Hey guys.
For what it's worth, here's my take on the Memorex and Verbatim blank CD-Rs.
First if you take your standard "Aluminum" CD and hold it up to the light, you can see through it. Not good! Also, if I hold this same CD in front my wife, I can see through her clothing and she's naked
. This is good(!) if your wife is a babe....I think my wife's a babe. For CD playback, as I understand it, if there's some transparency to your disc, some of the data can get lost as the laser reads the disc and cause the tracking function of the laser pick-up to work harder. Another "Not good" thing. I may be wrong here but that's what I've been able to figure out. Maybe someone else has better or more info on this.
As for why the Black versions of CD-Rs have the potential to sound better, it has to do with a couple of things. First, you can't see through these CDs which eliminates the problems mentioned above and, because they are black, I understand that the laser can focus better because there's less "scattering" of the laser as it reads the disc and that doesn't get fed back to the pick-up. Kind of another form of jitter I suppose.
I personally like the Verbatim CD-Rs for a couple of reasons; I like the aesthetic of a CD looking like a little LP (I'm still mainly a vinyl fan) but, intuitively, those little grooves can serve as breaking up resonance that can build up in the disc from mechanical or acoustic feedthrough/feedback. Also, they seem to be slightly thicker. I haven't taken the time to measure its thickness but they seem to be maybe .001"-.003" thicker. Thicker will generally offer a degree more of self-damping. While they don't sport a black burn side face, they do come in different colors than silver. I like the Green or Blue because, again, those colors also seem to create less scattering affects and, regardless the color, you can't see through them.
Also, perhaps a little on the bizarre side, in the near future, I'm going to fiddle with Cryo-Tempered blank CD-Rs and then record onto them and Cryo-Tempered recorded CD-Rs of the same music. I can understand why there may be some benefits to this but I won't have a firm opinion till I try it.
So, how valid is all this? I'm not sure. Maybe someone with more insight into this stuff can post here. What I do know is that to my ears, the Memorex and Verbatim CD-Rs sound better than the standard CD-Rs. It's not a HUGE difference but it takes one more variable of what can be bad for music playback out of the equation.
Last thing. Most of you may already know this but perhaps some of you don't. If you have a good to decent burner, you can make it better by isolating it and damping the transport. Then, when you burn your CDs, burn them slow. Commercial CDs are, by and large, just that. They are mass-produced and as a result, the lands and pits are not as clean as they should be. Burning CDs in your home usually produces a better copy than the original CD that you bought. Cleaner lands and pits.
So, there’s my $25.00 worth. Hope it's helpful.
BTW, the best thing I've found for standard aluminum CDs is they make great pictures of UFOs when you fling them in the air and shoot a picture of it. My friends think I have a special calling because I've "seen" an average of 7-13 UFOs a week for the past 8 months and just happen to have pictures to prove it!
