CD-Rs and Music CD-Rs

I am in the “business” of making audio CD’s. I used to always buy plain old CD-Rs for the purpose, but now there are CD-Rs labeled strictly for music use. My question is what is the actual difference between regular CD-Rs and Music CD-Rs? should i pay the extra couple bucks for them or is it just a marketting ploy?


PyroSean@aol.com

This is OT but I thought there were two types of music CDs. One where someone got royalties and one where they didn’t.

Markxxx is correct.

Most consumer “console” CD Recorders (with a few known expections) will only work with “Audio CDs,” which include a royalty kick-back to a cartel of Music Industry organizations to compensate for “illegal copying.”

These Audio CDs contain a flag that allows recording. Computer CDR blanks lack that flag and the player will not record to them.

Some early console recorders don’t look for the flag and thus will work with the cheaper generic CDR media. I have also heard of a “swap trick” that lets you use generic CDR in most consoles.

Thanks Mark and Mojo. It makes sense to me. A friend of mine has a CD Writer that only works with the music discs. Mine is older, so anything works.

Thanks again, you guys are awesome.

Never knock on Death’s door. Ring the doorbell and run away, he hates that.

I’ve had a CD-RW for my computer for quite some time now, and I can write from music CD’s to CD-R’s or RW’s at will. It works beautifuly. The music CD-R’s do not seem to be any better. The one thing that I have noticed is that the vast majority of commerical CD players (not in computers) cannot read CD-RW’s

The only difference between regular CDRs and “Audio” CDRs is about $4. If you burn a .WAV file to either CD and your CD recording software has an option for Audio CD, then you will have a CD that is playable in ANY CD player. I was just listening to Ben Harper on a CompUSA generic CDR ($30 for 50- great deal!) in my car’s CD player. There is no difference in audio quality.

The issue of not being able to record audio files to a non-Audio CDR was, IIRC, something that was proposed but never followed through on.

to remove all doubt, there are 4 types of recordable CDs.

  1. CDR (will record in computer burners, and high end professional stand alone decks, will play back in pretty much everything, or at least should)
  2. CD-RW (will record in computer burners, and hign end professional stand alone decks, will play back in computer burners (maybe regular CD-ROMs?) and high end stand alone decks) NOT DESIGNED TO BE PLAYED IN AN AUDIO CD PLAYER!
  3. CDR-DA (digital audio) (designed for consumer grade home decks, will play back in anything)
  4. CD-RW-DA (designed for consumer grade home decks, will play back in consumer and professional grade home decks, maybe CD-ROMs) not designed for audio cd players.

so,
regular cdrom should play back cdr and cdr-da, maybe the cd-rw and cd-rw-da.
computer burner, should play back cdr, cdr-da, and maybe cd-rw and cd-rw-da
consumer grade decks should play back cdr (with audio), cdr-da, and cd-rw-da.
professional grade decks should play back all

dunno if computer burners will record on the -da varieties, but the media is more expensive, so why try.

consumer grade cd burners will only record on the -da and -da-rw without modification.

professional grade stand alones will record on anything, since the royalities paid on each individual -da disc is included in the stand alone deck price, which is generally about $900us on the low end (the price, not the royality).

and yes, really the only difference is the $2 or $3 dollar difference per disc, and the flag that tells the consumer grade decks that the royality has been paid for and lets the deck record on the cd.
but the general belief nowadays is that since the prices are coming down so much for the CDRs, that CD-RWs will be extinct sometime soon. (a cd-rw-da disc is around $20)

Being the owner of both a CDRW and a regular CDROM – the CD-RW’s play just fine in a computer CDROM

I just started burning custom audio CDs with an H-P drive and Adaptec software. I’ve been using TDK conventional CD-R media which play fine in the Sony deck in my truck but my sony DVD player doesn’t even show that a disk is inserted. That would not be a big deal but I gave my home CD player to my folks. Any suggestions? I may try audo CD media to see if it makes a difference.


Come let us go, I’ve a cask of amontillado.

Actually, the CD-RW media has come down in price as well. CompUSA (no, I’m not a compensated spokeperson) has em on sale for about $2 for their generic brand.

Even though my burner supports CDRW, I tend to not use it as RW is very unreliable.

My post above regarding Audio CDRs related to computer burners, not the stand alone home decks made by Phillips, et al. I have no experience with the standalone units and, as Ubermensch said, they may only accept Audio CDRs.

I’ve got another CD-R Question:

I made a recording of a CD on a CD-R on my computer. The software (sorry, don’t have the name offhand) said I had recorded about 72 minutes worth onto the CD. But when I listened to the CD-R, several of the tracks turned out to have been cut short by up to several minutes. All in all, the CD only turned out to have recorded about 62 minutes worth of the music.

Any ideas why this may have happened?


Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Padeye: A lot of dvd players cannot read CDR media. In fact, the few that do actually include a second laser pickup specifically to support CDR.

Thanks Mojo, that’s probably it. I learned after I bought mine that it does not have a second laser and for that reason is a somewhat poor CD player.


Come let us go, I’ve a cask of amontillado.

I agree with pretty much all above.
CD-Rs play everywhere, Music or not
CD-RW’s do not, only in the ReWritable drive or maybe your CD-ROM drive
HOWEVER - i just got a new Philips Portable CD-player with 25 second ESP-3 and such, and it is CD-RW compatable. I tried it and it works great. It was under $100 dollars too so it wasn’t an EXPENSIVE plus. I guess the new audio devices are coming equipt for CD-RW’s, or Philips is just trying to get a head start.


I started out with nothing…And i think i still have most of it.