What's your CD-R of choice?

Thump553 · « **Reply #20 on:** 27 Jun 2003, 06:30 pm »

I've been burning audio discs since my 2X CDR (not CDRW) burner was state of the art. I do a lot of concert trading and over the years have probably burnt several thousand CDs and currently go through at least one spindle per week.

I personally think brand differences are vastly overrated. I've burnt on nearly everything. The burning hardware and software (use Exact Audio Copy software to extract WAV files) make huge differences. Your burning environment and practices can easily make a (negative mostly)difference. Media choice-I've never been able to tell any difference outside of frequency of burning coasters (early days mostly) and longevity of media concerns (always). The only really garbage CDR I've had were some CompUSA generics.

That said, music traders pretty much insist on quality brands, with Tayio Yuden (TY) and Mitsui, and sometimes Kodak being mentioned the most.

Nearly all Fujis are TY. Check the label on the Fujis-if they say Made in Japan they are TY. Verify with a CDRidentifier program for peace of mind.

Best Buy (and bestbuy.com) nearly always has Fujis on sale, with a healthy rebate. My personal rule of thumb is never pay more than 10 cents per disc net.

One caveat-if you have an old CD player (esp. in car or a boombox) check to see if that player can consistently read the brand of disc you pick. This is a pretty unlikely problem for this readership.

The black CD thing I put in the same category as the green marker twink. Black CD blanks were made for one purpose-to imitate video game discs. I bought some once-you have to buy a special marker to write on them was the only difference I noted.

JoshK · « **Reply #21 on:** 27 Jun 2003, 08:25 pm »

Thump,

What is your source for concerts? I'd like to check that out.

John Casler · « **Reply #22 on:** 28 Jun 2003, 01:26 am »

While the "black CD" thing may or may not be real, I like the way they look.

Does anyone know of abrand that makes "black MUSIC/Audio" CDs?

Plenty of DATA CDs but you can't burn them on an Audio CD recorder.

Thanks,

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #23 on:** 28 Jun 2003, 01:30 am »

I've never seen such a critter, John. I wish Mitsui made a black disc.

I never meant to imply one brand necessarily souned better, although I suppose it's concievable. I mostly have notice that the Memorex discs don't last for shit; they scratch very easily and I've seen 'em peel apart, too.

John Casler · « **Reply #24 on:** 28 Jun 2003, 01:34 am »

Well since they're actually made for "gamers" that makes sense, but I'd rather burn on the CD Music Recorder and regular speed.

I know Tyson ask (many moons ago) about little CDs that looked like Vinyl Records and I did see some in BB several months ago, with little record labels and everything.

Looked just like mini records (might even have had grooves in the top ia can't remember)

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #25 on:** 28 Jun 2003, 01:47 am »

Yeah, they do have little grooves in 'em, and I really like 'em. They are pretty durable and they sound great. I have about ten of 'em, and now BB has them in cakeboxes too, w/o the jewel cases. They are a bit hard to lable, but they work well.

One thing that I forgot to mention is that if you burn CDs on a computer, you will really notice that some discs (usually the cheapo's) won't reliably play back on older CD players. Most computer-grade discs won't always play back on my Phillips deck (circa 1996

- I need a new player!). If I use "audio" CDs they always work, at least burned at speeds up to 12X.

Thump553 · « **Reply #26 on:** 28 Jun 2003, 03:18 pm »

JoshK:

I mostly use a peer to peer network called furthurnet (www.furthurnet.org), which is reasonably efficient.

Recently I've been grabbing a lot of concerts using the bittorrents system, which is really fast, but the shows are only up for a few days so you have to grab them fast. Good starting points are:

http://digitalpanic.org/bt/index.php
and the forums at sharing the groove:

http://www.sharingthegroove.org/msgboard/

Etree is a loose organization of private ftp boards, good if you can find an open slot. www.etree.org. Their database is a great place to find out info about a show and maybe where to get it:

http://db.etree.org

Finally, and certainly not least is the internet archives. There are movies, music and a whole bunch more here. This may be the best place to start (click on the audio tab):

http://www.archive.org/

There are also band specific ftp sites and mailing lists, from the big guys (The Dead, Phish, Bob Dylan, Neil Young) to more obscure (Gene Clark, Roy Buchanan).

If you get into it for a while, you will probably get into trading concerts by snail mail. There are tons and tons of places where people maintain their tradelists. Mine is at www.tapercities.com and www.phishhook.com is maybe the biggest such site.

All of the above deal only in taper friendly bands. Trading of official releases, charging cash or extra blanks, etc. are extremely frowned on.

Enjoy.

JoshK · « **Reply #27 on:** 28 Jun 2003, 08:49 pm »

Thump,

Thanks for the info. Yeah I assumed it was taper friendly stuff, which is cool and what I would be looking for. My dayz of mp3, vidz and movies trading are over. I always bought the stuff I really liked but there is just too many problems with that stuff these days.

Do you know any easy way to find out if a band is taper friendly? Seems to me the band might be but often the label isn't so they put a lot of pressure on the band to not encourage it.

