Noik wrote in message ...
On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:03:45 -0400, "Rhino"
wrote:

Once upon a time I was kinda up-to-date on what was going on with CD
media/burners. That was back when it was constantly evolving with
higher burn speeds, different dyes being used by different
manufacturers, etc. Things have stabilized now, at least as far as
burn speeds go, and it's a technology that's looking at End Of Life
eyeball to eyeball. And when it got to the point where it all "just
worked" for me, I stopped paying attention. Burner/media compatibility
used to be *very* important. It probably isn't now. But I'd bet that
there are *lots* of crappy burners on the market now.

So maybe the best move would be to try a different brand of media?

For CDRW? Dunno, maybe. I'd guess not, there's no way around the
lower reflectivity.

It's a
LiteOn burner - model DH-20A4H - so perhaps the website will indicate
brands
of CD-RWs that work well with it.

It might, but I'd guess that media is so standardized these days
that you won't find info like that. Liteon had a *very* good
reputation back when I was paying attention. I had one, and they'd
regularly update the firmware to accomodate the new media that the
manufacturers were coming out with.

I dug up the manual for the burner and it specifies recommended media. For
CD-RW, it breaks them into three categories:
- low speed: CMC, Daxon, Gigastorage, Infordisc, LeadData, MCC, Princo,
Prodisc, Ricoh, Ritek
- high speed: CMC, Daxon, Fornet, Gigastorage, InfoDisc, LeadData, MCC,
NanYa, Princo, Prodisc, Ricoh, Ritek
- ultra speed: CMC, Daxon, Infodisc, Mitsubishi, Prodisc, Ritek

Of course they don't bother to clarify what they mean by "low speed", "high
speed", or "ultra speed". I assume this has something to do with burning
speeds, which are 1X, 2X, and 4X in my case. You don't happen to know what
they mean by low, high or ultra speed do you? Perhaps its a standard
industry term?

Also, they play the Cover Your Ass game by saying that all of their
recommendations are subject to change without notice, just in case one of
those manufacturers starts generating large quantities of crap.


(And then maybe I can actually find one of
those brands in the stores....)

That *is* a bit tricky. Manufacturers generally don't put their
brand on media, and brands generally buy from several manufacturers.
But stay away from Memorex. I really do believe that they buy the
dregs that didn't meet the specs of other brands.

I don't remember seeing ANY of the different recommended brands listed above
in my local stores but I could look around; maybe I'll get lucky. But it
seems like a crapshoot. After all, aren't most of the house brands that you
buy at places like Staples actually made by a major manufacturer and the
store then just puts its house brand on it? So maybe the Staples CD-RWs I
have _are_ one of the recommended brands for this drive. Or not. The stores,
of course, are sworn not to tell you what brand you are really buying....

For what it's worth, I mostly use Memorex media in the burner - I mostly
burn DVDs - and I've had very good luck with them. You may be right about
their overall quality but I don't have any bad experiences with them.

The other alternative would be a different burner, which wouldn't be
completely crazy either. I've never been able to get the DMA to work on
this
burner although I've got a question in to LiteOn about that; maybe they'll
have a solution. Burners are pretty cheap these days....

Not having DMA could kinda suck. But not like in the old days where
if the burner had a "buffer underrun" it would present you with a
coaster. ;-)

Are there any CD/DVD burners that have a particularly good reputation and
are also affordable and work with most of the major brands of media?

Based on what I know from years ago, I would say Liteon. ;-)

So I'm using one of the best-regarded burners, appropriate software and the
right techniques but my CD-RWs are still duds and no one can actually give
me an actionable plan for getting better results? Darn! Some days, you just
can't win....

Maybe I'll just have to burn CD-Rs then.

--
Rhino