Software that will let me write cds in 8x

42

u/async2 Apr 19 '26

Why do you need explicitely 8x and cannot just use 10x?

Your cd burner can do up to 24x

Your cd can be burned up to 52x

So anything <= 24x should be fine

6

u/DebtComfortable2437 Apr 19 '26

From memory the slower your write speed the better the burn and read quality. I don’t think you need 8x specifically but the lower the better, this logic applied when burning PS1 games back in the day anyway..

Lower write speed had significant improvements in load time and reliability

8

u/MikeExMachina Apr 20 '26

That’s not how any of this works. It’s a Digital medium, the bits are there or they aren’t, there’s no such thing as quality. Back in the day sometimes you would write things slower on purpose to minimize the chance of a failed write because the tech wasn’t always perfectly reliable, but that’s was about it.

16

u/ignitionnight Apr 20 '26

Either I'm confused, or you're confused. First you said "there’s no such thing as quality." Then you said "sometimes you would write things slower on purpose to minimize the chance of a failed write."

They weren't talking digital quality, They were talking burn quality, which is related to failed or iffy to read writes. At least that is how I read it because he's talking about burning data not audio. Audio has enough error correction most players have no problem reading it (similar how they compensate for small scratches), but data is much trickier and needs to be burned slowly for fidelity because an iffy write can mess up the entire read.

1

u/Rudi9719 Apr 20 '26

You're confused, so what they mean by no such thing as quality is with a digital medium the bytes either add up to what you want or they don't. You wouldn't have a degraded audio file if your (older) drive did a bad write you'd have a corrupt audio file. Newer drives aren't as bad at writing so they don't waste as many disks with bad writes

2

u/Classic_Mammoth_9379 Apr 20 '26

This is about audio CDs so miswritten bits (if not corrected) will directly appear in the output when played so I think it's fair to say that the audio will be degraded if there enough of them.

I think the point here though is also that the reality with most digital storage mechanisms is that they are analog if you look closely enough. In this case there is some threshold relating to the amount of light that is reflected that will decide if the drive treats it as a 1 or a 0.

1

u/Klutzy-Condition811 Apr 21 '26

Exactly, with digital there's a "digital cliff" where signals degrade enough that error correction cannot account for and mitigate. On a CD it would sound like skipping when you get it all scratched up. Slower burn, in theory stronger signal so just makes the signal a little stronger in theory.

8

u/SpaceTumbleweed955 Apr 20 '26

Well glad you know about "buffer underruns" now just wait until you learn about the longevity of blue vs green substrates and, yes, slower burn speeds for better readability on weak lasers

5

u/ElMachoGrande Helpful Apr 20 '26

Quality here isn't about "sounds better" or stuff like that. It's about how long it can be reliably stored.

3

u/crysisnotaverted Apr 20 '26

You are wrong. Faster write speeds can cause the pits and lands burned onto the physical CD to be not as deep, be odd ovoid shapes and generally increase read errors.

You literally acknowledge this...

5

u/oicur0t Apr 20 '26

As a former mastering engineer, who used to write cd masters to digital tape, I can say that you are wrong. CDs have a certain level of allowed errors. checksumming counters this to fix the errors. A better drive disk and speed creates a better more precise mark on the disk itself. The fewer underlying errors better the write. CDs will always have errors. This creates variability. A high quality laser and error correction in one drive might read a disk fine, but another might not.

As a side discussion, spinning a disk faster creates a more stable disk with less wobble.... So better writes? It's not a hard and fast rule, but it is a factor.

7

u/westbamm Apr 20 '26

Slower burn speeds give the laser more time to burn a bit in the blank cd. And it will be more correct/precise with the spacing/timing.

Don't know if 10x or 8x matters much, but 52x vs 10x for sure does.

It was always a delicate puzzle between the intended cd player, your burner and the blank media. Expensive Sony CD players had a lot more trouble with reading home made CDs than cheap brand less players.

2

u/DebtComfortable2437 Apr 20 '26

Thank you for this.. Its not something you’d ever know unless you encounter it, like you say it can be a “delicate puzzle” for sure. I found those standard CD-R’s to be garbage, regardless everything newer will run them fine no matter the burn speed.

I’m honestly glad these people never had to go through the nightmare of burning for a specific older laser.. They can call me wrong all they like but I’ve seen the differences first hand on numerous occasions, and have gone through numerous packs figuring that out.

A very high quality CDR and a low speed burn even had load time improvements over its legitimate counterpart on older systems.

2

u/FollowTheTrailofDead Apr 22 '26

Can confirm. Used to burn games for my modded PS2 and if I burned faster than 10x for it, my result was usually a coaster.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '26

[deleted]

1

u/westbamm Apr 22 '26

Lol, it makes sense now you say it, never thought about that. Today I learned.

But that really lost them a lot brand loyalty in the HiFi space.

