My friend and I were just debating if there is really a difference between a data cdr and an audio Cdr. Is there? Or is it just a ploy to get you to buy more cd’s? I seem to remember someone mentioning that a data cd will not play in some stereo systems. What’s the difference between the two if any?
If you’re talking about a blank cd that you can write to, then no, they’re the same. You can write audio or data (audio is really just data anyway in a specific format).
I have found, however, that sometimes lower quality dye can cause some music CD players to not be able to read the disc. For example, blue dye is supposedly the lowest quality, and is probably not recommended for making music CDs. Thus an “audio” CDR may have the better dye, where the “data” CDR would have the cheaper dye, since CD-ROM lasers are usually more powerful and don’t have a hard time reading them.
Consumer CD recorders aren’t supposed to record to “data” blank CD-Rs. The only difference between an audio and data blank is that the audio contains a code allowing a consumer recorder to record to it. The extra price of the audio blank goes to the recording industry.
A computer CD burner will burn audio or data to either one.
There is a royalty fee built into the price of blank tape cassettes, also, for the same reason.
Arjuna34
You mean stereos that have a CD-recording capability? Or do you mean CD-ROM writers?
I mean a consumer CD recorder that works like a tape recorder, i.e. one of these. As I mentioned earlier, a computer CD burner can write audio to either type of blank.
Arjuna34
That’s what I thought. That’s pretty wacked that they won’t work with regular CD-Rs. I didn’t know that, thanks for giving the Straight Dope (and making me look dumb :D)
If you don’t live near a “Frys” electronics then you might not know what I’m talking about or be able to confirm it but the bundles of 50 CD-R blanks I usually buy are of the cheaper “blue” variety and are listed as “ideal for audio recording”. The silver and gold variety are always more expensive and list data and multimedia as the preferred content so I think there is something of a mixture of meanings here.
The media designed for audio is kinda’ cheap compared to the media for data only, also as noted some audio only CD-R devices will not record data (or are not supposed to. I read an interesting article on adding MOD chips so you can copy any CD on one of the Sony recorders as raw data) wheras the CD-R and RW drives for computers can record most any media you want but here comes the third problem that makes a difference:
“Track At Once” vs “Disk At Once” recording methods. With a CD-R/RW drive in your computer it is very difficult to copy one track at a time to any type of disk when in audio mode. Wheras when compiling a data CD it’s easy to do. So if you want to make a music mix CD you pretty much have to rip all the track you want to lay down to your hard drive and copy them all at once as a “Disk At Once” rahter than “Track At Once”. I think this has something to do with the gaps between tracks on audio CDs’ and how they don’t mesh from disk to disk. I have used a variety of burning software and still have this problem of convenience.
p.s. I’m now using Nero and it is by far the best software I have come across for multi-purpose use. Not one single bad burn yet and I always burn at 8x.
We talked about this once, the person was very persistent about knowing why they aren’t made the same & how. Audio only cds here cost more, which doesn’t make sense.
Data cds must be perfect because very byte counts, its not the same with audio cd’s.