CD-R media quality affecting Audio quality

MrLip

New member
Does the CD-R media quality have anything to do with the quality of audio read from it?

In my experience, I haven't noticed a difference in audio quality whether I use good media (ie. Kodak) or shitty media (ie. no-name brands), but I've got a friend who
claims that when he uses cheap media he gets inferior sounding audio CDs (lack of clarity, reduced treble response).

I thought the only difference between cheap and expensive media were things like durability, longevity, and readability. I didn't think that audio quality was a factor (assuming that the CD can be read properly).

Any expert opinions?
 
A short story:

The last CD thing I finished. I burned this on a few different types of media, because I ran out of Mitsui's. I burned 1 on BASF, which was fine. I burned one on Mitsuko, and the errors were obvious. These are real errors though, obvious glitches/dropouts.

This got me very paranoid. I started listening to material even more closely than normal. I started to hear glitches that were not even there. On one particuliar song it sounded like a dropout in the left channel. I reburned, tried other media. Stupid me. I listened to the source material. It's not a glitch. The guitarist(me) didn't quite hit the bridge as well, but it sounded like a glitch (to me).

Moral of this short story. Performance errors can sound like glitches, to the over analytical types out there.


-------------------

But media does matter. It is the message after all.

Mitsui's are good, Kodak's are good. Cheapo generics can be good.

Any errors you encounter will be obvious.
 
Hmmmmmmm...

I recently started looking into this whole thing with that "other" thread about burn speeds and what not.

The bottom line is really this. Your burner will burn to certain media types better then others. The burner can be optimized to burn to one of the different media formulations better then other types. That is not to say that it can't burn to ALL the different formulations, just that is may burn to one type better then others. This is a good reason why you should follow the recommendations of the manufacture of your burner.

Also, you should investigate at what speed your burner burns audio content best! Really, even though audio content is just 1 and 0's just like DATA stuff on a CDR, with DATA you enjoy a level of error correction when you use the CDR to install an application or restore a file, then a CD player would provide when it is streaming audio. The errors encountered in a burn with DATA CD's will not effect the usefullness of the DATA unless the errors in significant, in which case, the burn probably would have been terminated by the software that was controlling the burner. But audio CAN start to sound really funny if there enough errors in it for the simple fact when you play a audio CD, the error correction is an "averaging" type of algorythem, and also that if the errors is unfixable, you will hear dropouts if the error is long enough (at least around 12 samples long or there abouts).

Oh crap! Go to these links! They will provide you with enough reading material for awhile and brush you up on the facts.

http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/

http://www.emediapro.net/EM1998/starrett10.html

Ed
 
I've been really happy with Taiyo Yuden CDRs from Musicians Friend @$0.69 in a jewel case. They're the silver ones rated at a 16x burn.
 
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