In article ,
Eeyore wrote:
Are you talking home recorded ones or 'factory'? Can't say I've had
problems with mass produced ones - but home recorded seem to have a
limited life. Although it seems to depend on make of blank.

CDRs really. And I don't know if it's the make of the blank alone ( I
usually use 'name' ones of some reasonably quality reputation ) or the
drives pack up early. I've thrown out more CD drives than any other
piece of PC kit.

Is that on the burning side or reading them afterwards? Finding one reader
that is universally perfect might be difficult. I recently had a PC data
disc that wouldn't read on any of my PC drives - but would on an ancient
Acorn one, so I managed to copy it.

--
*Two wrongs are only the beginning *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article , Laurence Payne
wrote:
On Sat, 23 May 2009 00:04:47 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:

CDRs really. And I don't know if it's the make of the blank alone ( I
usually use 'name' ones of some reasonably quality reputation ) or the
drives pack up early. I've thrown out more CD drives than any other
piece of PC kit.

The first generation of CD drives certainly seemed to have about a 3
year life.

A lot of my failed CD-Rs date from days before I realised that burning
at the manufacturer's maximum rated speed was NOT a good idea.

I've often had a situation where a newly-burnt CDR would not play properly
in a specific device or drive. Like the above, I have found that lowering
the write speed can help.

I've also found it helps to use a particular brand, TDK in my experience
works well. But this does seem to vary both with choice of writer, and with
the playback/reading devices.

*As yet* I've not encountered any examples of a CDR that used to play fine
but seems to have aged or deteriorated. Now approaching a decade for the
oldest. So although I suspect problems may show up eventually, I've been OK
thus far.


The
better burn utilities prominently feature a choice of burn speeds.
Unfortunately many of the consumer-aimed programs hide this setting.

I've found that some writers may also simply ignore a speed slower than
they can be bothered to accept. For example, the CD writer I have in my
day-to-day-use home machine won't go any slower than x4 even if the
software tells it to. The DVD writer seems to totally ignore any speed
instructions when used to burn a CDR, and what it produces is useless for
my purposes. Fortunately, the CDR writer seems to do a decent job.

Alas, this all seems a minefield in my experience as it seems impossible to
predict which burner/disc brand/speed combination will give the best
results in terms of how well some other specific player can then cope with
the resulting discs.

At one level you can just experiment. The snag is - what happens X years
later when you change playing device, and the discs that played fine on old
devices don't play correctly on it? So far, this has been OK in my
experience, but is this just luck?...

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

On Sun, 24 May 2009 12:23:30 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

I've found that some writers may also simply ignore a speed slower than
they can be bothered to accept. For example, the CD writer I have in my
day-to-day-use home machine won't go any slower than x4 even if the
software tells it to. The DVD writer seems to totally ignore any speed
instructions when used to burn a CDR, and what it produces is useless for
my purposes. Fortunately, the CDR writer seems to do a decent job.

I'm not sure it SHOULD let you go slower than 4X with the media
available today. The trick is to find an optimum speed, not "slower
is better".

Doubtless a shop-bought computer will come with the cheapest possible
burner hardware. And, of course, the fact that you have one unit that
burns ONLY CDs (not DVDs) gives a clue as to its age - it's as hard
(and as pointless) to buy a CD-only burner these days as it is to
search out a CD-only player for your hi-fi stack :-)

But you can slot in something like a Pioneer 115-D (or whatever their
current model is) for so little money, it can hardly be considered a
problem.

In article , Laurence Payne
wrote:
On Sun, 24 May 2009 12:23:30 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

I've found that some writers may also simply ignore a speed slower than
they can be bothered to accept. For example, the CD writer I have in my
day-to-day-use home machine won't go any slower than x4 even if the
software tells it to. The DVD writer seems to totally ignore any speed
instructions when used to burn a CDR, and what it produces is useless
for my purposes. Fortunately, the CDR writer seems to do a decent job.

I'm not sure it SHOULD let you go slower than 4X with the media
available today. The trick is to find an optimum speed, not "slower is
better".

Whilst that may be a useful generalisation, I've tended to find that such
generalisations often go awry. :-)

FWIW with exactly the same batch of discs, the above writer produced less
reliably readable discs than another that wrote more slowly. I agree,
though, that writers that refuse to go slower may do so because they are
incapable of working well at lower speeds.

TBH The best CD writer I ever used was a SCSI interface Plextor. If I wrote
TDK CDRs with that for CDDA at x1 or x2 speed then they played on all the
audio and computer drives I could find. Can't say that for *any*
writer/disk combination I've found since.

Doubtless a shop-bought computer will come with the cheapest possible
burner hardware. And, of course, the fact that you have one unit that
burns ONLY CDs (not DVDs) gives a clue as to its age - it's as hard (and
as pointless) to buy a CD-only burner these days as it is to search out
a CD-only player for your hi-fi stack :-)

Again, not quite my experience. I've found that a deliberately chosen CD
writer can work more reliably than a later CD/DVD writer, also specially
bought. However a factor in this is the point I make below...

