Best CD-R?

earlynovember73

New member
Hey guys. So this may have been covered but I'm wondering if anyone has any input on whether or not different brand CD-Rs may sound better than others. I've read some articles arguing both sides of this. If so, what CD-Rs do you find sound best?
 
Hey guys. So this may have been covered but I'm wondering if anyone has any input on whether or not different brand CD-Rs may sound better than others. I've read some articles arguing both sides of this. If so, what CD-Rs do you find sound best?

The difference isn't going to be in sound, but in bitrate errors and life expectancy. Taiyo Yuden are known to be the best CDr's available. Some people don't like them because the foil is light blue and don't look like a pressed CD. But they will probably outlast any other CDr out there.
 
Chili is right about sound quality: the only way different CD media can be of significantly 'lower fidelity' for digital audio is in the case of a high rate of read/write errors. It's no different to asking if a brand of hard drive or memory card sounds better - it's all just ones and zeros - though optical media are more error prone than other digital media. If most of your CDs burn OK, and they play OK on most players, it's very unlikely you can improve the sound by changing brand. If you want to obsess about it you can rip and re-burn several CDs and then CRC check the copies with the originals - though I figure on that being a waste of time myself...
Incidentally, some brands of disc are more or less compatible with certain models of burner - sometimes what seems a 'bad batch' of discs will work fine in a different burner - so the best recommendations for a brand of CD are those based upon use with the same model of burner.
Taiyo Yuden are a superb brand but I avoid 'tinted' CD-R discs these days: optically untinted ones seem to have a wider compatibility for playback, especially in old and/or cheap players. I do use Taiyo Yuden waterproof printable DVD-Rs - they have a unique ceramic print surface which is amazing - but read/write performance-wise much cheaper discs are easily good enough - the Taiyo discs are really very expensive unless you have very specific reasons to need their unique qualities.
 
Yup, digital 1s and 0s dont have a 'sound'.

Anything critical I always use Taiyo-Yudens.
(and I have discs from back in the $3000 1x-burner days when blanks were $30 EACH that still read with no problems...)
 
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