Most blank CD’s are designed for computers which can read virtually every format, and the same goes for blank DVD’s too. If like me you are making music CD’s it can be wise to record them on AUDIO CDRs as that’s the only way you can guarantee it will work on virtually every Hi-Fi. These can still be easily found on the internet, but are less common in the real world. But what I really want are AUDIO CD-RW’s, which you can record on over and over again. They are particularly useful as it’s easy to make mistakes when recording albums, and ordinary CDR’s can’t be corrected. Unfortunately it seems that no company is manufacturing the re-recordable blank CD’s anymore. I understand they are a relatively niche product, but it surprises me that other supposedly obsolete formats such as Audio tapes, answerphone cassettes, Videotapes, spare parts for '80’s video consoles, limited run vinyl singles, even Reel to Reels can still be found- if there’s a market for that then why not audio CDRW’s? It’s a big world after all
Partly because oftaxation differences. If media is marked for music recording, it’s silently taxed by 3% to pay a copyright royalty, as authorized by law (all over the place, actually, but the following is about US law)
There is a possibility of a technical difference, depending on the equipment used:
In other words, if you went full-audiophile* and bought a CD-R burner as a piece of your sound system, you may have voluntarily submitted yourself to proprietary lock-in.
*“full-audiophile” is not, by the way, a compliment.
Audio-CD’s R/Rw include SCMS (Serial Copy Management System) which makes them more compatible with more devices and lets you easier copy Audio CD’s with DRM.
Editorial: if you chose to purchase a playback device that enforces SCMS, you deserve everything that happens to you. No one can trade away your rights but you.
Audio CD-R/RW discs are 74 minutes like the original Red Book standard CD. Older CD mechanisms can’t read 80 minute discs because those have a slightly tighter track pitch than specified in the Red Book. given an 80 minute disc, they’ll either attempt to find the track, reset, retry into infinity, or give up after a short time and throw an error.
edit: at least they used to be; now I see a lot of 80 min. “Audio CD-Rs.”
I believe that audio-CD’s have a maximum or standard size of data per disk that limits the length of music that can fit on a audio CD - something like 74 minutes. Data CD’s can and sometimes do exceed that capacity per disk, the term ‘overburning’ comes to mind for this for when they first exceded the capacity of a audio CD. CD audio players are not standardized to read CD’s that were overburned, some will some won’t, so safer to use a audio CD.
So, can’t you just define the parameters of the burn to be 74 minutes? Or, am I wrong in thinking that a blank CDR is blank with no actual hard-coded tracks on the disc?
Also, I think SCMS is automatically engaged when you burn a CD for audio use regardless if it’s a data or audio CDR. I remember running into this way back when, my brother gave me a mixed CD and when I tried to copy it I got the SCMS error. The way to check it, burn an audio CD, and try to make a copy of a copy. SCMS allows for one copy to be made.
I would suspect that most if not all hi-fi CD recorders enforce SCMS (I have a DVD/ VHS recorder that also doesn’t accept numerous types of blank disc), so there’s little choice in the matter. It’s interesting though because I always assumed the reason why it didn’t work was because PC oriented blank discs were at fault because they didn’t bother to make them backwards compatible with older black goods- whereas if I am reading you correctly the black goods manufacturers have built in the inability to read a wider range of discs.
Other random musings- you can buy 80 minute audio discs.
It is true that no-one is still making betamax tapes but when you consider an audio CDRW is made in exactly the same way as any other blank disc, it is very easy for at least one of these factories to produce a limited amount of the discs I want. If I remember rightly there’s even somewhere producing new NES cartridges.
They do as long as you paint the edge of the disc with a black magic marker so that the bits aren’t flung out of the side of the disc when it’s spinning. It’s the “warm” bits that get flung first.
The official Red Book CD audio standard made absolutely no provisions for copy protection (home CD burning was flying-car futuristic stuff back then). Consequently if an audio CD is released with any kind of copy protection it cannot carry the official CD Digital Audio logo. Several attempts were still made in the early 2000s by record companies to copy protect their discs, most being easily defeatable (search Google) and some actually acting like malware (Sony’s infamous rootkit scheme). As others have said the so-called ‘Audio CD-R/RW’ discs cost more simply because the RIAA imposed a small tax on their sales.
As long as your prerecorded, store-bought CD has the official CD logo on it and you use a computer CD/DVD-ROM drive and not a component stereo CD player/burner unit to, ahem, ‘back it up’ you don’t need any special ‘Audio’ labeled CD-R/RWs. And there really is no reason to use CD-RWs anymore. I’ve been burning CD-Rs since the late 90s and I have never, not even once bought a single CD-RW disc because even back then blank CD-R discs got so cheap so quickly.
Even though I do still occasionally buy an actual music CD (they’re often cheaper to buy in the store than online) they are nothing more than a long-term library storage medium for me now. I rip them onto my smartphone and then put the disc in the rack to gather dust.
Doing this to ‘fix’ CDs that skipped etc. was indeed just an urban legend (I think it was supposed to be a green pen*!*) But it was a method of defeating one particular copy protection scheme.
They do, but only if you play them with a stylus on a proper turntable connected to a vacuum-tube amplifier with monster cables that cost at least $600 apiece.
