When Good CD-R's Go Bad

[nrgbeat]

Has anyone had a CD-R get a staticy sound after a few months?

I bought a bunch in an office supply store a while back. They sounded fine when I first burned them, but now they sound bad.

[Noman]

I baught a cd burner to the computer when they were quite new. I think I payed like $1300 :o
The first music cd:s I burned still plays fine.

As long as you don't leave them on the dashboard in summertime etc they should last 10 to 25 years.

with prices going down to under 25 cents for a cd-r maybe the quality has gone down too?

[dfc99bb]

Originally Posted by nrgbeat

I bought a bunch in an office supply store a while back.

What brand were they? A'no-name' brand may be cheap but have poor quality control during manufacture.

[QUINNY]

NRG: This is probably due to the error count going up and means in effect that the CD-Rs in question can only get worse from now on. It may be down to the dye being unstable when they were made, UV light ageing the dye layer and causing this instability or just down to poor QC at the manufacturing plant, but this is less common nowadays. It might possibly be something to do with the laser in your CD player not tracking the groove properly, in which case your CD player's laser assembly might either need a clean or some attention someday soon.

Despite what is written and said about CD-R by the manufacturers, I doubt if any of them will be worth a light in 20 years time. I have too many CD-Rs that I burned just a few yaers ago that are now frisbees. They've been stored in the proper way, were good brands (Mitsui/TDK) and now they're useless. Give me Minidisc any day. Touch wood, I've not suffered any of the problems associated with CD-R, when using Minidisc.

[Videoskooter]

Yep, Q is right! Too many people are relying on CD-R's and they will be very dissapointed in a few years! Even good quality discs will "pulverize", that is if you don't back-up on a hard disk, you will lose many of your favourite stuff.

I place all my music on an external hard disk (200 GB) which is never running when I'm on the net. If a virus hits my PC's hard disk, I always have the complete back-up.

That's my best advice to people who want to burn their pics or music. If a CD-R isn't working properly one day, you just burn another one from the mothership.

[Disco Funk]

Wow, you guys have had some serious horror stories. Me...I've had no problems. I've stuck to brands like Fuji and Sony, and have been burning CDs for about 5 years now. The first ones I did are in just as good shape as the ones I burned last week. I've had maybe one or two bad experiences. One was because I chipped off the metallic layer by accident on one CDR; and the other I thought pasting on a label would be a cool thing to do, only to discover that it mucked up the disc speed in my CD walkman. Oh yeah, I listen to some CDRs over and over again, without any loss in quality.

Disco Funk

[DJ Bozo]

The best brand, at least as of a year ago when I stopped researching, is widely considered to be Taiyo-Yuden from Japan. You can do a google search and find a number of mail-order outlets that sell them unbranded. No, they won't be as cheap as buying locally (due to sales, rebates, etc.) but they were considered the best for many years for their longevity, less read/write errors (which most software hides from you when you burn them if they are 'recoverable'), etc.

If you can find a pack of Fuji CD's that are "Made In Japan" instead of Taiwan or China, those are Taiyo's but I think Fuji has since gone all chinese for their manufacturing.

[Mixmachine]

I've had problems with a couple of Sony's I burned a few years back, they don't play in my car player any more as other CDRs work fine, forums are all full of horror stories with CDRs, so after researching testimonies in various forums the consensus is that Rytek or Ridata (same manufaturers) are the best and as good (DVDs also) as those expensive Taiyo-Yuden which are top of the line, bargain brands are not reliable as I read often they don't even go through QC before shipping, some no-name bargain deals can even be Rytek but they are not the same quality so "they' say, ( one needs to have special software to read the brand info on cdrs) just recently got a Ridata 50 CDR OEM w/o spindle deal from Newegg for 8.99 plus shipping, claiming to last 20 years or something, burned a couple w/o problems so far, I guess time will tell :-? .

[K-Bee]

I've never had any problems with cd-r's whatsoever, not even no-name ones. Some are about 6 years old by now and play fine. Maybe I'm just lucky.
Suppose we shouldn't really count on any media where you cannot physically "see" the music (no groove = nothing certain :lol: )

[soulsta]

I have a hardon karmon cd recorder and bought memorex cd blanks that are for computer use and audio recorder use. I have been transfering my lp's and cassettes to cd. when I make them they play fine in the house but in my car they sound distorted and won't play. does anyone know why this happens? these are fresh off the press cd's that I make

[QUINNY]

Originally Posted by soulsta

I have a hardon karmon cd recorder and bought memorex cd blanks that are for computer use and audio recorder use. I have been transfering my lp's and cassettes to cd. when I make them they play fine in the house but in my car they sound distorted and won't play. does anyone know why this happens? these are fresh off the press cd's that I make

This will more than likely be down to mistracking by your car player. Maybe the laser in the car player is slightly out of focus or the servo isn't quite right. Otherwise, you are aware that, in the main, car systems are basically very distorted compared to home systems, due in part to the hostile environment and that if you have a super loud system, you're trying to push around large amounts of air in a very small space.