Professional CD-R and DVD-R Burners/Duplicators? 41
burnWell asks: "I work for a software publisher, and when preparing CD media for final distribution to the manufacturer (the Gold Master if you will), we often find that our CD and DVD burns are not very good quality. Are there any recommendations for professional grade, highest quality CD-R and DVD-R writers? Are there any tools or metrics we should use to verify how 'good' a particular burn happens to be, and to that end, how well behaved some brands of media are versus another? Are there recommendations for the very highest quality CD-R and DVD-R duplicators?"
Plextor (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Plextor (Score:5, Informative)
I do wish Yamaha still manufactured CDR drives. Theirs were just as good as Plextor's.
Some quick tips:
Always burn at a slow speed. For a master I can't recommend going higher than 4x. 2x is probably best.
Dedicate as much RAM as possible to buffer the data stream between the source and the CD you are burning.
Try to stick with internal drives. While the ATA-to-USB/firewire bridges work quite well, it's just one more thing to possibly cause problems.
One drive per channel (SCSI excepted). Don't place another drive on the same IDE channel as the CDR drive. If you must use external drives, give each a dedicated USB/firewire connection to the computer.
As for media, I've heard rumors that the discs produced in Japan are of better quality than those made elsewhere, but have never seen anything to back this up. I'd always had great results with Kodak media in the past, but it seems they don't make discs anymore. You may want to check and verify.
Re:Plextor (Score:2, Informative)
Mitsui is my fave, their gold CDs are the best CD-R discs I've encountered.
Re:Plextor (Score:2, Informative)
It has burnt hundreds of CDs, with only 6 coasters created (usually when copying CDs that have anti-copy features/flaws that Easy CD Creator 3.5c cant handle).
It cost $640 AUS including the Adaptec AIC-7850 PCI to SCSI card.
I realise Plextor is a more recognised brand name, but would anyone buy a used CDR... regardless of the brand? I probably wouldn't. But something good has to be said about old hardwar
ISO? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ISO? (Score:3, Insightful)
The gold master only needs to be good enough to read it once.
I burn ISO's of linux distros all the time, with the CD's I pickup using a Sony CD burner. In all that time, I think I've had a half dozen coasters. Generally your biggest problem, is the CD you are reading it on is crappy (not the burner). A lot of laptops or slimline CD's that go into 1U server or speciality small machines have a very
Re:ISO? (Score:2)
Re:ISO? (Score:1)
Re:ISO? (Score:2, Informative)
I'll take that one step further: deliver the ISO on a DVD-RAM. Don't bother with +/- R or RW. A DVD-RAM is a much more stable medium.
While I'm here, I'd recommend the LG DVD burners. I've got one, and I know a number of others who do, and they seem to be very good. The old Plextor drives were good too; haven't tried any current ones though.
-- Steve
Delivering a disc?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Please, one call to your publisher would have had this explained to you.
Re:Delivering a disc?!? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, Yggdrasil Linux was responsible for writing the first open source tool for producing DVD masters on tape, which they used for releasing a DVD-based Linux distro back in... 1998? Info about it here [chguy.net].
That said, for CD mastering use CD-Rs that are designed to be used as masters (they are REAL gold media, and are not cheap, ~US$10ea), burn at 1x, make sure your disc is *really* standard compliant...
Also
Two words: Taiyo Yuden (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Two words: Taiyo Yuden (Score:3, Informative)
You are exercising a common misconception here. Taiyo Yuden is a company the manufacturers CD-Rs. Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs are made by Taiyo Yuden.
This is not true with Verbatim.
Re:Two words: Taiyo Yuden (Score:4, Insightful)
What's surprising is that price is not an indicator. The Taiyo Yuden music discs are sold under the Maxell brand for less than CMC discs (about half the Maxell spindles in the store were made in Japan, the others were made in Taiwan). Really, the only way to tell good discs from bad ones is to check the country of manufacture.
Re:Two words: Taiyo Yuden (Score:2)
This is absolutely correct.
I run fastdiscs.com [fastdiscs.com] and only use Taiyo Yuden, because after exhasutive testing I found them to be by far the most reliable. It's no good to me to have to handle returns of faulty discs, that hits me in terms of time and leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths. Since I changed to TY, not one single faulty CD returned, and I burn hundreds every week (on Plextor drives, if you are interesed).
Trial and Error (Score:3, Informative)
The first is that the specific brand that works best will vary from one CD burner to another. The only thing that you can do is buy a lot of samples and try burns at different speeds and with different brands until you know what gives you the best results.
As noted, slower burns usually are better, but the optimal speed will vary too.
The other problem is that manufacturers change their formulations from time to time. You of course have no way to know this, but may find that the media that worked great last month suddenly has problems.
Another test can be found here [beradio.com].
Re:Trial and Error (Score:2)
never mastered cds, but DVDs... (Score:2)
Since it seems like no other posts have been that great, i'd add my non-useful expertise into the mix.
Plextor (Score:2)
Re:Plextor (Score:4, Informative)
A common misconception - Plextor used to be the absolute best. Honestly they have been falling from the throne since they released the PX-708A (which is the predecessor to the PX-712A (which is the predecessor to the PX-716A.))
