Why are my 16x CDs burning at only 4x?

Factual Questions
1

My burner is actually an 8x burner. My last batch of CDs all burned at 8x without a problem.

I just got a new package of 20 TDK 80 minute CDs (color discs with matching color cases) (hey, I like to be thorough) which states quite clearly on each CD “up to 16X compatible”.

Yet my burner will only allow me to choose 2x or 4x. Am I misunderstanding something here? or are the CDs mislabeled? other?

2

Might just be a crappy batch of cd’s that happens sometimes. Also, the computer has
to be fast enough to do 8x. Are you sure it writes @ 8x & not reads?

3

Does the packaging have any recommended maximum write speed?

(I wasn’t aware that the drive/system was able to detect this automatically though).

4

Weird. I believe that all burners have the capability to read the media (and, presumably, its speed limitations), but that only certain CD burning applications actually use this.

At any rate, I’ve never had CDRs that were “rated” by the CDR at anything slower than advertised. (I’ve even gotten 32x out of my 16x media.)

One possible reason for your problem might be other system limitations. Are you burning, say, a disc full of MP3s from your hard drive, or are you trying to make an “on the fly” copy of a CD-ROM from your other CD-ROM drive?

If it’s the latter, it’s almost definitely a limitation of your “source” drive. Personally, my DVD-ROM reads audio at something like 32x slower than my burner can burn it.

I seriously doubt this is the problem in your case but, hey, you never know.

5

They wouldn’t happen to be CDRW discs, would they? Most burners can’t burn CDRWs as fast as they can burn CDRs.

6

What are you burning? Music, video, or data?

7
      • What model CD burner are you using? I have a Lite-On 12x10x32 that often refuses to burn at the disc-rated speeds. Most CD-RW’s will write/rewrite at their rated speed (up to 12x/10x anyway) but many CD-R discs only go at 4X even if they’re rated higher. There’s a firmware upgrade available, but if it goes screwy the drive’s junk, so I live with it as it is. I don’t burn often enough that it’s so much of a hassle to risk the purchase price of another CD-RW drive on. - DougC
8

They are CDRs, not CDRWs and I don’t see any recommended maximum write speed. It just says that it is up to 16x compatible.

I’m burning music, and more specifically, I’m just copying audio cds, not data nor mp3s.

KK my good friend and computer guru told me that the burning software can absolutely read the blank CDR’s speed limitations and this is the reason why the software doesn’t even give me the option of burning at a faster speed than 4x. (My previous batch of blanks allowed me options of 16x and I think maybe even 32x, I don’t remember).

Doug you seem to be onto something though I’m not sure I understand. First, to answer your question, I’m not exactly sure what model the burner is and I’m not at my computer right now, but it came with my Dell that I bought a year and a half ago if that helps.
Now, what does it mean for a CDR to be “rated” if it will not burn at that rated rate? If a CDR is “rated” at 16x but the coding on the CDR is telling my software to only allow speeds of 2x and 4x, is this a glitch that needs to be fixed, or is there a reason for this?

9

I’m with KKBattousai about “on-the-fly” copying.

You say you’re copying audio CDs. When you talk about speed limitations for this process, you’re talking about a lot more than just the rated speed of the CD-R media.

What is the audio extraction speed of your source CD-ROM drive? I’ve used 32x CD-ROM drives that could only extract audio at around 2x. Copying data and copying audio are two different things… the latter tends to be slower. If the source drive is only extracting data at 4x and you’re trying to write above 4x, you’ll get a buffer underrun and the write will fail. Your burning software might realize this and limit your write speed to avoid a guaranteed coaster.

You might also want to consider your IDE setup. Are you copying from drive to drive on the same IDE channel? Do you have DMA enabled on both drives? Ideally your source and write drives will be on different IDE channels and both will have DMA enabled.

Have you changed anything on your system between the time you were able to burn at 8x and now?

-fh

10

no no no. I haven’t changed anything except for the new blanks.

I don’t even know what any of this means, but my source and write drives are one in the same.

I’ve burned well over 100 CDs, mostly audio, in the last year or so. The difference with the new CDs was instantly noticeable.

11

Thats the point, I have returned cd’s simply for this reason & got another type.
Sometimes you just get a crappy batch thats all.