the voodoo of burning audio to disc

[@?,*???&?]

You guys notice any difference burning audio discs at multi-speed (8x or quicker) than burning at 1x?

[markpar]

Burning at 1x is generally more error-free than burning at 8x. Sometimes I can hear the difference, depending on the source material.

I pretty much always burn audio (for final mixes) at 1x.

-mark

[cassembler]

This is quite a hot topic; I've heard as many arguments as there are burn speeds.

One other story (as opposed to the above) is that most current CDR media work best at higher speeds, depending on the burner. The advice I stick to is burn at half of the max speed of the burner, of course following the traditional tips (burning from an image on a defragmented drive). The error rates that I get from the mfg's are all well-within acceptable limits.

(I had a CDR get refused a couple of years ago trying to burn at one speed, and since then, I've always burned at half max with no problems).

For those interrested, I do have access to error testing machines, but it's not cheap. See the studio listings page.

[joel hamilton]

I have never really tried to figure out what is best, but I have been burning production masters at 1 or 2x and listeners at 12x lately.

Simply a leap of faith that the error rate will be lower at 1x....

I think it is because I was second guessing my ears after all the arguements with total freakers about stuff like this. The same people who claim to hear the difference in humidity levels in the tracking room, but dont know a good song if it kicked them in the crotch....

[Professor]

I know that when Alesis was working on the Masterlink the first generation came out with a 4x burner with a speed that could not be changed - that is it always burned at four times speed. The second generation came with an eight times burner as do all of the current models. After substantial testing Alesis told the Masterlink Operating System to only burn at four times speed because the errors were increasing and the signal was degrading. Don't know if that helps your situation much, but I sure love the Alesis decks - I own two and I bought two for the school. Naturally you should make sure your discs are rated for 8x, 16x, etc. but also keep in mind that those write times are for data which has a different error correction scheme than audio since it doesn't play back in real time.
-Jeremy

[@?,*???&?]

I asked this question because I have sat with Mark Chalecki at Capitol Mastering and we have done some testing. To our ears, the bottom end seems to be lessened at multi-speed. That said, we also utilized the Audioprism CD Stoplight on blank discs prior to burning and the best we heard our master sound was to burn at 1x with the CD Stoplight edge treatment. I've taken to sending all masters to manufacturing with edge treatment to ensure the integrity of the playback while the glass master is made.

Laser scatter is an icky, icky thing...