Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.

Subject: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 Mar 18 - 10:42 AM

I regularly make audio CDs. Burner them on my laptop via an external CD/DVD burner.

But some reports are that older tower PCs and car audio players are refusing them. And because they are given free, maybe people don't complain. I have just burnt a regular CD-R on a different laptop (internal burner) as a test.

The normal medium is Texet full-face printable CDs. Printable to avoid peeling labels.

I spoke to the computer shop wot sold the burner and the owner suggested burning at a slower speed. Which makes sense (ish). I thought it might be the disk format because Nero doesn't give options now - only an ISO. And the medium is always a candidate.

Any experience in this area?

FWIW Texet now have a version of the f-f printables where the aluminium mirroring extends almost to the centre hole so the print doesn't look funny in that region.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: robomatic
Date: 23 Mar 18 - 12:29 PM

There used to be some audio devices that did not accept data CDs but only 'music' CDs even tho you could burn the exact same ISO on 'em. Are you using these type CDs? They're usually sold as CD-R Music. I've experienced some devices that will play data CDs with music ISOs burned on 'em and also other devices that will not play the CDs unless they're 'music'.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: DaveRo
Date: 23 Mar 18 - 02:35 PM

Some devices will only play CDDAs and not 'data CDs' which might contain, e.g. mp3s. Which is being discussed here?

Do 'music CD-Rs' still exist? They're mentioned here as history.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: BobL
Date: 24 Mar 18 - 03:35 AM

The Wiki article referenced by Dave is pretty informative.

CD-Rs should be every bit as readable as normal CDs (although CD-RWs aren't). However the quality of the writing depends on various factors - the laser power setting, pulse timings, disc speed - and if these are less than perfect, the resulting disc may not be readable on a reader that in also less-than-perfectly set up. Another factor is the condition of the disc: their shelf life is supposed to be decades but dyes degrade and silver oxidises, and if your blanks are old or poor quality, or have been stored in direct sunlight, this won't help matters.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Mr Red
Date: 24 Mar 18 - 06:17 AM

Yes the media & variations. Thanx 4 the input.

I would doubt that the ISO image was anything but Kosher. Data CDs AFAIK and I do burn data disks, though the archive is 2 Data DVDs now.

The medium I understand, the burner - I have three at my disposal but it will take time to run the permutations. The bog standard blanks are no waste, I have many that can be sacrificed. My caveat is that big names like (say) Maxel have their blanks made in the same factories as unbranded types. There is little guarantee - complaining is of little use when the recipient hasn't informed me ('cos they are free issue). They are a gift - some gift!

Some reports are of PCs not playing, so the data CD issue is unlikely.

My plan:
1) try other burners (including one I thought was dead!)
2) burn a batch of 3 on three different burners and see if there is a difference.
3) try old media. But not the batch of 3 or I will be into burning maybe 9 as a test.
4) then there is the DVD dimension - you get the logistics - this is a hobby! Not a volume business. And I am currently helping an historian to make DVDs of his slide shows. 100 old photos of Stroud at a time, and he has 5000. So before the first is finished, I want enough confidence to proceed.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Mr Red
Date: 24 Mar 18 - 06:33 AM

needless to say my blank media are stored in a dark box, at about 18degC (winter) to 20s (summer).

But I am well aware of the problemo of heat work -
lasers burn at hundreds of degrees for a millisecond ish. But that equates with 100 years at ambient temperatures on longlife media (they claim), and 5 years on peanuts level blanks (MTBF).

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 24 Mar 18 - 06:45 AM

The factory CD player in my 2003 Micra would only play certain Philips CD-RW discs from a 10 pack I bought around 2005. Tescos CDR discs were fine. I found some identical Philips CD-RW a couple of years ago but they would not play on my car, so now I have a digital player which reads flac files on a memory stick!

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: DaveRo
Date: 24 Mar 18 - 07:09 AM

Mr Red wrote: I would doubt that the ISO image was anything but Kosher.

