[fuse999@excite.com]

The slowest burn speed I can choose for cd's is 8x. How can I burn at 1x?

[cdanteek]

fuse999@excite.com, on Jun 11 2006, 06:39 PM, said:

The slowest burn speed I can choose for cd's is 8x. How can I burn at 1x?

Its the disc and the write speeds for that disc.



cdanteek

[fuse999@excite.com]

These are the same cd blanks i always use, and with the old ez cd creator i could record at 1x. with this emc8 it never gives me the option below 8x.

[cdanteek]

Quote

These are the same cd blanks i always use

Same spindle or same brand? What does the packaging say?

cdanteek

[sknis]

fuse999@excite.com, on Jun 11 2006, 01:39 PM, said:

The slowest burn speed I can choose for cd's is 8x. How can I burn at 1x?

Did you select the options? Put the cd in the drive and the program will give you all the available "good" options. If I might ask, why do you want to burn a cd at 1X ?

This post has been edited by sknis: 12 June 2006 - 05:41 AM

[cdanteek]

Recordable and rewritable CDs and DVDs are manufactured with a small amount of written "pregroove" data that contains various disc attributes, including the disc type, part number, manufacturer, the kind of dye used, its writable capacity, rated write speed, and other items. This data resides in a very small area on the disc that is not part of the user-writable area. The optical drive reads this data to determine how it should handle the disc.

When you begin the burning process, the drive will burn some very short tests in another tiny area of the disc, called the power calibration area. It does this to estimate the optimal setting for its laser so that the spots burned into the disc's dye will yield ideal reflectivity when reading.

Firmware
Due to slight mechanical differences between different optical drive models, the same disc might not perform exactly the same way across different computers that have similar drives. One way that two similar drives can differ is the firmware. If a firmware update is available for your optical drive, apply the update. Firmware can help define the way an optical drive assesses and reacts to discs.

Software
The software that you use to burn a disc has its own set of rules about how it interprets and responds to data it receives from the drive about the disc. Based on these rules, the software can tell the drive to burn the disc, burn at a reduced speed, or not allow the burn to occur.

Some software may request that the drive perform a low-speed burn if conditions do not allow it to burn at the rated speed (of the disc or drive). The software can request a certain burn speed, or it may allow the user to choose a speed for the drive to attempt. It's possible for software to send a request for the drive to burn at a speed that is below or above the rated burn speed of the disc. Advances in optical drive technology have enabled newer models to offer faster burn speeds. Generally, older optical drives are not able to burn at the faster speeds featured in more recent models.

Hardware
Optical disc drives use motors to spin up discs to their maximum revolutions per minute (RPM). As the disc spins, the laser starts writing from the inner portion of the disc to the outside. As the burn reaches the outer portion of the disc, the drive is able to write at faster speeds, as more pits and lands are available in one revolution. Maximum burn speeds are reached toward the outer portions of the disc. Therefore, if you burn a disc with a small amount of data, it may not reach the maximum burn speed because the written area doesn't approach the outer edge of the disc.

cdanteek

[d_deweywright]

fuse999@excite.com, on Jun 11 2006, 07:02 PM, said:

These are the same cd blanks i always use, and with the old ez cd creator i could record at 1x. with this emc8 it never gives me the option below 8x.

But is it also the same drive? Not all new drives have the option of burning at 1X. As far as CD-R (write once) media, the speed rating printed on the packaging is not necessarily even written on the disc itself. My recollection of the old days when the fastest rated discs were 4X and 8X, these same discs were happily accepted in 12X and 16X drives without complaint, even if they didn't always produce a good burn.

Writing at 1X is also no guarantee of a better "quality" burn. Testing done by others has shown that most drives are optimized to write their best when writing at, or near their fastest rated speed, and they can actually create a poorer quality burn at slower speeds.

So, if you're working under the assumption that slower is better, that is not necessarily a valid assumption.

[fuse999@excite.com]

The discs are from the same spindle, but it is a new recorder and i hadn't considered that it would not record at all speeds. That is probably the problem, so i thank you all for your input. and yes i do record at 1x because my discs last longer than others recorded at the fastest possible speeds. i have 14 year old discs i recorded that still are perfect, and newer faster recorded discs that have developed dropouts all over them. thanks again for the help, Roxio technical support was a total waste of time. ZERO help!

[cdanteek]

Quote

i do record at 1x because my discs last longer than others recorded at the fastest possible speeds.

None above ever mentioned recording at the max speed! I record my CD's from 8x to 16x. The quality of today's burner over your old burner, probably burns as good a disc at 8x to 16x.

cdanteek

This post has been edited by cdanteek: 12 June 2006 - 05:30 PM