"Under-Burning" to CD. Is this necessary?

A reply to a readers query in the "Boot Camp" section of Tuesday's Daily
Telegraph suggested that it might be best NOT to fill up a CD-R to its'
limit as the reliability of the recording medium is not always uniform and
does tend to tail off towards the outer rim of the disc, and that if you're
recording to an 80 minute disc blank, play safe and don't try to record more
than 72 minutes of music or 630mb of data.

This seems a bit over-cautious to me. I've never had any problems writing
right up to the capacity of the disc.

Anybody found any problems?

Mike O'Sullivan wrote:
A reply to a readers query in the "Boot Camp" section of Tuesday's Daily
Telegraph suggested that it might be best NOT to fill up a CD-R to its'
limit as the reliability of the recording medium is not always uniform and
does tend to tail off towards the outer rim of the disc, and that if you're
recording to an 80 minute disc blank, play safe and don't try to record more
than 72 minutes of music or 630mb of data.

This seems a bit over-cautious to me. I've never had any problems writing
right up to the capacity of the disc.

Anybody found any problems?

How important it is depends on how critical the information is to you.

Yes, error rate tends to increase toward the outside of a disc. Take an
imperfectly written disc and read the error information using your
favorited diagnostic program (e.g., CDSpeed). In addition, poor handling
is more likely to damage the outer portion than the center.

On the other hand, a well written line - one with few or no recoverable
errors, let alone unrecoverable ones - can be written to the ATIP limit
without trouble.

If by "I've never had any problems" you mean that the tracks haven't
failed, your criterion is too loose; by the time the track becomes
unreadable or noisy, you are far below the quality of write most would
consider acceptable.

Mike
--

http://www.mrichter.com/

Mike O'Sullivan wrote:
A reply to a readers query in the "Boot Camp" section of Tuesday's Daily
Telegraph suggested that it might be best NOT to fill up a CD-R to its'
limit as the reliability of the recording medium is not always uniform and
does tend to tail off towards the outer rim of the disc, and that if you're
recording to an 80 minute disc blank, play safe and don't try to record more
than 72 minutes of music or 630mb of data.

This seems a bit over-cautious to me. I've never had any problems writing
right up to the capacity of the disc.

Anybody found any problems?

How important it is depends on how critical the information is to you.

Yes, error rate tends to increase toward the outside of a disc. Take an
imperfectly written disc and read the error information using your
favorited diagnostic program (e.g., CDSpeed). In addition, poor handling
is more likely to damage the outer portion than the center.

On the other hand, a well written line - one with few or no recoverable
errors, let alone unrecoverable ones - can be written to the ATIP limit
without trouble.

If by "I've never had any problems" you mean that the tracks haven't
failed, your criterion is too loose; by the time the track becomes
unreadable or noisy, you are far below the quality of write most would
consider acceptable.

Mike
--

http://www.mrichter.com/

I know that from the Lite-On KProbe scans I've done of discs, I've never
seen any that had any drastic increase in error rate at the end of the disc,
unless it's from the disc not being able to handle the peak write speeds at
the outside edge. If you overburn the disc past the stated capacity, the
error rate may increase once you get past the official end of the disc..

--
Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada
To email, remove "nospam" from
Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/


"Mike O'Sullivan" wrote in message
...
A reply to a readers query in the "Boot Camp" section of Tuesday's Daily
Telegraph suggested that it might be best NOT to fill up a CD-R to its'
limit as the reliability of the recording medium is not always uniform and
does tend to tail off towards the outer rim of the disc, and that if
you're
recording to an 80 minute disc blank, play safe and don't try to record
more
than 72 minutes of music or 630mb of data.

This seems a bit over-cautious to me. I've never had any problems writing
right up to the capacity of the disc.

Anybody found any problems?

"Mike Richter" wrote in message
...
Mike O'Sullivan wrote:
A reply to a readers query in the "Boot Camp" section of Tuesday's Daily
Telegraph suggested that it might be best NOT to fill up a CD-R to its'
limit as the reliability of the recording medium is not always uniform
and
does tend to tail off towards the outer rim of the disc, and that if
you're
recording to an 80 minute disc blank, play safe and don't try to record
more
than 72 minutes of music or 630mb of data.

This seems a bit over-cautious to me. I've never had any problems
writing
right up to the capacity of the disc.

Anybody found any problems?

How important it is depends on how critical the information is to you.

Yes, error rate tends to increase toward the outside of a disc. Take an
imperfectly written disc and read the error information using your
favorited diagnostic program (e.g., CDSpeed). In addition, poor handling
is more likely to damage the outer portion than the center.

On the other hand, a well written line - one with few or no recoverable
errors, let alone unrecoverable ones - can be written to the ATIP limit
without trouble.

If by "I've never had any problems" you mean that the tracks haven't
failed, your criterion is too loose; by the time the track becomes
unreadable or noisy, you are far below the quality of write most would
consider acceptable.

Thanks. Well basically I mean that the "information", ie music, I've
recorded still sounds good.
I suppose I'll just have to be careful with handling.

On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 06:17:24 +0000 (UTC), "Mike O'Sullivan"
wrote:

Thanks. Well basically I mean that the "information", ie music, I've
recorded still sounds good.
I suppose I'll just have to be careful with handling.

We've been discussing disc failures in another thread, and what I've
found on my music CDs is that they get progressively harder to read as
you get further out on the disc, once the disc starts deteriorating.

For instance, the compilation in my Alpine car player now works fine
on the first 6 or 7 tracks, and will track all through the disc if I
let it play through, but if I try to skip to (say) the 10th track, it
takes it 30-40 seconds to pick it up again. The higher the track
number, the longer it takes, but once it starts playing, the sound is
fine.

On my home stereo player, it shows up as more skips on the later
tracks, and gets unlistenable on the last third of the disc.

I still don't underburn, but I do copy important discs more frequently
than I used to.



Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer

"Neil Maxwell" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 06:17:24 +0000 (UTC), "Mike O'Sullivan"
wrote:

Thanks. Well basically I mean that the "information", ie music, I've
recorded still sounds good.
I suppose I'll just have to be careful with handling.

We've been discussing disc failures in another thread, and what I've
found on my music CDs is that they get progressively harder to read as
you get further out on the disc, once the disc starts deteriorating.

For instance, the compilation in my Alpine car player now works fine
on the first 6 or 7 tracks, and will track all through the disc if I
let it play through, but if I try to skip to (say) the 10th track, it
takes it 30-40 seconds to pick it up again. The higher the track
number, the longer it takes, but once it starts playing, the sound is
fine.

On my home stereo player, it shows up as more skips on the later
tracks, and gets unlistenable on the last third of the disc.

I still don't underburn, but I do copy important discs more frequently
than I used to.

Thanks for that. It's usually only wave files from private and BBC
broadcasts which I burn up to the max. Maybe I'll start leaving a few
minutes free.