Burning a CD in iTunes: Is Slower Speed Better?

[HappyDude20]

I'm burning a few CD's to listen to in my car...

the audiobooks i'm burning are going at the maximum speed, as its simply an audiobook...but as for my music, i'd prefer the best sound I can get..

..So this leads me to wonder if a slower burning speed, such as 2x or 4x, are better than say 12x, for sound?

Can anyone verify this provide some insight on the matter?

 

[RubbishBBspeed]

Haven't used cd's in the car for a while now but certainly burned a good few cd's for previous cars. Personally I never had a problem burning at any speed. Maybe the quality of the disk or the type of cd player may have something to do with playback quality but I've never noticed a difference.

Off hand the first car system was a sony with in dash minidisc and 10 disc multichanger was a bout £800 back in 1998. then in 2003 next system was about £1,200 in dash CD and glovebox 6 disc autochanger and then the last one was a premium factory model (no idea who makes it) with in dash cd & dvd and 6 disc autochanger. all three sounded good.

Why not try one or two and see if you can hear a difference and take it from there.

 

[dXTC]

You can burn a playlist at 2x and the same list of songs at 24x. Both will have the same digital data on them, since the codec will produce the same digital output every time, regardless of disc write speed.

That said, the faster the disc speed, the greater the chance for write errors. It's still a small chance, but it's theoretically there. I'd go for a happy medium-- striking a balance between convenience of fast write speed and minimizing chances of a "bad burn".

 

[HappyDude20]

This is very interesting. I hadn't taken into account the data files being written the same regardless of speed.

I'll go ahead and burn the same cd three times at different speeds and report back the results.

 

[HappyDude20]

Oh man.

So I burned 3 CD's with the exact same music.

One burned at maximum speed, another at 12x and another at 1x.

There is a noticeable difference. There truly is. Vocals, guitar riffs and bass sound incredibly better when burned at its lowest speed setting (1x). Maximum speed is great for my audiobooks but in no way will I be burning any music at the fastest speed. In fact, for peace of mind i'll be burning at 1x.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Oh man.

So I burned 3 CD's with the exact same music.

One burned at maximum speed, another at 12x and another at 1x.

There is a noticeable difference. There truly is. Vocals, guitar riffs and bass sound incredibly better when burned at its lowest speed setting (1x). Maximum speed is great for my audiobooks but in no way will I be burning any music at the fastest speed. In fact, for peace of mind i'll be burning at 1x.

If thats the case and its not just your imagination (which I suspect it is, have you tried doing it "blind" with someone else putting the CD's in without you knowing which is which, or vice versa?) , the only possible reason is that you are getting a LOT of errors and the error correction on the CD player is kicking in. What happens if you do a verify after the burn? Does it report errors?

As said, its the exact same data, but if not your imagination, it could be much of it is being written with a lot of errors. In which case you need to try a different brand of media as the differences should never be enough to be noticeable.

 

[HappyDude20]

If thats the case and its not just your imagination (which I suspect it is, have you tried doing it "blind" with someone else putting the CD's in without you knowing which is which, or vice versa?) , the only possible reason is that you are getting a LOT of errors and the error correction on the CD player is kicking in. What happens if you do a verify after the burn? Does it report errors?

As said, its the exact same data, but if not your imagination, it could be much of it is being written with a lot of errors. In which case you need to try a different brand of media as the differences should never be enough to be noticeable.

A blind test does seems like a better way contest this out. I'll have to try it with a friend. I haven't checked for errors but will do.

I do agree it could just be my imagination but the songs do seems to shine a bit more on 1x.