"Best" burner for audio CD high quality ?

Can someone recommend a writer that would be very high quality for burning
audio CDs ?

Now using AOpen burner and not satisfied with the audio output, even when
burning at low speed ( 4x)

TIA !!

On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 22:47:06 +0200, "MoiMeme" wrote:

Can someone recommend a writer that would be very high quality for burning
audio CDs ?

Now using AOpen burner and not satisfied with the audio output, even when
burning at low speed ( 4x)

TIA !!


In what way are you not satisfied with it? The AOpen drives aren't
exactly my favorites in the hardware arena, but typically problems
with audio CDs aren't due to the drive.

1. Poor playback quality or low volume. This is due to your choice of
source material and/or the burning program. If the volume's a problem
you need to equalize the signal. If you're getting a stuttering or
warbling effect, it's either an issue with the encoding of your source
file, or the computer's not fast enough to decode it on the fly. If
it's a compressed format like OGG or MP3, decompress it to WAV first,
if your computer can't keep up -- whatever you do, do NOT cross
convert OGG and MP3 to each other, as that introduces some really
nasty artifacts.

2. Skipping or odd read problems? One possibility is the burn speed,
but you're already throttling it down to 4x. Another is the media.
It's not just the quality of the discs. Some older players won't play
anything except discs made with the original cyanine dye (the light
bluish green dye) or play with great difficulty. If that's the case,
you may need to buy a new player. Cyanine dye based discs are still
available, but they're not all that easy to find, except perhaps
online.

If you must replace your drive? I suggest the following:

BenQ (DW 16xx series)
NEC (ND 35xx or 45xx series)
Pioneer (110D)

---------------------------------------------
Thanks.


MCheu

Ripping with EAC latest version to wav no compression
Burning with Feurio latest version; lowest speed available ( that is
accepted by the burner : lower does not respond)

Problem I have isn't volume / jumps / ... BUT quality and detail of sound
when playing back on my home HiFi ( particularly loss of fine details in
classical music, mostly in the medium range).

Have tried burning with my NEC DVD 3500A with better results, but still not
as good as original CD

"MCheu" a écrit dans le message de news:
...
On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 22:47:06 +0200, "MoiMeme" wrote:

Can someone recommend a writer that would be very high quality for burning
audio CDs ?

Now using AOpen burner and not satisfied with the audio output, even when
burning at low speed ( 4x)

TIA !!


In what way are you not satisfied with it? The AOpen drives aren't
exactly my favorites in the hardware arena, but typically problems
with audio CDs aren't due to the drive.

1. Poor playback quality or low volume. This is due to your choice of
source material and/or the burning program. If the volume's a problem
you need to equalize the signal. If you're getting a stuttering or
warbling effect, it's either an issue with the encoding of your source
file, or the computer's not fast enough to decode it on the fly. If
it's a compressed format like OGG or MP3, decompress it to WAV first,
if your computer can't keep up -- whatever you do, do NOT cross
convert OGG and MP3 to each other, as that introduces some really
nasty artifacts.

2. Skipping or odd read problems? One possibility is the burn speed,
but you're already throttling it down to 4x. Another is the media.
It's not just the quality of the discs. Some older players won't play
anything except discs made with the original cyanine dye (the light
bluish green dye) or play with great difficulty. If that's the case,
you may need to buy a new player. Cyanine dye based discs are still
available, but they're not all that easy to find, except perhaps
online.

If you must replace your drive? I suggest the following:

BenQ (DW 16xx series)
NEC (ND 35xx or 45xx series)
Pioneer (110D)

---------------------------------------------
Thanks.


MCheu

There's no credible evidence that the burner makes any difference at all in
audio quality for playback, assuming that jitter is not unusually high.

Any of the LiteOn CDRW drives will perform very well for ripping without
errors.

Burning at low speeds is clearly a bad choice with modern high-speed media
and high-speed drives. Burn quality will be much lower. The best choice with
most drives is to use top-quality media and burn at 32x or 24x depending on
the drive and media in use. This will produce the highest quality burn with
lowest jitter.
The only drives that produce decent quality at low speed are audio
recorders.


