speed. He had CDs he had bought a while ago that said 24x or 16x supported. For his 1st burn to test the drive, I said to him "phuk it, burn at 40x, worst that can happen is you make a bad cd". Well, CD works fine. Now I did choose 40x, perhaps the drive in turn went ahead and burned at supported speed of the CDR (didn't time it or anything). Do you really have to burn at the speed the CD says it was made for ?
I just know from reviews I've read on Plextor and Burnproof, that it's difficult to make a coaster.
My advice to him was burn it all at 40x. He has been now for 2 weeks and no coasters.
Click to expand...

there is a program that well run a test on a given cd-r or cd-rw and will tell you up to what speed your burner can burn it at. the only reason they are rated why they are (i believe) is because if you go to fast, you are more likely to burn a coaster. but thats total speculation on my part. if hes been burning at 40x for 2 weeks and no problems, i say let him keep doing it, and there should be no problems.

EDIT: here's the program
Click to expand...

Hey, now THAT'S a cool program! I like it very much. I have a Liteon 401248...possibly this proggy came integrated w/some of the software...but I don't remember seeing it before. In any case, it's a neat program to have this way you can check out whatever media you're about to burn to....I checked out my Fuji 16x CDRs; Smartburn says they can be burned up to 40x. I don't know about that, but I regularly burn them at 20x without a single coaster.
 
I will third the opinion of Sudheer Anne and KameLeon that burning any faster than 4x for VCD's/SVCD's will cause stuttering and freezing on playback on a DVD player. It may be all 1's and 0's, but it does make a difference.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top