Best CD-ROM Drive for mastering?

farss wrote on 1/25/2004, 2:53 AM
I am going to master 24 audio CDs. I'll be burning onto CDs specifically made for low speed mastering. Any suggestions as to mastering software but more specifically burners.
I have the latest CDA and Nero.
My gut feeling is to go with CDA seeing as how it's written for just that job but I see it doesn't support CD text, not a big issue in this instance though.
Or is it that one burner is as good as the next these days?

Comments

Rednroll wrote on 1/25/2004, 8:01 AM
Most will tend to agree, Plextor drives have become a staple in our arsenal of mastering tools. As far as software, that is less important than the person turning the knobs and knowing how to use the software. Sound Forge is the best in my opinon, but you'll need some plugins to go along with it, that does some good multi-band compression. Izotope's Ozone is a good mastering plugin, but I've only tried it out a couple of times, because I still think my external hardware sounds better, or maybe I'm just more familiar with the adjustments and what they sound like.
farss wrote on 1/25/2004, 2:21 PM
Red,
thanks for the info, I'll get a Plextor. I'm more worried about the dub house sending it back due to errors than the sound quality. Much of the content would have been recorderd on journalists cassette recorders and since been through several generation of analogue copying and then one or more stages of A/D.
This is only spoken words and its what's said that'll be what the audience will be interested in. I'd never use that as an excuse for sloppy work of course but if it was material where the audio quality was a serious factor I would have passed it over to a full time professional. Problem with this sort of material is the client will be lucky to sell 100 copies of the finished product so if this was done through a pro mastering facility no one could afford to buy the product.
Also it finally dawned on me that this was mastered originally for release on audio cassette which is a real pain. Each program runs about 43 minutes which would have been fine for cassette but means only one program per CD.
Rednroll wrote on 1/26/2004, 5:44 PM
I believe they make 99minute CDs or maybe it's a 92 minute, for the last couple years now. I know it's ninety somethin minutes. I've never tried to use one and send it off to a pressing plant, but they do make them none the less, so you might want to look into that option. Not sure if Vegas will let you burn it, but I've used Nero and had no problems.
farss wrote on 1/26/2004, 11:43 PM
I bought some 90 min CDs about a year ago to squeeze that extra bit onto VCDs but I was a bit put off by all the warnings that trying to burn to them could damage the burner. I seem to recall both the CD supplier and Nero giving warnings about this. I think I tried one and the CD burner just quit at about the 85 min mark.

The other issue to consider would be if all the CD playaer will play them but I'll do a bit of research. I could shave about 30 secs of the end of each program where they announce what the next program is going to be, bit pointless on a set of CDs!
Geoff_Wood wrote on 1/27/2004, 1:02 AM
Get a Plextor Premimium. Will burn down to 4x.

And you can burn a whole bunch of speeds as well, and then with the included Plextools pro do BLER tests to see if the old-wives' tale that slower really means better, is true or not.

geoff
farss wrote on 1/27/2004, 2:42 AM
Geoff,
that's the one I'm aiming to buy. I hadn't thought of that aspect but yes it does come with software to check the number of errors. It's a damn expensive burner, well compared to all the other ones on offer but it does seem designed to do the job properly.