I know we all talk about 32X and 40X and 48X but I've noticed that even if my Benq(formerly Acer) 32X10X40 writer claims to be writing a CD at 32X with Nero it still takes about 7 mins to complete. I know you've got to give a bit of extra time for the lead in and lead out but 7 mins ??? I use Princo which I know are cheap and I have a spindle of 50 which I dont have the heart to throw out so I make Cds for all my friends :) . They're rated for 2X to 48X and I've never had a problem with them except the speed - but I'm wondering - if 32X doesn't necessarily mean 32X or 32 X 150 kb/s then it's no method of reckoning at all is it if it's so dependent on the CD media ? Should I be trying better quality media ? Will better quality media give me actual 32X speeds ? And do you have to finalize the CD to get it to play on some CD Players ? I've never figured this out...

I have answered that question in a previous post...

(in reply to conalcharles)

A lot of it has to do with the amount of time your burner takes to "spin-up" to that speed. You should always look at benchmarks before buying a cd-writer, or you're liable to end up with a "lemon" even when dealing with big name brands...I mean hey, look what happened to Creative, they used to make REALLY good CD-ROMs, now even their readers don't work well. CD Media can make a difference...but generally not THAT much (from my experience). My suggestion would be to look for benchmarks done on your burner, you might be getting an ordinary speed for your model. My Friend's 32x LG burner (sorry don't know any other specs off hand) burnes at about the same speed, but in my store it only takes me 3.5 minutes or so per disc (LiteOn 40x12x48x).

(in reply to conalcharles)

Thanks Dolphinius_Rex - I get what you're saying - I already know my system is slow(Celery 433Mhz, 66MhzFSB, 196MB RAM, Seagate 20Gb HDD) and hence it might not be delivering a constant 4800 kb/s stream to the writer and I guess in the event that the Benq writer did not have the Seamless Link technology (the anti Buffer Underrun technology) I would have ended up with coaster after coaster unless I burnt at a lesser speed. It's not a big issue really for me - but I just want to know what's going on. As such Acer has no "recommended" or certified media for which it guarantees a write time of 2.5 mins (isn't that what a 32X writer should take for 703 MB - 4800kb/s so 703 X 1024 = 719872kb - divvy it up and it should take 2.5 mins to write 703MB) How much extra time is overhead - spinning up, writing lead ins and lead outs, cacheing files etc etc ? What's a realistic time to expect ?

(in reply to conalcharles)

John - I searched but turned up a ton of posts. Which post did you answer this question in - can you point me in that direction ? Thanks![B)]

(in reply to conalcharles)

Cut the crap about slow system. This might only be the case if you would burn on the fly. In any other case your system should be able to handle it.
What you experience here are 2 things.
Poor compatibility of Acer/Benq writers with princo disc's
2.5 minutes is not a correct time since you forget that the drive uses zones/cav technology which won't let you write at 32x from the begining.
Now what can we expect at 32x.
Now I don't know what to expect from the Acer but it should be just arround the 4 minutes that is normal for a 32x burner with good media.
By the way in the begining most 32x burners burnt Princo 32x disc's bad when burnt at full speed. This might been improved with firmwares
and the Acer might be one of the good drives still the time
indicates some problems with keeping up good quality writes.
So better check out other media.

Well since you don't know what is recommended you could try.
Taiyo Yuden as a start since Taiyo Yuden was one the creators of the cd-r. So most compannies see to it that these disc's work above average with there burners.

(in reply to conalcharles)

Ummm rjw we don't get Taido Yuden in Bombay, India at all but we get all the other brands. Dunno why - maybe they don't distribute our side of the world. Does Nero and Easy CD Creator take different times to write the exact same data to a Same brand CDR ? I've always wondered....
Guess I should be trying out some other media to see what works best on my burner...

(in reply to conalcharles)

Since you said you can get any other brand. Try Mitsui or Kodak.
Since these disc's are also A quality and work with most brands at full speed. I will try to find out in the mean time some speed ratings for the Acer.

(in reply to conalcharles)

Princo has a habit of trying something shady every once and a while...like when they tried to sell 2x certified DVD-Rs as 4x Certified DVD-Rs...and now they're being sued by Philips over it. (For future reference, that's why I don't trust Princo).

2.5min would be in a perfect world. If the burner started and finished at 32x and didn't have to write TOC or the lead in/out tracks. In reality, you're looking at 3.5 minutes, maybe 4 minutes.

on a side note, how much does 10 T.Y. 80min CD-Rs ususally cost? (in full sized jewel cases). Anybody have an estimate?

(in reply to conalcharles)

Dang-IT! I'm having the same problem at home! I can't seem to burn a CD in any less then 8min...even at 40x (supposedly 40x I should say). I'm sure it's LiteON's smart burn that's holding me back, I just have to figure out why.....ARGH! any ideas anyone? I have all of my devices running on ATA100 cables, my Burner and HDDs are on seperate cables (my often unused pioneer 105 DVD-Rom is the partner to my LiteON 40x12x48x). And I turn everything else off when burning. Thanks!

(in reply to conalcharles)

YAY! there we go! Now I can burn 80min CDs in 3.5min! (+/- 15 secs or so). The problem was the IDE Channel speed, it was set to PIO instead of DMA. Formatting my hardrive and re-installing windows helped a lot too!

(in reply to conalcharles)