'ISO' here refers to ISO 9660, the organisation of the filesystem - like FAT or NTFS. It's possible to produce a CD-ROM to ISO 9660 standards but for the software in the player not to be able to handle it - for example if the directory structure is too deep. ISTR there are extensions too - long filenames, unicode - that sort of thing - which a player might fall over. So keep the structure simple.

On Linux most if not all burners are based on cdrecord, originally written by Jörg Schilling, which is part of a suite called cdrtools. I used it in a script to burn audio cds (CD-DA not CD-ROMs like you) and it used to display a message telling me the manufacturer code of my blank CR-R, then a disclaimer that, having not paid a license fee, he (Jörg) wasn't allowed access to the database containing the corresponding manufacturer and factory names. Followed by a 'guess' - which suggested, unofficially, who made it and where!

So if you want to compare different blank CD-Rs you might look for a Windows program that will read the CD-R Manufacturer Code.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Mar 18 - 06:05 AM

4) ... I am currently helping an historian to make DVDs of his slide shows. 100 old photos of Stroud at a time, and he has 5000.....

Since optical media is useless for archival purposes, I hope that the CD burning is just a temporary path. The slides need to be backed up onto a at least three hard-drives of different makes and stored in three places in case of fire or flood.

Then the hard-drives can be backed up to cloud storage.

As an aside in our huge project to salvage and restore folk programmes from around the world I have lost count of the number of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs that have been offered only to find that they have gone corrupt and that they are no longer playable. This does not affect commercialy pressed CDs/DVDs - but even then the oxide players can decompose in damp surroundings, e.g. the tropics.
However what we have found is R2R and cassette tapes are good for 50+ years.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Mar 18 - 06:06 AM

4) ... I am currently helping an historian to make DVDs of his slide shows. 100 old photos of Stroud at a time, and he has 5000.....

Since optical media is useless for archival purposes, I hope that the CD burning is just a temporary path. The slides need to be backed up onto a at least three hard-drives of different makes and stored in three places in case of fire or flood.

Then the hard-drives can be backed up to cloud storage.

As an aside in our huge project to salvage and restore folk programmes from around the world I have lost count of the number of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs that have been offered only to find that they have gone corrupt and that they are no longer playable. This does not affect commercialy pressed CDs/DVDs - but even then the oxide players can decompose in damp surroundings, e.g. the tropics.
However what we have found is R2R and cassette tapes are good for 50+ years.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: GUEST,CJB
Date: 26 Mar 18 - 06:06 AM

Sorry that last was from CJB

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Mar 18 - 03:51 AM

However what we have found is R2R and cassette tapes are good for 50+ years.

hmmm...... VHS tapes that were used extensively by the record industry to archive many famous and successful digital audio recordings was found to suffer when they revisited them. The medium that bound the ferrous particles had oused from the edges and coagulated. As the tapes unwound it ripped off the protective layer and some of the ferrous layer. They tried baking the tape with moderate success. Decca used a propriety system so didn't follow the rest of the industry and their digital R2R system didn't suffer in the same way.

Cassettes inhabit the same area. And "print-through" is a known degradation with analogue & more prevalent in cassettes. Because the tape is wound & thin. But as I inevitably say when the HiFi is questioned - "how good a quality is a blank recording?"

in my application CDs & DVDs are a transfer medium. A review vehicle. A discussion point. Who knows what legacy equipment they posses. The historian receiving the DVDs is nearly 80, his wife does the computery stuff and she merely knows what she knows! My project is to get his stuff and voice to our local museum and Gloucestershire Archives where they have experts in digital archivery wotsit.

And at the end of the day his collection of slides, postcards (& slides thereof) and published books, will last longer still, but not his voice and extensive knowledge.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Mar 18 - 04:09 AM

for example if the directory structure is too deep ..... - long filenames, unicode DaveRo to the rescue again. TIA

Yes. Some had long filenames. Maybe a legacy from Nero10 was allowing that. Picking up ID3 data - there was evidence. I have removed Nero10 and installed Nero7 which doesn't handle MP3!

My next stab is to rename files beforehand (some are numbered anyway), and use Nero8 (on another PC) which seems to report less of the data. And setting ID3 TAGs to blank data is a simple block process manually.

