January 03, 2006 7:40 pm
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OK, this has been bugging me a lot lately. Some people say there is no difference between the two, others say they are different. I've always just assumed that there were no differences other than price. Well to be sure of this, I decided to do some research and find out for myself.
In my assumption I thought a blank CD is a blank CD, no matter what the title is. When sticking a blank CD-R in a CD burner, the burner just sees a blank CD and writes to it. All it's doing is burning holes into the CD. It's the same process whether you're writing data or music to the CD-R. Burnt holes are burnt holes right? Right....and wrong.
You see there are two main types of CD burners out there. You have your computer CD burner and your home stereo CD burner. If you're using a computer CD burner, then you're fine. Use whatever type of blank CD media you want. The computer does not care. And when the CD burn is complete, then the CD should be able to play in any modern CD player (PC, home stereo, car, boombox, etc). It thinks under the same logic that I do - a blank CD is a blank CD.
With that easily put aside, let's discuss the other CD burner - the external, home stereo burner. Now this burner is different from your common computer burners. You see with this external burner, it uses its own proprietary software to burn CDs. Unlike with a computer burner, which uses whatever burning software you like on the PC.
Apparently, certain Music CD-Rs contain additional information on the blank CD that certain external CD burners look for in order to write to. With this method an external burner could force you to buy their blank CD-Rs and no one else. But this is mostly true for older external CD burners. A lot of the newer ones don't perform this check and don't force you to use their proprietary blank CDs.
So I hope this clears the air for some people. To recap, if you are using a computer CD burner, then you're fine. Use whatever blank form of media you want - it will burn to it and any modern CD player will be able to play it. If you own an older, external CD burner you may want to check the owner's manual to see what they recommend. But I would first try to use a common blank CD-R and see what happens. It might work and you might of just saved a few bucks in the process.
On a similar note, older/external CD burners can also have trouble reading the more compact 700MB, 80 minute blank CD-Rs as opposed to the standard 650MB, 72 minute CD-Rs.
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Intuitively, I agree with the above writer, but I have been trying to determine the accuracy of the assumption. Reliable information is hard to come by. The above writer makes some statements, but provides no supporting information to back the statements up. For all I can tell, they are merely one person's opinions.
My sister-in-law, who is technically more competent than I am, insists that use of data disks vice audio discs is tempting fate and that she had myriad reproduction problems using data discs where she should have used audio discs. On the other hand, I have never run into such problems. Were her problems due merely to the quality of the discs she used? I don't know, but I do know that I've used data discs running $0.10 to $0.15 a piece. The least expensive audio discs I've seen cost about 3 times as much. But then so do the branded data discs and prices for both rise from there.
I have yet to run across a reasonable explanation for the variations in the prices of the blank CD-Rs available out there, much less of CD-RWs and DVD-Rs.