Art

Good to hear from you - I will pass on your regards to Stewie and Cathy. I will certainly look up Folk Legacy Records.

The Australian Consumers' Association recently did some tests on a range of blank DVD brands to see how accurate they could be recorded at different speeds by different burners. The results were surprising - nothing was error-free, but the best brands were pretty good. With a couple of the worst brands, it was virtually impossible to burn a DVD that was playable. The best brand was Verbatim, from memory. I don't think things are quite as bad with CD-Rs, because the burner doesn't have to work as hard, but I suspect similar problems occur with cheaper brands, particularly when you try to burn too fast. My 2.4GHz P4 won't burn at 48x regardless of the media, and despite using supposedly 52X discs. And that is with a brand new burner with the latest firmware!

Durability wasn't mentioned, but I had previously read an article about CD-R durability which wasn't encouraging. Most brands at the time didn't make it past 7 years in accelerated aging tests. Hope things are better now!

I won't be throwing out my old tapes just yet!

Chris