Also, the CD writer made a much better job of reading some faulty
commercial CDDAs I had than the CD/DVD drive. The CD writer got better
results until the point it admitted it couldn't read any more and gave up.
The CD/DVD drive basically read garbage from parts of the disc and gave no
sign it hadn't read correctly to the end.

But you can slot in something like a Pioneer 115-D (or whatever their
current model is) for so little money, it can hardly be considered a
problem.

Can I? erm... You may not know what machine I use for most domestic
computing... Hints are that it doesn't run Windows, nor MacOS, nor Linux
(usually), and doesn't have 'IBM PC' type hardware. :-)

That said, I've been playing with a new linux box in recent weeks. This
came with a CD/DVD writer, but I've not yet tried it for disc writing.
Spent more 'drive time' installing various OS to see which I prefer. ;-

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

On Sun, 24 May 2009 17:36:58 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

Can I? erm... You may not know what machine I use for most domestic
computing... Hints are that it doesn't run Windows, nor MacOS, nor Linux
(usually), and doesn't have 'IBM PC' type hardware. :-)

No, I don't. Are you an enthusiast for something esoteric or
something retro?

But whatever it is, if it takes a CD/DVD drive at all, what can it use
other than an ATA or SATA unit?

In article ,
Jim Lesurf wrote:
TBH The best CD writer I ever used was a SCSI interface Plextor. If I
wrote TDK CDRs with that for CDDA at x1 or x2 speed then they played on
all the audio and computer drives I could find. Can't say that for *any*
writer/disk combination I've found since.

Yes - I got one of those as part of a package that included CDBurn. At one
of the RISC OS shows - Epsom, IIRC. Still in use. ;-)

--
*If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Laurence Payne wrote:
Can I? erm... You may not know what machine I use for most domestic
computing... Hints are that it doesn't run Windows, nor MacOS, nor
Linux (usually), and doesn't have 'IBM PC' type hardware. :-)

No, I don't. Are you an enthusiast for something esoteric or something
retro?

But whatever it is, if it takes a CD/DVD drive at all, what can it use
other than an ATA or SATA unit?

The snag is suitable RISC OS drivers ain't available for every drive. And
no two makes of drive seem to be identical.

--
*Growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Mon, 25 May 2009 10:11:27 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

No, I don't. Are you an enthusiast for something esoteric or something
retro?

But whatever it is, if it takes a CD/DVD drive at all, what can it use
other than an ATA or SATA unit?

The snag is suitable RISC OS drivers ain't available for every drive. And
no two makes of drive seem to be identical.

What's he on then? An old Archimedes? Can't argue with religion I
suppose :-)

In article ,
Laurence Payne wrote:
On Mon, 25 May 2009 10:11:27 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

No, I don't. Are you an enthusiast for something esoteric or
something retro?

But whatever it is, if it takes a CD/DVD drive at all, what can it
use other than an ATA or SATA unit?

The snag is suitable RISC OS drivers ain't available for every drive.
And no two makes of drive seem to be identical.

What's he on then? An old Archimedes? Can't argue with religion I
suppose :-)

Think Jim uses an Iyonix. Newer and more powerful than this machine. ;-)
They can do all the common tasks like handling news and email, simple
browsing, word processing etc just fine. Things that need a deal of number
crunching like video, not. But ok for audio. But I have a PC for tasks it
can't handle so well.
The beauty of using a non standard OS is there's no need for
sophisticated firewalls and anti virus etc systems which cause so much
grief on a PC.

--
*If horrific means to make horrible, does terrific mean to make terrible?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article , Laurence Payne
wrote:
On Sun, 24 May 2009 17:36:58 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

Can I? erm... You may not know what machine I use for most domestic
computing... Hints are that it doesn't run Windows, nor MacOS, nor
Linux (usually), and doesn't have 'IBM PC' type hardware. :-)

No, I don't. Are you an enthusiast for something esoteric or something
retro?

Call that either way you like. :-) For most of my day-to-day computing I
use RISC OS on an Iyonix. I simply find it easier and more convenient for
the tasks I do, in general.

But whatever it is, if it takes a CD/DVD drive at all, what can it use
other than an ATA or SATA unit?

The problem is that most units need specific driver details. Alas, in
general the info isn't available. So a few have been determined to be
workable, but most others, not. Ditto for a range of other types of device.
Afraid accessibility of hardware where the makers only talk to MicroSoft or
Apple about the workings can be difficult at times. Fortunately, enough of
us have got enough items working for this not to be a shutout. But t'aint
as simple as with Windows.

The situation is similar to linux where some hardware doesn't work as it
does with Windows as the makers won't release the driving details and
no-one has (yet) worked them out to do an open driver. The good news is
that the number of programmers using linux is higher, so they can fling
more effort into sorting such problems.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html