Every different kind of CD-Rs I buy [sub](okay, all two of the kinds I’ve bought)[/sub] to burn my MP3s* onto end up sounding like complete crap. The quality is similar to that of a taped copy of a taped copy of a CD.
Can some kind soul tell me what a good quality brand/type of CDR is? Pretty please? Or could it be that my burner is just a piece?
[sub]* legally obtained, of course.
I suppose this could have gone in IMHO or GQ, but I stuck here here because, well, just because.[/sub]
Er, please excuse my horrific misuse of an apostrophe in the subject line.
I don’t think the quality of the CDR should matter, since you’re doing digital, “it’s there or it isn’t” reproduction. You should either have the track in near-CD quality, or it shouldn’t be playable at all.
I don’t have a cite right now, but I’m pretty sure there’s only two or three different CDR manufacturers. Companies like Sony, Maxell, Memorex etc. buy from them and then just slap their names on them. I use Memorex myself, burned at least 100 of “their” CDRs at 8x, and I’ve had zero problems.
Are you burning them as MP3s, or converting them into WAV files to make an audio CD? If the latter, make sure you’re converting them as 44.1 Khz, the bitrate of CD-quality audio. (Converting MP3s back into WAV files obviously won’t give you the quality of the original CD track, but it should be a lot closer than what you described.) It sounds like you might be using 22.5 Khz, which is approximately FM quality.
I think Max Harvey is right on. As long as the CD will burn properly and will play, the media shouldn’t affect the sound of the music (AFAIK). Check your other settings and you may find the answer.
Could it have something to do with the MP3 player you’re using? Are you playing them in your computer or in your car (on one of the new MP3-CD players) or someplace else?
Far and away, the best brand of CD-R’s are Kodak Golds. Though I’d agree with what Max Harvey says, there could be something else. MP3’s naturally do not have the same sound quality as wav sourced files. There are other file types that are lossless (such as .SHN), and smaller than wavs, but unfortunately, they’ll only play on your computer.
::scritches head:: 
Um, usually I open up the software that came with it, drag things from a list of sound files on my computer over to a little box that says “Drag audio tracks and audio files here”, and press “record”. So, I imagine it just burns them as MP3s? Am I supposed to convert them to WAV first?
I guess I just have no idea what I’m talking about 
There’s no way I could convert 20 MP3s into WAV on my computer without having it explode. ::sigh:: I guess I’m just doomed to burn crappy CDs.
I will try the Kodak Golds, I think someone told me to use them before but I was confused and thought he just meant the kind that weren’t blue on the bottom.
I work for a music store & we sell Music cdrs. But the people on the board said they are the same as data cds but since I don’t do music cdrs I don’t know if thats the case. Maybe you can try one? Also are you using the verify option of your software to verify your disks?
Since it’s calling them “audio tracks” it sounds like your software is probably making an audio CD with them, perhaps automatically converting them into the CD audio format.
What is your goal here? Are you trying to make a CD that will on any CD player, or a CD of MP3 files to play on a special CD-MP3 player (or to backup MP3 files)?
Those two kinds of CDs are identical except:
[ul][li]Music CD’s cost more because you are paying royalties to artists that you MIGHT be ripping off.[/li][li]To a computer, either will work. But to a stand-alone audio CD copier, only music CDs will work, because the machine reads a code on the CD hub and will refuse to write to a non-music CD for the reason #1.[/li][/ul]
Other than that, the best CD blanks are those that cost 15 cents or less (in bulk, no case). I have found some brands of CDs that won’t work with some models of CD burners, but if it works and it’s cheap, go for it.
It’s the nature of digital data that if, as long as no error happens during reading or writing, the acoustic sound of a cheap CD copy is identical to an expensive one. Not similar, but identical.
Yes.
Play the MP3s on your PC (with Winamp or Windows Media Player) and then play the Audio CD you created from the MP3s, also on the same computer so you are using the same speakers and whatnot. If the CD sounds noticably worse, then the software you are using isn’t converting properly.
If both the MP3s and the audio CD sound bad, then likely the MP3s you are using as the source aren’t very good quality. Most people say use should use at least 160kbs bit rate MP3s as sources for burning CDs. Maybe I have a tin ear, but 128kbs sound fine to me too.
Let’s try to clear up some things.
AFAIK:
To verify, most CDRs are made from a few select manufacturers. I don’t know them all, but I have heard that Taiyo Yuden makes good ones. As for who uses what, I think Kodak and Fuji use Taiyo Yuden CDRs. TDKs should be pretty good too.
The burner is also very important. Plextor is my recommendation, though TDK and and Yamaha are also respected brands.
Music CDRs vs. Data CDRs. Covered by Musicat. Don’t buy music CDRs for your computer unless you like to waste money.
