Losing quality through burning

[Rock Star 87]

Does burning a CD, any CD, result in any quality by burning the CD, assuming there were no errors or anything of the sort, and using a Memorex CD-R. just wondering.

 

[Rokket]

Are you asking about quality loss? There shouldn't be any quality loss at all. It's one of the advantages of digital recording. With analog, you lose some signal quality when transferring tape to tape. You don't get that with cd's and digital medium....

 

[bigwillz24]

Unless your talking about going from 24bit to 16bit however it shouldn't be THAT big of a deal to where you can hear it.

 

[Tifstorey]

You can change the speed of burning process, in which if you put it at the fastest, it can lose quality. But just keep it at around x8/x12 and you shouldnt be losing any quality.

 

[regebro]

Data CDs and audio CDs uses the same media and the same writers and the same everything, except that a data CD has much more error correction than an audio CD, and so can handle bigger errors. But at the same time, if you have such serious problems when writing your audio CD that it gives a really audible quality loss, then you would have problems with your data CDs as well.

So, if you are trying to show off the sound quality of your $50.000 mastering suite, you need to put the same type of care into your CD's. Otherwise you shouldn't have a problem.

 

[gvarko]

Drop the burn speed...

I found that burning at slower speeds kept the integrity of the mix more complete..

 

[Rock Star 87]

my drive's old, so it only burns at 4x anyway, and i never noticed anything audible, but just a curious question. also, would you lose more quality dubbing a tape than just recording it.

 

[The Green Hornet]

Yo RS:

Before digital, I mixed to tape. Depending on your gear, you can lose a great deal or just a little.

What you need for a good tape dub: Good tape. Sony UX Pro is almost impossible to find but I found it to be very good tape because it had a very good transport system within the cassette--many other brands of tape had poor tape and poor transport systems which leads to a poor dub.

I've never worked with a DAT but that was the "going" box for a while. I even joined the DAT club to keep the format in public hands. But, DAT quickly faded although there are still DAT boxes around and they should do a good job if you know what you are doing.

Some gear will let you burn "hot" to tape. I always did that and did not have too much trouble with clipping. But, I was using an 8 track Tascam 488 then.
I can still dub to tape from the SIAB Yam 2816 and I get a decent copy. Again, I dub the tracks hot, right up there in the clip zone. It is a savings when you need one song to send to someone and you dub to tape. I don't like to do one song on an 80 minute CD but sometimes we do what we need to do.

I recently sent an arrangement I did to a friend who sings and he dubbed the music from my tape into a CD and sang the song. Came out great.

I guess the bottom line is you need to try and experiment and see what happens with the gear you are using. There are many possibilities and discovering a few good moves makes for a lot of fun.

Green Hornet

 

[matt_macfarlane]

memorex

for audio CD-R's, i would stay away from Memorex if i were you. I know they always have the best deals, but the three times i've bought memorex CD-R's in the last 8 years, they've always come up with audible crackles & pops, even at slow burning speeds. so whenever i end up with a pile of memorex, i use them strictly for Data CD-R's and have not had a problem.

I've had good luck with Maxell, TDK, & Hi-Val though.