"MoiMeme" wrote in message
...
Ripping with EAC latest version to wav no compression
Burning with Feurio latest version; lowest speed available ( that is
accepted by the burner : lower does not respond)

Problem I have isn't volume / jumps / ... BUT quality and detail of sound
when playing back on my home HiFi ( particularly loss of fine details in
classical music, mostly in the medium range).

Have tried burning with my NEC DVD 3500A with better results, but still
not
as good as original CD

"MCheu" a écrit dans le message de news:
...
On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 22:47:06 +0200, "MoiMeme" wrote:

Can someone recommend a writer that would be very high quality for
burning
audio CDs ?

Now using AOpen burner and not satisfied with the audio output, even
when
burning at low speed ( 4x)

TIA !!


In what way are you not satisfied with it? The AOpen drives aren't
exactly my favorites in the hardware arena, but typically problems
with audio CDs aren't due to the drive.

1. Poor playback quality or low volume. This is due to your choice of
source material and/or the burning program. If the volume's a problem
you need to equalize the signal. If you're getting a stuttering or
warbling effect, it's either an issue with the encoding of your source
file, or the computer's not fast enough to decode it on the fly. If
it's a compressed format like OGG or MP3, decompress it to WAV first,
if your computer can't keep up -- whatever you do, do NOT cross
convert OGG and MP3 to each other, as that introduces some really
nasty artifacts.

2. Skipping or odd read problems? One possibility is the burn speed,
but you're already throttling it down to 4x. Another is the media.
It's not just the quality of the discs. Some older players won't play
anything except discs made with the original cyanine dye (the light
bluish green dye) or play with great difficulty. If that's the case,
you may need to buy a new player. Cyanine dye based discs are still
available, but they're not all that easy to find, except perhaps
online.

If you must replace your drive? I suggest the following:

BenQ (DW 16xx series)
NEC (ND 35xx or 45xx series)
Pioneer (110D)

---------------------------------------------
Thanks.


MCheu

Dan G wrote:

There's no credible evidence that the burner makes any difference at all in
audio quality for playback, assuming that jitter is not unusually high.

Any of the LiteOn CDRW drives will perform very well for ripping without
errors.

Burning at low speeds is clearly a bad choice with modern high-speed media
and high-speed drives. Burn quality will be much lower. The best choice with
most drives is to use top-quality media and burn at 32x or 24x depending on
the drive and media in use. This will produce the highest quality burn with
lowest jitter.
The only drives that produce decent quality at low speed are audio
recorders.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say you should burn at high
speed.


--
Paul (Everyone I know goes away in the end)
-------------------------------------------------------
Stop and Look
http://www.geocities.com/dreamst8me/

Paul Heslop wrote:

Dan G wrote:

There's no credible evidence that the burner makes any difference at all in
audio quality for playback, assuming that jitter is not unusually high.

Any of the LiteOn CDRW drives will perform very well for ripping without
errors.

Burning at low speeds is clearly a bad choice with modern high-speed media
and high-speed drives. Burn quality will be much lower. The best choice with
most drives is to use top-quality media and burn at 32x or 24x depending on
the drive and media in use. This will produce the highest quality burn with
lowest jitter.
The only drives that produce decent quality at low speed are audio
recorders.


I don't think I've ever heard anyone say you should burn at high
speed.

I'm still using my old Mat****a 4x SCSI burner, which has always burned
excellent quality audio at 4x. Using high-speed media at this low speed
has not affected my results.

Sunny

Sunny wrote:

Paul Heslop wrote:

Dan G wrote:

There's no credible evidence that the burner makes any difference at all in
audio quality for playback, assuming that jitter is not unusually high.

Any of the LiteOn CDRW drives will perform very well for ripping without
errors.

Burning at low speeds is clearly a bad choice with modern high-speed media
and high-speed drives. Burn quality will be much lower. The best choice with
most drives is to use top-quality media and burn at 32x or 24x depending on
the drive and media in use. This will produce the highest quality burn with
lowest jitter.
The only drives that produce decent quality at low speed are audio
recorders.


