I think I know the answer to this but…
I was gettting some CD-Rs the other day and the Staples guy asked if he could help. I told him what I wanted and then he asked.
“What are you going to put on it?”
“Well, pictures actually”
“The HP disks are better for pictures.”
"What is the difference between pictures and any other data?’
“The HP ones are better for photos.”
I shurgged my shoulders and bought some HP disks.
The thing is that I just wasted several diskes trying to burn some photos. These were Memorex but I’ve had problems putting photos on Sony disks as well. I’ve been told to update my driver for my CD writer frequently and that if that problem persists to unintall the re-install the hardware.
But the HP worked fine.
So, if a CD-R is marked ‘for music’, should I only use that for music? Is there a difference?
I’ve never had a problem with any brand, except for Verbatim, which somehow freeze my computer and don’t let the CD-ROM drive door open so I can remove them. But that’s neither here nor there. I usually buy the big spindles of 100 CD-Rs, the cheapest kind so they often end up free after mail-in rebates, and they’ve worked just fine for music OR data (photos, etc).
The CD marked for music have an extra tax on them that supposedly goes to compensate the music copyright owners. Some decicated music CD writing hardware will only work with ones marked for music. But bits are bits. The photo bits are not different from the music bits.
There is a difference in some disks in the long lasting quality, some are made for archival purposes and are suppose to hold up better over time, IIRC cost about 50% more then normal ones.
Also the color of the disk sometimes makes a difference, but I can’t remember which color is better.
gazpacho has it correct: home-audio system CD recorders will only work with “audio” CD blanks (that contain a special encoding on them), and those blanks have an extra tax on them because the RIAA are a bunch of thieves. For computer-CD-making use, just get the “data” ones, which are cheaper anyway. They can be played in a regular CD-player after they are made.
For “which brand is best”, http://www.cdrfaq.org/ has some info–but if I am burning something critical, I just use the Mitsui Gold CDs. They are distinctive (easy to search for online and easily visually identifiable) and are some of the oldest, and are always among the highest-rated for data retention.
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The guy obviously had overstock of HP discs, and you helped him get rid of some. There is no difference in the ability to store data of any kind of disc, no matter how much it costs. As mentioned, the ones marked “music” cost more due to the cut that goes to ASCAP and BMI, and those discs work in stereo component CD writers, whereas ones not marked “music” are normally rejected by these machines.
Also, aren’t the music ones subject to lower standards for quality, since the players and such can compensate for slightly messed up data, but it’s bad for data because it’s harder to fix that?
I’ve not heard anything about lower standards of quality for music discs. All CD-Rs must conform to Red Book standards, which means that all discs have a minimum standard of quality, and all will work within a strictly defined set of parameters. To the best of my knowledge, the only difference between unlabelled CD-Rs and “music” CD-Rs is a bit of data in the TOC area which is read by standalone CD writers, but is ignored by computer CD writers. All it’s there for is to prevent you from using less-expensive CD-Rs to copy factory CDs. As if that’ll deter anybody!
Error correction is a whole other subject that I am unqualified to discuss. If a machine was to allow more errors during recording because it was able to compensate for them during playback, that still seems to me like it would deviate from Red Book. But it’s beyond my area of useful knowledge. Somebody else here is bound to show up in this thread and explain to us how it works.
According to the information Here, CD-R media made with the PhthaloCyanine or Advanced PhthaloCyanine dyes are the most long-lasting (claimed 100+ years). As the HP discs are actually made by Mitsui and use the dyes mentioned above, the Staples guy was correct (although he may not have known why).
Whoa! You have a cite for that? Are you telling me that I can’t record my own music (from my own mixer hooked to my own instruments and mics) without paying a tax to the RIAA?
Well it depends on your audio equipment. Some audio equipement will not work with regular CDRs and you need to buy the CDRs with the levy on them. I am not sure is tax is the absolutly correct word here.
If you have a standalone audio CD writer, you can only use “music” labelled CD-Rs in it. As soon as you’ve swiped your card at the store to buy those discs, you’ve paid that fee. To avoid this in the future, write all your CDs on your computer.
The difference between used car salesmen and electronics salesmen is that used car salesmen know they’re lying.
I had someone tell me that I needed a special snazzy cable to send digital surround sound to my receiver because, if I used a standard audio cable, the signal would be noisy. Uhm. Nope. That’s what happens with analog signals. With digital, it’ll either work perfectly, or it’ll be so noisy that you won’t get any decodable signal at all.
The same thing is true of pretty much every recordable tape format and minidiscs as well. The difference is that, while the music conglomerates can make a pretty good argument that music tapes are almost entirely used for reproducing copyrighted music, they can’t make that same argument for blank CDs.
AFAIK, there’s no such things as ‘music CD-R’ and ‘data CD-R’. All the CD-R I bought are capable of both. What makes a CD-R an audio cd is during the burning.
ExtraKun, please pay attention! If you have a standalone burner, you can only use the kind of CD-Rs that have the word “music” stamped on them. This is because they contain data that is read by standalone CD writers that identify them as the kind for which you paid the RIAA fee included in the higher price. No other kind of disc will work in these decks. The only difference between these CD-Rs and any other is that bit of identifying data in the TOC; that and the higher price.
The CD writer in a computer will accept any old kind of blank. It will write anything you want to put on it. You could take a “music” CD-R as described above, put it in your computer and record data on it. The only difference is that you would have paid more for that kind of CD-R than you would for another, unmarked CD-R.
All CD-Rs are capable of storing music or data, but only one kind of CD-R is able to be written in a stereo component standalone CD writer.
I remember back in the day you could buy data cassettes at radio shack. This was back when your PCs recorded data onto cassettes at 150 baud or some such ridiculously low bit rate. When you wanted to play a game you put the tape in and let it run for about 5 minutes while you made a sandwich after coming home from school. I don’t remember if there was much of a price difference.
I would guess they do the same thing as they do for lightfastness tests for photopaper, paint, or what-have-you. Use overly-intense lab conditions (high temperatures, bright lamps, big humidity fluxes, whatever might have any effect) and extrapolate from there.
Yes, if you use a stand-alone “home audio” type CD-R deck. The reason is because the only blank disks that work with those are the ones labelled “Audio”, and (in the US, and some other countries as well) the (country-specific) recording industry already got a piece of the blank-disk price that you paid: http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq01.html#S1-13
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