what's the difference between different COLOR CD-R media???

[j@cko]

The light blue seems the cheapest, but is there any catch there? lower qulaity? or what?


100 Spindle -$18.00
200 Spindle -$36.00
400 Spindle -$72.00
500 Spindle-$90.00

 

[j@cko]

any one?? knows the difference?

 

[IamDavid]

Nothin much. I've tried them all at all different speeds and found nothing. I've tried 20 different brands and found no important differences. A CD is a CD so go with the cheap CD's with a good burner. In my test I get less than 1 error per 50 disk using any type of disk. the one type of disk that I had zero errors with was a brand named KAO which had the yellow backs. I use a plextor CD burner.

 

[Imported]

Don't know.. but I've heard a dark blue colored disc is best for copying PSX games with.

 

[BigToque]

it may have to do with how the laser light reflects off the surface. i think the closer you can get to the standard silver/really shiny surface of a facroty pressed cd, the better quality the cd will be.

I've heard of some cd players that will not read audio cd's with blue surfaces, that will read audio cd's with green surfaces.

 

[ForeverSilky]

<< but I've heard a dark blue colored disc is best for copying PSX games with >>


I've found this to be true. I have a few psx backups and the ones that were burned on tdk dark blue disks are very easy for the psx to read.

 

[urbantechie]

<< I've heard of some cd players that will not read audio cd's with blue surfaces >>


Very true. (Portable though)

 

[j@cko]

what about the light blue? Will Sony's new G-Protection series of CD player reads it?? becuase I am thinking to purchase one.

 

[Imported]

All my cd players, including protables read blue discs like the TDK Cert. + and Verbatims DataLifePlus'.

 

[Danlz]

The answers are here: cdmediaworld dye

 

[Looney]

Generally the darker the better from my experience. Most burners nowadays will write even the cheapest CDRs... but how long that CDR will last is another question. I've got some generic ones and nice Sony ones that i made into audio CDs at the same time... they've been in my car for about 6 months now, and i've thrown most of the generic ones out already because they've been corrupted. Hissing and crackles, and sometimes the player won't even pick it up.

So if you're using the CDR for something that isn't that important, such as backing up Win2k Pro so that you don't accidentally sit on the CD (which i did!) and break it, then it's a good use. But if you're backing up something important (you're pirating the Win2k Pro CD and it's the only copy you'll have), then i would definitely go with something nicer.

 

[Radboy]

Use silver for audio CDs (or even gold). User darker blues for data.

 

[Bloodybrain]

Usually, light green or gold is phtalocyanine dye, and blue is cyanine. In my experience (with my burner) phtalocyanine-based discs are better in all aspects: they're less prone to errors when burned at high speed, and they work in every audio CD player I've tried. I can't say the same about most cyanine-based CDs (although some of them are not bad.) But cyanine dye is cheaper, so are the CDs... so it really depends on what you do with your CDs.

 

[NotoriousJTC]

Usually the silver/gold ones are better for burning, and shades of blue are worse when it comes to other machines reading them. Like cd-players.


BTW, this is my first post

 

[dcdomain]

Perhaps the reason for Playstation preferring the darker dye is because normal Playstation games are black cds...

 

[Mark R]

Nah. Playstation CDs are black so that they look nice - while the disc substrate appears black in the visible spectrum, in infra-red where reading occurs, it is completely transparent.

In my experience, pthalocyanine discs (silver/gold) have by far the best readability, and you should use these where possible.

If you are looking for reliable data storage then you should look at the disc construction first and the dye second - most CDRs fail by having the reflective layer peel off the dye, or by having the reflective layer scratched. Use a disc with a toughened top coating to help reduce the risk of this type of failure, e.g. Verbatim datalife +, BASF Ceramguard.

If you need maximum data life, then you should use discs with pthalocyanine dye and gold reflective layer - these are now difficult to find because of their high cost (each disc contains about $0.40 of gold) but are the only discs approved for archival storage by various government agencies. Mitsui Gold (Silver SG use pthalocyanine and 'silver' reflective layer) discs are built with this construction.

 

[andylawcc]

great find danlz

 

[Mday]

yeah, the cdmediaworld article is a great resource as is their database (of sorts) of discs is great too. NOTE, that article is outdated.

but the difference in quality cannot be asserted by looking at the dye color.

the quality of discs does not lay in how many coasters are produced, but how long the disc will retain its usefulness over time with regular usage.

all we can truly rely on are getting good drives, and media that the drive can burn. and media that when burned can be read by our devices (consoles, players, drives)...

manufacturers can say a disc will last 10 years, or 20 years or even 100 years, but do you even have computers that old? and even pressed cds (the types that are not writable, you know music CDs and what not) are already degrading, as in the first ever CDs, and such, due to regular usage.

there is always a catch, cheap $$$ = cheap quality in manufacturing.

some media are still highly priced because of the quality of the discs themselves. re, TDK has been known, by its users, to be high quality media... but some of their discs are NOT made in their factories, the cheapies, while others are, which cost more and of higher quality.