18 September 2007

A Slow Burn

How much does the writing speed of a CD or DVD recording session affect the disc's writing quality?

Each brand of CD-R and DVD-R media is certified for a maximum burning speed, expressed as a multiple of the standard audio or video playback speed; thus, a "52x" CD-R can be reliably burned while spinning up to fifty-two times faster than an audio CD spins while playing. If you burn it faster than the rated speed, the audio data won't be reliably written to the disc. This may cause the player to skip erratically through the disc, or to play up to a certain point and then stop.

Well-engineered burning software won't burn a CD faster than its rated speed, but not all burning software is well-engineered! Unfortunately, some programs that I've tried default to burning "as fast as possible," that is, as fast as the burner's mechanism will spin, which may be faster than the media is certified to burn. Some poorly-written burning software allow you to set the burning speed, but do not save your setting from one burn to the next, so you have to take care to reset it every time.

Unless you really are in some kind of hurry, you're better off burning at less than the maximum rated speed, because that will give you some safety margin to guard against failure due to manufacturing defects in your burner or the disc.

Choose your burning software for the job at hand. Some programs just work better for burning music than others. The same is true for DVDs. Making data CDs does not require anything fancy, but the program you use for this purpose may not be suitable for burning music CDs.

I use and recommend Nero Burning ROM for data CDs, but my choices for making music CDs and DVDs may and should differ from yours. CD and DVD burners, computer systems, Windows versions, and disc brands will influence the quality of a burn as much as the burning software. You need to experiment with different brands of discs and different software (most offer free trial versions) until you find a combination that suits your needs. The cost of a CD-R is not much even when you factor in the number of plastic trees that must give their life to make the disc. When you ruin a disc, you can recycle it into a number of useful items, such as coasters, sun catchers, and Elton John sunglasses.