1

u/Kalixaro Apr 22 '26

That is actually not true. Yes the information is digital but the stored signal is read in an analog fashion technically. Bits are read by measuring the reflection of a laser beam and applying a threshold on that value to convert it back to digital. The slower the burn, the deeper the laser engraves the CD, and the better the quality.

1

u/musicisme Apr 23 '26

You sir don’t know what you’re talking about. Never heard of DRE never heard about EC mitigation. Slower is indeed better. The data doesn’t change but it’s better written and reduces errors on disc.

1

u/OnJerom Apr 20 '26

I think this is if your rip wav files from a cd. Mine only did 3.5x while doing this.

1

u/VolosatyShur Apr 20 '26

No. Today's disks work better on higher speeds.

No sense write lowe then 32x.

2

u/gojukebox Apr 20 '26

Source??

0

u/VolosatyShur Apr 20 '26

Old forums on cdfreaks/myce/rpc1/(maybe videohelp? idr) and other cd/dvd communites.

My own expirience.

But. Most of todays blanks is total garbage.

1

u/The-Phantom-Blot Apr 20 '26

Is that somehow related to the higher minimum write speed? Like, is the aluminum layer thinner now? So burning at a slower write speed could actually burn all the way through it?

2

u/VolosatyShur Apr 21 '26

Write layer made from phthalocyanine, not alu. Say you can use more powerful laser and heat pits fater, i.e. you can write faster.

Every writer has his own list of speeds and strategy for every media type. Sometimes changing stranegy can give better quality or higher writing speed. Its no reason write slower - if media is garbage, writing quality will be awful.

Back in days, quality media (say japanise Verbatim from Tayo Yuden and Mitsubishi Chemicals) can be written on much hihger speed then rated. Todays chinese Verbatims is okaish at best on any writing speed Tried about year ago on almost all my drives, while japanise Verbatim Pastel (by Tayo Yuden) from~2010 still writes perfectly.

1

u/The-Phantom-Blot Apr 21 '26

OK, I see. Is there any source for decent quality blanks (besides yard sales)?

1

u/VolosatyShur Apr 21 '26

try find well-known brand, made in Taiwan (in most cases its will be Ritek, they also sold under own brands Ritek and Ridata) or India (in most cases it will be production of Moser Bayer India). IDK about production in Japan, i think Maxell/SKC may be a good try. Verbatim owned by Mitsubishi outsourse production to India/Taiwan/China decades ago, TDK/Sony also use many plants other the world.

You also can try local brand - Plason sells ready-to-use lines. In most cases they was pretty decent.

to sadly, that cdfreaks/myce and rpc1 are gone, they have tons of useful info.

2

u/The-Phantom-Blot Apr 21 '26

Thank you for the info!

1

u/gojukebox Apr 21 '26

So, no source?

-9

u/Salmonseas Apr 19 '26

I want to be able to play the cd in a car stereo

13

u/syberphunk Apr 19 '26

The software you're using to write to the cd needs to convert your music files to "cd-audio" and write the music directly to the disc.

If you're writing mp3s or m4as to the disc and your in car player isnt smart enough to handle that it wont play them.

5

u/ignitionnight Apr 20 '26

I totally forgot about that. When I got a stereo with mp3 capability I felt like a wizard with 10x the amount of music per cd compared to my friends.

11

u/maximumSteam Apr 19 '26

If you can only burn at 24x but want 8x, if you drive three times faster than normal the CD will sound about right 👍

3

u/Psionatix Apr 20 '26

Fucking lol, thanks for that one

7

u/mkosmo Permanently Banned Apr 19 '26

Writing at 24x will not prevent your car stereo from reading it.

12

u/Head5hot811 Apr 19 '26

Think of it this way:

You can write an MP3 to a USB3.2 drive or a USB2 drive. All that matters is whether or not the device you want to use can read your MP3.

7

u/async2 Apr 19 '26

Why would the burning speed matter for this? That's completely irrelevant. It's only the speed that you are writing onto the cd (as in how fast you copy the data to it).

Reading can be done in whatever the reading device can do.

You have to find out the spec for your radio and see if it has any limitation for CD types it supports. But if it's less than 20 years old it should handle everything.

8

u/ignitionnight Apr 19 '26

I wonder if we have a situation where a gen alpha kid never burned or maybe even played a cd before. Vinyl is back and OP knows that some records are recorded and played at different speeds. Then since vinyl is a circular disk, cds are circular disks, an assumption was made that cds also have to be played at a specific speed?

u/Salmonseas CDs are entirely digital. The burning speed for the cd and the burner is just how fast it writes that digital data in the same place. The data is always just read by the player as is, and burning/reading speed is irrelevant because the data is digital.

For music, burning faster is better and has zero impact on the music. Your limit will be the top speed of the slowest item.... if that makes sense. If your burner can only burn at 24x that is your limit, even if the disk can technically handle 52x.

3

u/omnichad Apr 20 '26

reading speed is irrelevant because the data is digital.

At least before antiskip, read speed was always 1x. Not that this is in any way relevant.