“All or nothing digital copies” NO, NO, NO! All digital data is stored in some sort of analog format, like voltage, or magnetic field intensity. These analog value are interpreted by the computer as one or zero. In the voltage example, 5 volts could be one, and 0 volts would be zero. If there is some interference and we get 2.5 volts, what do we do? This is where errors in digital data can arise. This is also why you need error detection capablilites. By looking at supplementary data, the computer can see if the original data is correct or not. When you burn audio, there is no (or very little) error detection. When you burn data, there is error detection information interspersed with the data. Therefore,if your burner burns a one instead of a zero in a data CD, it will be able to catch the error. In an audio CD it may not. How do these errors arise in CD burning? If your CD is of poor quality, the laser might not burn enough before moving on, or the CD might wobble due to the balance of the CD and the spin rate. Bad data or audio can happen. Bad data usually results in the CD or file being totally useless, because the error detection finds the error. Bad audio may end up being static filled becuase there is no error detections. BTW, bad audio will sound like static becuase if enough ones and zeros are randomly changed, a random sound will result.
How to burn MP3s to CD. As has been said before, you can burn them as data and store 650-700 megabytes of MP3s on one CD, or convert them to audio (audio = WAV) and store 74-80 minutes of audio on one CD. Clearly storing them in data leaves them compressed, while converting to audio uncompresses them. MP3 are inherenly of lower quality than the original CD, but not much (depending on the encoding and your ears). When you uncompress back to audio, you do NOT get the quality back. So buring to CD in data or audio format should have the same quality, barring any errors. Your goal AndYrAStar is to make an audio CD if you want it to play on any CD player. Form your description, I think your CD burning software burns MP3s as audio by automatically converting them. Follow Revtim’s suggestion about using the same computer to test the quality.
To sum up: Buy good CDRs, perhaps invest in, or test another burner, and make sure you are burning good sounding MP3s. I doubt the software is causing any errors, but you could try a different package. I recommend Nero.
I hope that wasn’t too long or convoluted. I’ll try to clarify if needed.
Circuit City cdrs were the only ones I had to take back to the store for a refund. Just couldnt get any of them to recognize.
Another important thing not mentioned is computer specs. People don’t read the side of the box that their recorder comes in to find out how fast their computer must be. Some recorders require 800mhz cpus. Most of the time your cahnces for a perfect disk are better if you record at 1x.
800 MHz? Are you kidding cause thats amazingly high? I just installed my TDK VELOCD 24/10/40 and its requirement is 266 MHz.
As far as disks go, I have had VERY good luck with the black Memorex disks (And they are cool as hell to look at, too!)
Though it’s not exactly what the OP is asking, I’ve found that TDK disks are the only ones I’ve had a high success rate for making data disks. Every other brand I’ve tried has had at least half of the disks become unreadable and unrepairable in short order- even those I’ve “closed” so no more data can be added. Anyone else found this themselves experiencing this problem?
Here we go again…
CPU speed is largely irrelevant. I’ve successfully burned CDs using an 8x8x24x Yamaha burner on a 33 MHz PowerBook 540c, at 4x speeds. This speed limitation was due to a slow SCSI bus, not slow CPU speed. The side of the box you mention most likely refers to the software. CD burning is not a processor-intensive task. A decent bus(SCSI or IDE), disk drives that don’t suck(defragging them helps too) and a good amount of RAM will carry the day. All you need for even a 2x burn is 300 KB/sec uninterruped transfer, and even then, modern CD burners have 2 MB or so of cache, so the data stream can drop a bit and the burn will still be successful.
Also, there is some question if 1x will really create perfect copies. The theory is that, at 1x, the laser is focused on any given spot longer than, say, 3x. This extended time may contribute to degradation of the recording medium. I have no data either way, its just a theory I’ve come across.
A bad recording would most likely manifest itself in a “skip” or a similar-sounding event.
Ummmm… not always with older PCs. If you have an older PC without the option to enable DMA access for the IDE drives, overall CPU utilization during the burn can be a significant factor with respect to burning CDRs successfully.
again, like most of the other posters, the brand of CD-R will not make a huge difference to the end sound quality. The only thing that will make a real difference is the quality of the source files.
MP3s compressed at 128kbits are always going to sound a bit ropey if you’ve got good ears. I would suggest compressing the music at 192kbits. The files aren’t that much larger and the quality is far better.
Also, the MP3 encoder itself could be causing problems. The best one I have found is BladeEnc, it is a Win32 command line compressor and produces reasonable quality output, even at 128kbit.
At the end of the day, MP3 is a compromise. You might just have to put up with the higher frequencies sounding slightly garbled at times for the benefit of fitting 10 hours worth of music on 1 CD.
As for the OP - I have used around 8 brands of CD-R with my burner (Philips CDD4201) and the only brand I would NOT recommend are Princo. Not unless you like your CD-R Discs to fail after three months.
The other brands? Acer, BASF-EMTEC, Go-Tech (generic Taiwanese), Imation, Kodak, Maxell, TDK, Verbatim. Currently using Imation 74s and Acer 80s.