Red Book on a CDRW

freendeed wrote on 2/5/2003, 4:21 AM

I'm in the process of mastering an album and to keep from using up discs while I'm auditioning in the car, etc. with different mixes I've just been using a CDRW disc (all the players I'm using will play CDR, CDRW, and MP3). It works fine on the first burn, flakely after the second burn, and sometimes not at all after 3 overwrites. Has anybody seen this kind of problem in a system that otherwise works fine? I'm wondering since a "data" CD is more forgiving than an "audio" CD if CDRW's are not good to use for this purpose (multiple burns as a red book CD)? Anyone have any idea?

Comments

PaulO wrote on 2/6/2003, 4:09 AM

I have successfully overwritten some CDRW discs dozens of times in the course of testing stuff. This does seem more like a media fault - not so much a problem with an individual disc, but rather more broadly based. The writer may also be impliciated. It rather sounds as though, for one reason or another, the old data is not being adequately 'swept away' when new data is written.

My money is on the writer. The obvious tests are

i) try your media in another writer
ii) try totally different media in your writer - make sure that despite the branding, the 'other' media really does originate from a different factory.

Geoff_Wood wrote on 2/7/2003, 4:00 AM

Make sure you have the correct speed rating media. 1x - 4x CD-RW media is *not* compatible with faster drives, and vice-versa, even if burned at the rated speed.

Also, why bother with CD-RW discs at all ? CD-Rs are so inexpensive, and less chance of player difficulties.

geoff

freendeed wrote on 2/12/2003, 4:33 AM

It was the "full erase" thing. If I completely erased (vs. Quick erase) I can reuse the CDRW fine.