I don't think I've ever heard anyone say you should burn at high
speed.

I'm still using my old Mat****a 4x SCSI burner, which has always burned
excellent quality audio at 4x. Using high-speed media at this low speed
has not affected my results.

Sunny

I must admit I seemed to be able to burn higher back when I had an 8x
than the last few burners I have had, all of which were high speed. I
just don't trust the gear now, nor the discs, to blast through
anything at max speed. the things I put on disc I want to keep, family
photos or artwork, things I'd like to keep and not risk a burn failing
soon after the act, which has happened to my high speed burns.

--
Paul (Take my hand, I'm standing right here)
-------------------------------------------------------
Stop and Look
http://www.geocities.com/dreamst8me/

Paul Heslop wrote:
Sunny wrote:

Paul Heslop wrote:


Dan G wrote:


There's no credible evidence that the burner makes any difference at all in
audio quality for playback, assuming that jitter is not unusually high.

Any of the LiteOn CDRW drives will perform very well for ripping without
errors.

Burning at low speeds is clearly a bad choice with modern high-speed media
and high-speed drives. Burn quality will be much lower. The best choice with
most drives is to use top-quality media and burn at 32x or 24x depending on
the drive and media in use. This will produce the highest quality burn with
lowest jitter.
The only drives that produce decent quality at low speed are audio
recorders.


I don't think I've ever heard anyone say you should burn at high
speed.

I'm still using my old Mat****a 4x SCSI burner, which has always burned
excellent quality audio at 4x. Using high-speed media at this low speed
has not affected my results.

Sunny


I must admit I seemed to be able to burn higher back when I had an 8x
than the last few burners I have had, all of which were high speed. I
just don't trust the gear now, nor the discs, to blast through
anything at max speed. the things I put on disc I want to keep, family
photos or artwork, things I'd like to keep and not risk a burn failing
soon after the act, which has happened to my high speed burns.

Indeed, that's why I resist the urge to "upgrade" - and even picked up a
couple of identical 4x burners for pocket change to keep as spares.

My equipment might be slow, but I don't mind waiting for results I can
trust - the discs I burned 10 years ago all read flawlessly today. More
recently I've had bad experiences with cheap media becoming unreadable
within months, so I try to buy quality media and read test it regularly
after burning.

I've noticed a correlation between the amount of time my old burner
takes to "accept" a blank and the longevity of the result. I've not had
a failure of any disc where the "busy" light went off within a couple of
seconds of closing the tray, whereas all the bad discs took at least 5
seconds - in some cases much longer. While I'm not suggesting "accept
time" can be used to assess media quality, it has proved to be a fairly
reliable indicator IME.

I almost lost all our Summer 2003 family photos to a bad disc - none of
the optical drives in regular use here could read it. As a last resort,
I fired up an ancient Sun box I hadn't gotten around to tossing out or
donating to a museum. I did not expect the 2x Toshiba XM4101B drive
(manufactured 1993) in the Sun to read CDRs at all, but it eventually
retrieved the entire contents of the faulty disc :-)

Sunny

MoiMeme wrote:
Can someone recommend a writer that would be very high quality for burning
audio CDs ?

Now using AOpen burner and not satisfied with the audio output, even when
burning at low speed ( 4x)

The consensus among serious testers and archivists is that the 8x
Plextors were the best made. The margin from there to the 12x was slight
and the 12x have BURNProof, so in practical terms they are the 'best'
drives. You may be able to find one refurbished. There is no consensus
on the best (or 'least poor') combination drive when writing CDs.

Highest quality recording on CD depends on your drive but generally is
in the range of 8-16x. However, modern (inexpensive) high-speed media
may not be optimum at such low speeds. If you have a need to write at 4x
and can stand the price tag, check out the archival MAM-A media and
those made for medical imaging and records.

Mike
--

http://www.mrichter.com/

There's a long thread on the diyAudio forum discussing the better (yes,
better) sound quality a copy can give over the original.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showt...&threadid=6545