And burning at slower speed. Alternative media. And using Win7's own Audio burning feature. (reports not in on that yet)

At this rate I will be regressing soon to wax cylinders! Now where can I purchase real vellum? Goose feather I have.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Mar 18 - 04:15 AM

Oh and limiting the burn to less than 60 minutes run time. The CDs are 80 minute potential. Just a guess but legacy players may not like it past 60. Anyone know that feeling?

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Mr Red
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 04:39 AM

Old bog standard media, Nero 8 and a different burner - that audio CD plays on a car stereo. A good test but teasing out the troublesome vector is going to take time. Could be any one of the three.

Nero 8 does not label the tracks any more informative than 1, 2 ,3 etc. So short Track descriptions regardless. And just to compound the permutations - the printable blanks are a new batch. And because Nero 7 refuses MP3 I tried Win 7 native burner (reports not in yet). More variables! Nero8 handles MP3 as CD audio, so does Win Media Player (Burning).

It may seem luddite to persevere with legacy apps, but the uncertainty of the potential for loading the directory structure is a case in point. I have to cater for everyone's equipment out there. So I have written code to copy & re-number files that can be moved to any machine and know what order they should be in. Removing ID3 TAGs is easy in Win Explorer as a batch - they are there because there are 1800 audio tracks now (numbered). You can imagine the confusion, even though I have a database and the on-line search engine. I print the track descriptions anyway as part of the package.

FWIW Nero have a supa dupa Platinum version priced at only the equivalent of 20 cups of coffee. But you can't buy it, you rent it, per year! And it would still cause me headaches. So would the coffee !

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: DaveRo
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 10:17 AM

Mr Red wrote: Nero 8 and a different burner - that audio CD plays on a car stereo

You're referring to a CD-DA - Compact Disk Digital Audio - here? Compatibility with CD-DA is a different matter to CD-ROMs. ISO 9660 filesystems only apply to CD-ROMs. Pure CD-DAs do not have a filesystem or even files, just a set of tracks like an LP. Originally they had no metadata but 'CD text' was added later.

There are also hybrid CDs which looked like a CD-DA to a CD player but revealed other stuff when put into a computer drive. (An early one I have is 'Wake the Vaulted Echos' - the Bellamy box set - which includes, IIRC, an html 'website' and tracks in RealAudio format.) I wonder if any of these 'extended CDs' are still being released?

If burning a CD-ROM I can't see why Nero (which I admit I know nothing about) should care whether a file is mp3 - it's just a file. If burning a CD-DA it has to have an mp3 decoder to convert it to PCM - and that required a licence until recently. Any CD-ROM player would have to have a decoder too; I had a car radio (on a boat) which would play mp3 and aac but not mpc - which I had a lot of.

The trouble with stripping ID3 tags is that media players - at least ones in computers - increasingly ignore filenames and directory structure and just index the tags. ID3 tags come in various versions - ID3v1, ID3v2, ID3v2.1, ..., so you could opt for an old version to increase compatibility, or maybe the extra fields of the later versions would be useful for your sound files.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 10:23 AM

A long while back I moved on from ultra reliable nero 5 after many years good service,
and chose freeware Imgburn, which seemed just as good.

But I can't even remember the last time I burned a Disc.
Perhaps a handful in the last 5 years...???

I mention this in case Imgburn offers any better options...

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 10:54 AM

CDDA cannot be stored as ISO files.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 12:21 PM

If I record stuff from Spotify, I burn to CDR so we can listen to it. Some end up in the bin - like the new Josienne Clark & Ben Walker album. She should stick to trad stuff which she does very well!!!

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 12:47 PM

GUEST - I used to record 'music CD' discs on a pioneer CD recorder/player back about 15 years or more ago.

They could be ripped and saved as iso files on a PC.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: DaveRo
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 01:21 PM

punkfolkrocker wrote: They could be ripped and saved as iso files on a PC.

