What speed cd do I use with a 24x/10x/40x CD-RW?

Question

I'm very new to this cd-rw stuff, so this is probably a stupid question. If my cd-rw is 24x/10x/40x, what speed cd should I being using to burn onto? I went to staples and saw that the 24x cd's cost the most. Lets say I'm buying cd's to burn mp3's onto at a speed of under 24x (since I just found out you should burn slower for best quality), like maybe 8x.. should I get the 8x cd's then? Can my cd-rw even use a cd slower than 24x? What about putting stuff onto cd other than audio files, what speed should this be done on for best results and what speed cd should it be burned onto?

Sorry for so many questions. Any info would be great, thanks.

John_T · Answer

Writing to a CD at higher speeds does not mean that it is writing at less quality, since your writing digital information onto it, if it was 'less quality', the file(s) would be corrupted and not work. However, it does mean that there is a higher chance of a buffer-underrun, but most burners come with some form of protection against that nowadays. As for the rated speed, its how fast the manufacturer thinks that the CDR/RWs can be burnt to. But its not the real limit, for example, i can burn 8X CDRs at 16X without problems, whether you want to try them at 24X is up to you, depends on how much you value your CDs :)

dre53 · Answer

I use a LiteOn burner, 24*10*40. I buy the Cd's that are on sale, usually 16x. I burn music CD's at 24x and have yet to make a single coaster. I'm in the habit of closing most of my programs running in the background during a burning session.

(Home built)
Pentium 4 1.9 Gig / 478 pin 400Mhz FSB
Shuttle Motherboard
Via chipset P4x266 VT8233 DDRam Support
Windows XP (home edition - Clean Install!)
DDRam 768 Meg - WD 80 gig HD ATA 100
Gainward GF3 Powerpack Golden Sample/64 meg
LiteOn 24x10x40 CD-RW - Pioneer DVD 500m
Pinacle Firewire Card - Linksys Lan 10/100
Santa Cruz Sound Card (4127 beta drivers)
Dell 991 Monitor - Altec Lansing 885 Thx Speakers
Microtek 3700 Scanner - HP 1100 Printer
Altec Lansing 885 Thx Speakers

Other: (Dell built)
XPSB1000r ,XP home, Gforce 2 pro 64meg
384 megs PC700 Rdram - 60 gig maxtor HD
DVD-Rom - Sony CD-RW

Message Edited on 01/23/02 07:15PM by dre53

tbrd113 · Answer

I was always under the assumption that the film or what CD digital coding is burned into was somehow sanwiched within the plastic top and bottom of the actual CD. I always new that the blue side was down. Therefore the silver side would be up. What I didn't realize was that the silver side up was actually a film. My son had a CD in his room that wasn't labeled and I told him it wold get scratched. It didn't matter. I looked at it and thought it was cracked or chipped. Wrong, It was the film on the top that got chipped. You could see right through the CD. I don't know if all CD's are made this way, but there should be a label on the top ASAP after burning. Unless, you buy the better CD's that have a writable label already on them. On the otherhand, I might have cheap CD's. They are either Hi-Val or Imitation brand CD's. I guess you get what you pay for.

Dimension 8200
19" M991
1.7 g with 256 PC800 RDRAM
32 MB NVIDIA GeForce2 MX with TV out
48 MAX CDROM
16x10x40x CD RW
Conextant HCF Modem
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound
Harman/Kardon HK-695
250 MB Internal zip
Win XP Home
40 gig Hd.
Norton System Works 2002

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What speed cd do I use with a 24x/10x/40x CD-RW?

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