Days ago I went to see Limp Bizkit (yeah yeah I know) in Seattle and the band came out and was getting the crowd going while we waited for the bassist to get his hand stitched back up (bass breaking accident). He was asking the crowd to send him a copy of the taped show even though no one was suppose to tape. I mention this because a lot of bands I know are like that, the labels ban them but they themselves don't care.

Thump553 · « **Reply #28 on:** 28 Jun 2003, 11:41 pm »

I think etree, furthur and the internet archives all maintain lists of who is taper friendly on their sites. The internet archives and furthur, at least, and probably etree, self-police themselves pretty rigorously.

I'd start with the internet archives- www.archives.org -, and maybe check out Martin Sexton there (esp. the Central Park concert July 19, 1997). This is a show he originally released as a bonus disc with a commercial album. He's definately an artist you should check out if you never heard him. I just downloaded a Derek Trucks concert (600+MB) there in about an hour. They have something called FreeCache which seems to really work good. You don't have to install anything special at your end to use it.

EProvenzano · « **Reply #29 on:** 1 Jul 2003, 08:50 pm »

Does anyone have some experience with Maxell Music Pro CDR's?
I don't have a retailer near by who sells Mitsu or others mentioned in the thread. I've noticed that the Maxell Music Pro's also have a much deeper blue dye than the usual Maxell offerings. What does the darker dye do?
I'm interested in picking up a hundred of these blanks, but I'd like to know if some of you have something to say about them first.

Thanks!
BR,
EP

grub · « **Reply #30 on:** 2 Jul 2003, 12:14 am »

Although I've never done any testing with different types of CD blanks, I get the feeling that the Mitsui blanks are very good.

Ehider burned me a CD that sounds better than the original--he used a Mitsui blank. Also, the recording studio at Western Michigan University only uses Mitsui blanks...that really turned my head. I know what brand I'm buying when I run out of CDR's.
-->grub

Rob Babcock · « **Reply #31 on:** 2 Jul 2003, 12:53 am »

CD-R Planet sells the Mitsui Gold 80 min discs for $83 per hundred. I'm planning on trying a sleeve when I get more of my current discs used up.

I've got quite a few cakeboxes of various brands.

Mitsui says their gold ones use a different type of dye that will last an extra century longer than the regular ones, although I may not be here to confirm that!

randytsuch · « **Reply #32 on:** 2 Jul 2003, 01:11 am »

Quote from: grub

Although I've never done any testing with different types of CD blanks, I get the feeling that the Mitsui blanks are very good.

Ehider burned me a CD that sounds better than the original--he used a Mitsui blank. Also, the recording studio at Western Michigan University only uses Mitsui blanks...that really turned my head. I know what brand I'm buying when I run out of CDR's.
-->grub

Hi Grub,
Just remember that CD Ehider burned was written on a specific Pioneer Audio cd writer (probably the PDR-W739), using a Mitsui digital audio CDR.
This Pioneer is recommended by Stan Warren and his friends.

Randy

grub · « **Reply #33 on:** 2 Jul 2003, 06:03 am »

Cool Randy, that's probably what the setup was.
-->grub (hoping to get some Mitsui digital audio cd's in the future)

ehider · « **Reply #34 on:** 2 Jul 2003, 07:44 am »

Randy's exactly correct. I used the Pioneer 739, which to my knowledge is one of the very few burners that actually makes better sounding copies than the original CD. Better space, decay and basically more analog sounding. This player has allowed me to make such good copies that I can actually differentiate between different CD-R brands too! This is why I recommend the Mitsui. They won hands down against 5 other CD R brands in a true double blind comparison. I will also note that the burned copies were selected over the originals as the best sounding source disk in a true blind comparison (by 6 different listeners no less!)

EProvenzano · « **Reply #35 on:** 2 Jul 2003, 10:57 pm »

ehider,
Could you point me to an online source for those specific Mitsu blanks that you use.
Also, are those blanks compatible with Computer based burners?

Thanks.

ehider · « **Reply #36 on:** 4 Jul 2003, 03:08 pm »

There are quite a few, here are 50 or so different links to retailers that offer various Mitsui blanks:

http://www.dvd-rwmedia.com/

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=2/topcat_search=1/form_keyword=mitsui/mode=google/ut=44288805f52853ec

http://www.nextag.com/serv/main/buyer/outpdir.jsp?doSearch=y&search=mitsui

In terms of CD-R's for computers just specify which type you want when ordering (for computers or for "audio only" CD-R). Typically most listings are for computer CD-R's unless you specify otherwise.

Cheers,

Ehider

cyounkman · « **Reply #37 on:** 21 Jul 2003, 11:04 pm »

Quote from: EProvenzano

Does anyone have some experience with Maxell Music Pro CDR's?
I don't have a retailer near by who sells Mitsu or others mentioned in the thread. I've noticed that the Maxell Music Pro's also have a much deeper blue dye than the usual Maxell offerings. What does the darker dye do?

I saw these a week ago and have also been wondering. They claim compatibility with 'Orange Book II'. Does anyone know what that is?

John Casler · « **Reply #38 on:** 22 Jul 2003, 12:25 am »

I've posted this in other places but Memorex makes a "BLACK" ALL USE (can be used in computers "and" audio recorders) CD-R

But it must say "ALL USE" on the box.

I just got mine and they are great.