I was reading somewhere long ago (sorry, don't remember where now) about the relationship of write speeds and data integrity.
Every mastering house I have talked with burns MASTER QUALITY CDR's at 2X speed. Not 1X, not 4X, but 2X. The techincal article I read suggested that it had more to do with machanical considerations more than anything else.
It claimed to at 1X speed, the burning was open to lazer errors due to external vibrations that you cannot control while writing (note, it said that 1X speed is okay, just that it takes the real time to burn it which creates more opportunity for external vibrations to come into play). At 4X speed, the actual burner creates these vibration errors (possibly) by spinning the disk at the faster speed. At 2X speed, you half the write time without making the burner vibrate unneccesarily. Makes sense to me, and I use this while burning Master Quality CDR's for clients.
My Sony burner has never shown an error while writing (I have only had one disk not burn properly, and that had to do with me messing around with another app while I was writing, a big no no while writing disks). I have never had a disc come back because of excessive errors on it that made it unusable by a duplication facility. I have made digital copies of CD's on my hard drive using ripping software and using the digial I/O or my soundcard from another CD player with digital out, and burned new CD's of these files that sound exactly like the original CD that where professionally manufactured. So, my EIDE burner is adequate for the job. It does not produce errors in the magnitude that corrupt the disks while writing. You CAN have a disk with many errors on it that will play just fine on a CD player, but would be rejected by a duplication plant. I suspect that way back when (like a year or two ago..
) the cheaper CD burners and old computer mother boards that had slow and somewhat unreliable PCI and IDE buss issues could mess up writing "exact digial copies" of the info on your hard drive. But in the now competitive market of CDRW hardware, it would be suicide for a manufacture to produce products that do not have this ability. I suppose the main differences now are how well the hardware will hold up more than anything else and how well the hardware deals with making sure that external vibrations to do disrupt the lazer while burning. It is all getting better as time goes on.
Anyway, 2X speed is standard. Good media is important. Most of it is the same, but I have heard that Kodak's stuff is not all that reliable unless used with their burners (dont' even know where to buy a Kodak burner..).
While burning, don't do anything else. If your system is passing the system tests that hopefully your software interface has available, you should have no problems burning a disk. If you are getting buffer underruns, you have another problem that needs to be looked at. Most likely, you have a screen saver employed (another no no when burning disks..in fact, my Sony HotBurn software detects a screen saver is engaged and will not let me burn the disk untill I change the setting in control panel) or your files are really fragemented if you are getting buffer underruns. So, just make sure that you defrag before burning if you have just did extensive (and I mean extensive) editing, don't have any other app's open, and turn off you screen saver if you are using one (why are they called screen savers still, video monitors have not needed screen savers for several years now, why not call them "cool things to look at if I am not using my computer for awhile...
), and burn at 2X speed. Your CD's should come out just fine.
Ed
