What are some names of reliable CD media?

[oreo1]

Prior to sending out a CD for mastering, I burned a CD worth of Protools bounced tunes for a client. The CD plays some crackling artifacts about half way into the 60 minute disk. These artifacts only play on certain CD players. Both his car and my car systems sound the worst, and perhaps strangely, they sound bad in the same places. I say it's strange because we don't hear the crackling at all on my home system. Nor on my protools computer. So at this point I can't really tell if the problem is the CD player, the media, or the burn itself.

What i do know is that i have to take greater care to optimize a burn for my clients. So I''m wondering what other people are using for CD media. I have been using memorex music cd-r lately. And burning on my G5 using Toast at 2X speed. Does the burn speed matter? I also, have error checking on.

Or maybe it is the specific CD players which are the problem. So I'm wondering if anyone can tell me if those CD cleaner disks with the little brushes actually work?

Anyway, I'm curious if someone can offer me any suggestions about this issue which needs rto be resolved.

[req06]

You may have the mix peaking too close to 0db, this can sometimes cause distortion on some domestic amplifiers. Did you limit the master bus heavily? That would be my guess if it happens in the same place in a song in two different systems.

Try rebouncing the song, and check your peak and vu levels, limit peaks to -0.3db

just some ideas, sure some others will chime in soon.

[M.Brane]

Disks that are mastered too hot can clip the converters on lots of consumer-grade audio gear.

The preferred media for most mastering/duplication houses in Taiyo Yuden.

I use TDK disks for everyday stuff, and it works fine. Some burners seem to prefer certain media over others though so you may need to experiment a bit.

[lwilliam]

Yes, those are good points.

1. Too hot a mix for consumer-grade players. Always master no higher than -0.2 db. Some people like to leave .5 db headroom.
2. Burning too fast can also produce more digital errors and cheaper players may not be able to do the error correction. I always burn CDs for mastering at 4x. This may sound weird, but I've heard some people say that burning at too SLOW a speed can also produce an "overburn" effect on CDRs, producing more errors. Try burning at a different speed. I do believe there is some truth in the idea that burners are optimized for low errors at different speeds, so one burner may produce the least errors at 2x and another at 8x.

I've been using TDK and NEVER buy the "music CDRs", just data CDRs.

[M.Brane]

Yeah, there's no reason to buy "music" CDRs if you're burning on the computer. The music CDRs are pre-formatted for stand-alone audio CD recorders, and you also pay a royalty to the RIAA because you're obviously making pirate copies if you're using those.

I've read about the "overburning" problem too. I guess with the faster disks the substrate is more sensitive, and can be damaged if you burn too slow. Probably depends a lot on the media, and the burner.

My old SCSI Plextor would burn almost anything without problems. My Pioneer DVR109 seems to be a bit pickier about what you stick in there especially with DVDs. It likes the -R better than the +R.

[sndgeek]

Second vote for Taiyo Yuden branded CD-R and DVD-R media.

If you want to go seriously overboard try the MAM-A stuff.

MAM-A Archive quality CD-R

[flommer]

Apogee markets some archival grade cd-r's and you can buy them at Guitar center. I think they cost about $2 each? Been a while since I bought any..

[Paul Maunder]

Count my vote for Taiyo Yuden. Extremely reliable.

[pkurzweil]

I agree that Taiyo Yuden are excellent for everyday use.

For mastering and archiving, spend the extra money on either Apogee or Quantegy. There is nothing that comes close to gold-on-gold P-Cy media for longevity, robustness, compatibility and low error rates.

The extremely low error rates of Apogee or Quantegy gold-on-gold media are nothing short of amazing. I sent one Quantegy disc for testing to a friend of mine who was part of the original consortium that created the CD-Audio standard. He could not believe it.