source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 1 Sep 1996 19:36:47 -0700 Subject: Post from Brian From: John Chalmers From: mclaren Subject: writeable CD-R drives -- There's been much enthusiasm of late about writeable CD-R discs, CD-ROM-writing drives, and the prospects of releasing your own microtonal music on your very own CDs burned on your very own home computer. This would be wonderful, if the technology were ready for prime time. It isn't. "The problem with the writeable CD technology is that you have to make an `image' to be written to the disk. (..) If you want to back up 650 MB, you want to have another 650 MB on your hard disk empty to store the image, which is then transferred to the CD-R (..) You get *one shot at writing to the disk* from beginning to end. You can do multiple sessions, but that's a *real hassle too.* The point is that once the CD-ROM starts to `burn' you can't stop it. If there's a glitch, brownout, operating system hiccup, horribly fragmented file, or any number of things, then the CD doesn't get burned, and you end up with a *blown session.* These are common, and *the result is a totally useless disk* that must be discarded. It takes a couple of hours to prepare your files to be burned into the disk. If something changes, you have to start over. And if your hard disk isn't fast enough, you can't even burn the disk at all. "One vendor told me that the quad-speed CD- ROM writers *were kept off the market* because the system requirements were outrageous, and tolerances for error was nil. I recommend people buy a cheap Tahiti optical drive and use it for backup and archiving instead--at least until a new technology arrives called *packet writing.* Packet writing is now being standardized, and it will allow a CD-R to act a little more like a normal optical drive insofar as using for backup is concerned. I'm told that many of the CD-R units on the market will be upgradble to packet writing technologyw ith a BIOS revision. Make sure to check before you buy a CD-R. Until packet writing comes along, these devices are *close to being useless for the average user.*" [Dvorak, John C., "Inside Track," in PC Magazine, March 26, 1996, pg. 91] The test reported on this forum in which a 15-minute audio file was written to CD-R is, alas, meaningless. The acid test: how often does the drive and disc combo produce a bad burn when a full 680 megs of audio data are written non-stop to CD-R disk? Reports suggest that the error rate right now is around 60%, depending on the brand of CD-R disc. That is, 6 out of 10 discs produce a bad burn and a blown disc which must be discarded. Worse still, my gearhead friends inform me that the writeable CD technology is so flaky that to get good results, people who burn their own CD ROMs must check the grapevine to see which brand name of writeable CD-R disc has a bad error rate this month, and which manufacturer came out with a good batch. One month TDK writeable CD-R discs produced near-100% bad burns, the next month it was Mitsui, the next month Sony... And it changes from one month to the next. You get the idea. Worse still, many CD-R writeable drives will burn discs that other brands of CD-ROM read-only drives cannot read. Let's take some detailed examples, from "The Great American Burnout," Multimedia World, July 1996, pp. 58- 66, in which 20 different CD-R burner drives were compared: "JVC's Personal Archiver 2X for Windows 3.x and Windows 95 eliminates compatibility issues; but it limits you to burning discs on JVC recorders..." "On the HP SureStore 4020i, none of the included software would run our write tests..." "[On the Microboards PlayWrite 4000] premastering packages can record Red Book audio tracks, but they lack audio-editing features, and [the Microboards'] Red Roaster's ability to set up subchannel codes for subindices and program pauses...] "[MicroNet Master CD Plus] the 512K buffer can be a problem with slower 486 systems...] "Though it supports all modes of writing, the drive failed the CD Extra test. According to Olympus, the PC versions of Gear don't handle the [Olympus Deltis CD-R2] properly, causing the failure..." "[On the Pioneer DW-S114X] we created CD Extra discs without a problem; but the read tests failed, with bad sector errors. This recorder requires CD-R media to be in pristine condition..." "We couldn't get [the Smart & Friendly CD-R 1002] to burn a CD-DA + XA two-session disc. Our attempts to add a session after recording a session with audio tracks resulted in a cryptic `Toolkit or virtual CD error' from Easy-CD Pro. Since we were able to add data on the very same CD-R disc using the same software but another recorder, the Sony mechanism appears to have been the culprit..." "Easy-CD Pro returned a cryptic `Toolkit Error: 136' and Gear's manual stated that the [Sony Spressa 9221] doesn't support CD Extra..." "While the write performance is excellent, the [Yamha CDR100] cannot effectively double as a reader, because of slow access times..." The Philips CDD 2000 got the highest marks from Multimedia World magazine--which, compared with the dismal results from the other drives, means that the Philips CDD 2000 might actually *work*--some of the time. Now let's deal with some anecdotal evidence: Gary Morrison and I paid for a CD-R audio disc as the pre-master of our CD release, "Detwelvulate!" containing 74 minutes of Ivor Darreg's microtonal music. I tried to play the CD-R master last week. It's now unplayable, some 18 months after it was burned. Despite all the nonsense about the photoreactive dye lasting 10 years, 20 years, 500 years, or what-have-you, the brutal reality is that CD-R discs don't last very long. A year, maximum. Probably less. The problems afflicting CD-Rs, once written, are legion: [1] Fingerprints are permanent. They cannot be burnished off. Try to do so, and you'll destroy the CD-R because you'll smudge the photoreactive dye. [2] The photoreactive dye is laid down in a single continuous spiral track 1/10 the width of a human hair. As the disc endures thermal stress in winter and summer, the single continuous spiral track distorts and finally becomes unreadable. [3] If the spiral dye channel is even microsopically off-center, the CD-ROM drive will accumulate so many errors as the drive head runs from the inside toward the outside fo the CD-R disc that the disc will be unreadable. Thus, unfortunately, the writeable CD technology is not ready for prime time. I researched the technology 6 months ago: it was dismal. Packet-writing drives are now beginning to become available, but it doesn't seem to have helped the abysmal error rate of the CD-R media, nor has it helped lengthen the ridiculously short life span of dye-based CD-R discs once burned. Those of you who are contemplating buying a CD-R writeable drive to burn your own microtonal audio CDs would do well to wait another 3-5 years. Perhaps the technology will have been debugged by then. --mclaren Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 2 Sep 1996 20:53 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA06941; Mon, 2 Sep 1996 20:54:07 +0200 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA14925 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id LAA07506; Mon, 2 Sep 1996 11:18:25 -0700 Date: Mon, 2 Sep 1996 11:18:25 -0700 Message-Id: <960902181107_71670.2576_HHB36-4@CompuServe.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu