I got a "classic rock" new releases email from Amazon tonight.

2 of the titles highlighted are BURNED by Amazon: cdr's of Scorpions Crazy World
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000001FYZ/?tag=imwan-20

& BOC The Revolution By Night
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000025WW/?tag=imwan-20

I hope this isn't becoming a serious issue.

While as an old fart, I prefer real cd's at minimum, I would rather buy a lossless download than a cdr:

1. It SHOULD be cheaper
2. Delivery of a dl is instant & no shipping cost
3. Pretty much every company that sells burned discs uses crap blank discs, & I have to rip & reburn them anyway.

Amazon has been stocking loads of official CD-Rs for a while now. It's not a new model, it's just a way for them to offer reasonably priced physical copies of titles that the labels are making available only in digital form.

That said, I agree with your reasoning completely. Dedicated collectors can safely ignore these releases.

I would never buy an "official" CD-R unless it was from a lesser-known artist distributing their own work that didn't have the means to press "silver" copies.

On the surface this would seem like a reasonable way to keep titles that should be out-of-print in print. But this concept seems doomed. IMO asking $11.98 for a CD-R is an unreasonable price point. I think most people that collect physical CDs would rather pay two to three times that price and seek out a used silver copy (in very good+ condition) or an import rather than pay $12 for a CD-R.

Geff, the #3 in your post makes it sounds like you've obtained a couple of these CD-R releases in the past. How were they packaged? Thick jewel cases, slim jewel cases or paper envelopes? Printed artwork, photocopied artwork or no artwork?

I haven't bought any burned by Amazon.

I have purchased various including from artists, CD Baby, Concerts Live & The Smithsonian. As far as i can remember the only one I knowingly bought as a cdr was the Concert Live Mott set which was well packaged with trays but on crap Pro Disc media. The CD Baby/Wendy Waldman was in a jewel case with no back cover. The Smithsonian was in cardboard packaing (a cdr packed straight in cardboard = disaster.) I've also bought 1 "WAC" (Warner Archive Collection) DVD. Packaged fine, but Warner goes out of there way to hide the brand of blank media they use which concerns me.

I suspect there were others but that's what I remember off the top of my head.

I believe I've bought one CD-R. Directly from the artist, who offered to do it because the album was out of print and he couldn't convince the label to put it back in print.

Alan

I purchased one as-advertised CD-R from Amazon: UB40's "TwentyFourSeven". Came in a standard jewel case with booklet & insert & normal looking CD label. Printed on the label is "The copyright in this album is owned by Reflex Recordings Ltd. This label copy information is the subject of copyright protection." To me, everything about it looks & sounds like a normal CD release, although I can read in the tiny print on the playing side of the disc "CD-R" followed by a series of letters/numbers that my eyes have trouble reading clearly . So how would I even be able to tell what brand of CD-R was used for this?

Seemed like a decent deal for $9.99.

As a fan of Julia Fordham, I've been thinking a while about purchasing Julia Fordham & Paul Reiser's "Unusual Suspects", which for physical product, is also only available as a CD-R through Amazon, but reviews & the sound snippets have made me think this one may be a bit of a snoozer.

IMPORTANT EDIT: I had forgotten (& re-learned the hard way tonight) that any version of Nero Disc Speed higher then the 5 series (part of Nero 9) can hose your ability to burn on XP. I unfortunately can't find any links for 5.x, but as it is freeware i would be glad to email it to anyone who needs a copy. The solution is to uninstall & reinstall the nero suite.

Download the freeware program below. Select the "Disc Quality" tab & it SHOULD tell you the TRUE manufacturer of the disc (be prepared to be surprised, the ONLY 2 of the big mass market co's that EVER makes there own discs are JVC & TDK, & even TDK does it rarely. Since JVC bought Taiyo Yuden, they are now using TY dye, but the TY quality has gone significantly downhill since the purchase. The best bet is kind of like with Tubes, try to find "New Old Stock" discs 3 years older or more, with MIDS of Tayio, TDK (again with the Blue Dye), & I've heard rumor that some older Verbatim cdr's were good, but I've never seen them).

For cd, you ideally want to see Taiyo Yuden dye, or a Blue (NOT SILVER) TDK dye.

If you have a decent drive that it supports, it will also scan the quality of the burn. Different drives vary wildly in the results they show. Which drives are most accurate? That is another huge can of worms. Here's what I consider a quality cd scan::

Good-Excellent
Score:99-100
C1 Errors Under 100
C2 failures 0

Acceptable:
Score 97-98
C1 Errors under 250
C2 failures 0

Anything worse on a burned disc: toss it; including ANY C2 failures

Compatible back to win 98:
http://www.freewareshare.com/overview/4 ... 7-5-0.html
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/cd_dv ... _speed.cfm

Latest free version (I haven't got around to upgrading to this one yet)
http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD-DVD-Too ... peed.shtml

Geff: thanks for the tip on the freeware. I ran the Nero software on the UB40 CD-R & here are the results:

TDK manufactured
C1 Errors: Avg .13; Max 27; Total 556
0 C2 Failures
Quality Score: 96

Looks like this is a fail according to your ranges, although don't think I'll just "toss it". I'll just realize it's not up to par. It can't hurt the player to play it, right??

Anyhow, do you have a suggestion for a good place to purchase blank CD-R's, either the Taiyo Yuden or TDK blue-dye?

So think I'm safe, I downloaded Nero CD-DVD Speed v4.7.7.16 from afterdawn.com as it was the one of the links you provided that didn't make me enter all my personal info to do easily.

it was the 6.x series that causes me grief, as i was reminded the hard way last night. When I went to install 7.x, it wanted to add a bunch of tag along programs, so I declined & went back to 5.x.

Kid, the disc will not harm your player. The concern is having the disc go bad. One option is backing it up to your hard drive with EAC.

Re disc quality, to quote Duke Ellington "Things Ain't like They Used to be".

The good news, is a couple months back I got the first decent batch of newly manufactured blanks I'd received in a couple years. As there is now a HUGE variance from batch to batch, I can't guarantee they're still as good, but here's the link to what I bought:

http://www.supermediastore.com/product/ ... utm_medium

The "in plastic wrap" part is important. One of the ways manufacturers are dealing with the economy is by not using enough spacers in "cake boxes"; so during shipping the discs bounce which causes all sorts of problems. The tape wrap (ironically the "cheap method") eliminates that.

I also suggest the following:

1. Rip with freeware program EAC in "secure mode"
2. Burn at 4x
3. Turn off av before burning & if you want to be really anal like me (& increase the chance of a good burn) flush your system memory before burning (I use freeware "Free Ram XP Pro" &/or "Ram Rush").
4. I also suggest using IMGBurn rather than Nero or Roxio if you have a cue sheet (which EAC will make). I only use Nero for custom cd comps or cases where I have no cue sheet.

Geff: thanks for all the good tips. I've actually got a Pioneer Elite CD recorder that records at 1x or 2x, so I've mostly used it instead of a PC for my more serious listening CD-R's (as well as burning LP's). Of course the CD recorder requires the use of Music CD-R's and I'm unsure if I can find those in high quality. I'll do some testing on the ones I've got when I have a chance to see how they score. Still never had a CD-R crap out on me yet & I've had some at least 10 years, but that's certainly not a lifetime!

You're lucky. The highest percentage of cdr's that I have had go bad were TDK, Maxell, Office Depot & Comp USA all done on a Phillips stand alone. The majority of those were actually Ritek, Ricoh & CMC.

Not sure the Phillips was to blame, but since it dies I have noticed that my recently purchased Tascam pro tends to have considerably more errors than my Plextors, so i usually rip & reburn anything I make on there.

The reason i am so over the top on this is that I have had a lot of discs (both cdr & dvdr) go bad over the years.

Last time I checked, the best "Consumer music discs" other than the uber expensive gold discs were Mam-a/Mitsui.

I purchased Bob Seger's "The Distance", and got a real CD (made in the EU).
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000002U88/?tag=imwan-20

I'm only interested in CD-Rs in special cases.

I've knowingly bought them through artist sites (Joan Jones), CD Baby (Rebel Red) and Amazon (the Bettye Lavette EP).
But only because that's the only physical format in which they were available.