The 708A had pretty good quality burns, but they still did not qualify as excellent. But lots of people reported problems with this drive and CD media in general. It had a tendency to somehow get 'stuck' on DVD-only mode and not read any CD media, pressed or burned. My own 708A only read CD (pressed and burned) at 4X and actually left scuffs on them. I spoke to many people on forums about this and it was widely reported, some people going through two and three RMAs. I returned it to costco and got another one which fortunately worked well. I paid CDN$300 for my 708A right when it came out and I still feel ripped of my money.
The PX-712A, while an excellent drive in theory that got very good reviews, still only had 'pretty good' burning quality, which IMO is not good enough for the most expensive drive in its class at the time. There were also a lot of burn quality problems, again with people going through two and three RMAs.
As to the PX-716A, it is simply not good enough to be worth its exorbitant price. Again the burn quality for CDR and DVDR is very good but not supreme. This is confirmed by PI/PO and C1/C2 scans in comparison to other drives of half the cost.
Every burner I have owned for the last 5 years was a Plextor, but I think it will stop here. The competition delivers better burn quality for much less money. Plextor's products are not rock solid anymore and I won't pay their price.
If you want the best CD-R burning on a drive today, get yourself an old Plextor Premium (back fomr the days when Plextor *was* the King of Quality) or get a very economical NEC-ND3500A which currenty owns the title for the lowest error rates on CDR and DVDR burns.
Mastering (Score:5, Informative)
For our CD's, we used Mitsui primarily. They were a decent balance between cost and reliability. We'd also always submit to our release labs at least five copies of each CD.
Finally, we'd use a tool (CRC 3.05, available to MSDN subscribers in Subscriber Downloads) which would calculate the CRC value of each CD. Once we finished burning a CD, we'd do a binary compare with the source bits, and if everything matched up, we'd add the CD to our "good" pile.
For the first several (spread out over three years), we used a PlexWriter 2x writing at 1x to burn. We also used Goldenhawk CDR-WIN to burn the masters, but had to switch to Prassi once Goldenhawk stopped putting in the proper postgap on the CD's.
For our final disks, we went with a PlexWriter 48x writing at 16x.
Re:Mastering (Score:2)
The entire point of verifying the data written, creating the CRC, etc., is to increase the likelihood that data errors will be found.
After all, while you cannot eliminate errors, best efforts at prevention combined with best efforts at detection will greatly reduce errors.
Re:Mastering (Score:2)
When I mastered, I did as much verification as I could on the disks themselves to ensure that they were correct. Beyond that, the CRC check is merely there so that
it pays to shop around.. (Score:3, Informative)
Why CD masters? (Score:4, Interesting)
Another thing would be to simply burn it, then use a tool to verify that the disc was burned correctly and reliably. Heck you could even do your own sample test and do other interesting metrics like how long it takes to complete the verification - possibly an indicator of how many errors were encountered in the read process.
Better yet, just offer the files up on your web site and let customers burn their own CD's if they feel they really need them.
This site is good (Score:4, Informative)
Has some very detailed reviews, including detailed quality analysis tests with many combinations of drives and media.
Small or Large Developer? (Score:2)
Check out these guys... (Score:2)
Also check out this list of CD/DVD duplicators from Pricegrabber [pricegrabber.com].
"Piracy" Reports. (Score:1, Funny)
Ask the pirates what they use?
Give them an image file, not a master disk... (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead, make an image, call it a golden image, checksum the image (MD5sum for example), compress it and send it on any media you like or over the net.
Re:Give them an image file, not a master disk... (Score:2)
You give the company what they ask for. They cannot, and will not accommodate every companies whim on providing the data.
i cannot (Score:2)
CD quality.. (Score:3, Informative)
We've always used Taiyo Uden's. Big surprise.
Making a hash/md5sum is pretty silly and is one layer above what you need to be checking.
What you need to check are the block errors/specifically c1/c2 errors.
When a cd is authored, it is authored to cd with subcode that can not be changed in the slightest.
Q-bit subcode is the term for the information on a compact disc that holds the track number, track length, and time in track.
Any change results in bad crossfades, blips and other ugliness.. Some plants have been known to extract the audio and redo it, and generate crap.
Most masterhouses know which ones these are and stay away from them.
Whats important are c1/c2 errors.
Check http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.
for a technical description.
C1 is error correction for the block error rate (BLER), which consists of bit errors at the lowest level. BLER is normally given in errors per second. The typical maximum BLER for quality recording is 220 errors per second.
C2 error correction applies to bytes in a frame (24 bytes per frame, 98 frames per block) and is an indication of the drive's attempt to use extended error correction to recover the data. Even a few C2 errors can be an indication of poor media quality or a drive's inability to write or read correctly.
CU error correction applies to uncorrectable errors, or errors that are present after C2 level correction. No CU errors are allowed in a recorded disc. CU errors are usually a result of damage to a disc and represent unrecoverable data. Discs with CU errors quite often cannot be read.
The acceptable number of c2 errors is zero for a disc sent to the plant.
A simple check with kprobe or plextools pro will validate your disc, your burn, your burner, and whether or not you really should be smoking in the computer room..
Once it hits the plant, the disc is reread, all samples, subcode intact and a glass master is made to create the pits in the substrate..
Some manufactured discs, have more c1's than a typical burn, this could lead to early death due to scratches.. HMMM..
Primera Bravo II (Score:1)