Since these questions are related and came from the same person we’ll give you two tips for the price of one today.
“I have a CD writer that can burn CDs at 4x, but I’ve been told that 2x is more reliable and produces discs that can be played on a wider range of players. Is this true? If yes, why don’t we reduce the speed even further and burn the discs at 1x? Do we use 4x for data CDs only?”
“Another issue is about the life of the lens and the beam. How many CDs will I burn before seeing the unit wear down? Someone told me that 2,000 discs is the limit, but then again he was a salesman and not an engineer. I’ve had the unit since summer 1998 and I’ve already done more than 1,200 discs. Is there a test I can run to find out the status of the lens and the beam? Is there any indicator one can check to know if the CD-Writer is still in good shape? I would hate making CDs that would be “half-cooked” and therefore less reliable in the long run, without even being aware of it.”
1. In the early days of CDR it was thought that slower writes were better, but as hardware quickly improved, the common sense shifted to faster writes being better. In practice we have found 2x to be the most reliable write speed for audio disks. It doesn’t seem to matter as much for CD ROMs, but in audio it can sometimes make a big difference depending upon your hardware and software. We’ve heard a few theories about why this is so, but honestly we’re not deep enough into it to truly know (or care) why. Hardware and media are still improving though, and we’ve been able to recently make many discs at higher speeds that work just fine. Like most paradigms, the optimal 2x-speed issue is changing and we suspect it is no longer as important as it was two years ago.
2. CD drives sold in this country generally have MTBF ratings that give you a clue how long you can expect the device to last. In reality they aren’t much more than a good guess, but predicting failure of electronic equipment is pretty hard to do accurately unless you know how to use a crystal ball. One of the best tests for your CD burner and media is to send discs to a mastering house and let them tell you how many errors there are. BLER rates are very important and one of the first things to falter when equipment is operating optimally, though there are other issues they can help you with as well.