An 'iso file' is like a zip file, it's an archive. It is a structure of files and directories in a format designed for a read-only device such as a CD-ROM. You can copy an iso file, more or less bit for bit, straight to CD or DVD - and many operating systems will do that if you click one. (You can also mount an iso file just like a hard disk.)

An 'audio CD' - that is a CD-DA - does not contain files, in the usual computer sense. You could call a track a file, but they don't have names, for example, and they are not in ISO 9660 format.

A CD ripper could copy each track of an audio CD (a CD-DA) into a file on hard disk in a PCM format - WAV say. It could store those files in an 'iso file' archive - though I don't know why it would. It could copy that iso file bit for bit to a CD-R (if it would fit) - but the result would not be a CD-DA - it would be a CD-ROM containing WAV files.

In my experience most burners asks if you wanted to burn an 'audio CD' or a 'data CD'. If you select the former it will reverse the ripping process and write PCM tracks. So the fact that it used an iso file as intermediate storage would be incidental.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 01:41 PM

DaveRo - such nostalgia.. from circa 1999 to about 2010 my usual day would involve multiple CD,
then later DVD, burning from iso sources..

Mostly redundant technology now and a forgotten mental library of knowledge and practical techniques...

I bet most of the discs in numerous dusty boxes have faded by now.
Lost back ups of data that turned out to not be that vital and invaluable after all...

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: DaveRo
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 01:56 PM

I started converting my LPs to CDs and mp3s on about 2000. I finished only last year.

The earliest CDs (I startied with Bellamy's Argo LPs) all seem to be playable, despite fears they might last only 10 years. But I mainly play the mp3s these days.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 29 Mar 18 - 05:58 PM

Don't really understand all the tech stuff above, but what I do know is:
1. Tesco blank CDs are "not recognised" on my Mac, and therefore will not burn: Ok with other non-supermarket brands such as Verbatim.
2. I burn a batch of the exact same CD and approx 1 in 10 person will say it doesn't work in their car stereo, ghetto blaster, PC or whatever. I check them all before giving them away, and they work on our equipment - 3 or 4 different machines of different types - so guess it's something to do with theirs! If i ell them to try it in a different machine, they usually come back and say it's OK.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: DaveRo
Date: 30 Mar 18 - 01:27 AM

Tattie Bogle wrote: Tesco blank CDs are "not recognised" on my Mac, and therefore will not burn

In post_19 of this old thread it explains how the drive can use the CD-R manufacturer_code (I mentioned it earlier) to determine the optimum way to burn it. My guess is it doesn't have that in its database.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 30 Mar 18 - 01:39 AM

Soooo.No One.....stills burns WAV files.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

. Something is missing in this post.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Mar 18 - 02:16 AM

Nero8 labeled the tracks by number despite having long names and plenty of copious ID3 TAGs. The CD played but as above there were other variable factors that must figure in any comparative analysis. IME there is a limited set of information that it will allow you to set or change, so the numbering was taken from the order they loaded (random IME) regardless any ID3.

And FWIW my understanding was that in burning an audio CD the app converted the file to PCM and that is why it refused MP3. I assume Nero7 wants WAV (& not the MP3 style).

Nero7 also refuses all video that isn't MOV (obviously) or WMV or AVI format. Clearly they want you to upgrade to get the decoders. That's business.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: DaveRo
Date: 30 Mar 18 - 02:40 AM

Mr Red wrote: Nero8 labeled the tracks by number despite having long names and plenty of copious ID3 TAGs.

If this is an audio-CD, maybe it doesn't write CD-Text - or if it does your player can't read it.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD-R compatibility any ideas.
From: Mr Red
Date: 01 Apr 18 - 03:10 AM

Nero 8 has made playable CDs.
But the track descriptions are numbers - in Nero8 anyway. And my experience is that what it displays as you prepare the tracks for burning, is what can be seen in modern player.

The car CD may be limited in its display - in fact on a commercial CD I do remember asking if the music was CD or radio so I must have not been able to read any obvious clues on that car player.

Curiously we were in a traffic jam and under a bridge listening to a band from Avignon called "Sous la Pont"! The band enjoyed that irony too.