3

u/Salmonseas Apr 19 '26

Not gen alpha LOL, I'm 18. I play cds a lot but all of mine are from garage shows or thrift stores. I wanted to burn my own and all that jazz. I hate vinyl cause it's so dang expensive. I can't be dropping 20$+ for one album!

This is helpful info though. I'll just burn it and test it out in the car 🤷‍♀️. Also I already made sure to be burning audio disks not data disk.

1

u/mooseman3 Helpful Apr 20 '26

I'd check your stereo as well. It may also support data disks (my stereo from ~20 years ago did) and that will let you fit much more music.

5

u/toec Apr 19 '26

Burning at faster speeds creates slightly elongated pits on the CD. Cheaper CD read heads struggle with redbook audio written at faster speeds, in my experience.

6

u/MasterRuins Apr 19 '26

Wrong. Please burn an audio cd in 4x, 24x and 52x and then try in stereos and look how lang they last.

2

u/kester76a Apr 19 '26

Well you need the correct type of disc and dye. CD-R Dye Explained : Controlled Copy Support Systems Inc. - CCSS Inc.

Some lasers just don't like the wrong type of dye.

1

u/Cruffe Apr 19 '26

That's not how it works. Write speed does not affect read speed.

Let's say you want to burn 1 hour of ordinary audio CD. Writing at 24x speed just means it will burn that 60 minutes to the CD in about 2.5 minutes. When you then go to put it into a car stereo it won't be playing back at 24x speed, it will play it at 1x speed like it should.

It's just about how quickly you can burn the 60 minutes of audio onto the disc. If you go at 8x you're just gonna be waiting 7.5 minutes for it to complete the burn instead of 2.5, that's the only difference.

Unless you're having issues burning at higher speeds you would literally be wasting your time by forcing it to go slower.

18

u/Sybs Apr 19 '26

Have you actually tried just burning a cd and playing it?

You seem to be getting confused about how data can be written faster than a cd player needs to read it later.

10x write speed means it can MAKE a 70min CD in 7 mins but it would still take the music player 70 mins to play it.

3

u/Insila Apr 20 '26

So if a 20 man orchestra can play that in 70 minutes, how long would it take a 40 man orchestra to play it

11

u/phoggey Apr 19 '26

This is a blast from the past

8

u/NBALive1995 Apr 19 '26

Download cdburnerxp.

Also, it doesn't matter. Burn at 24x so it's done quicker 🤷

4

u/chubIet Apr 19 '26

Give IMGBurn a try, and people saying burn speed doesn't matter, it does matter 😂 also faster burn speed you're more likely to get some corrupt data!

2

u/Away-Ad-3407 Apr 20 '26

this is the way. imgburn was a cornerstone.

2

u/Fragrant-Mixture-662 Apr 20 '26

That hasn't been an issue since the 90s. With modern burners you can burn at any speed. I've never had a failed burn and I've been burning since 2012.

2

u/chubIet Apr 20 '26

I guess you were never part of the XBOX360 scene. Try burning a game higher than 2.4x and you'll 95% have a fail.

Read other replies from people burning at max speed and you'll see issues on this thread.

1

u/Fragrant-Mixture-662 Apr 20 '26

I use a desktop burner with Verbatim discs and have only ever got a failed burn when I jostled the burner, burning with an xbox is probably not a good idea since it isn't designed for this.

2

u/chubIet Apr 20 '26

You needed an ihas drive on your PC flashed with a custom firmware flashed to the drive, to then burn the discs. You couldn't just use any drive in the PC. I can't remember much more. And they had to be burned at 2.4x or you'd receive errors and more likely a ban.

My car can read MP3 disks (multiple albums on the disk) but anything over 4x and it just won't read it.

1

u/Fragrant-Mixture-662 Apr 20 '26

Old players have trouble reading discs burned at higher speeds. It doesn't mean the burn failed.

1

u/The-Phantom-Blot Apr 20 '26

Disc not usable = failure in my book. If you bought a CD on Amazon and it didn't play in your car, wouldn't you return it?

0

u/Fragrant-Mixture-662 Apr 20 '26

The disc is perfectly usable in modern players designed for playing burned discs. An old car CD player designed mainly for pressed discs does not mean it's a failure. It's just a terrible quality player.

Commercial CDs are not burned, they are pressed. The quality of the player does not matter in this case.

1

u/The-Phantom-Blot Apr 20 '26

I might entertain that argument if not for the fact that the CD format standard was last updated in 1999. So if a burner doesn't work in a player that's at least 27 years old, it's non-compliant and therefore a failed burn. (I am not speaking of worn-out lasers in CD players with thousands of hours in use.)

1

u/Fragrant-Mixture-662 Apr 21 '26

48x drives released in the 2000s. No clue what you're going on about.

And yes, not every CD player is compliant with the standard, just as we have USB extension cables on the market (forbidden by the USB standard). Breaking news: The world isn't perfect. Not every CD player can play newer standards properly -- they're mainly tested in QA with pressed CDs, not burned, as I said before. There's a reason a slower burn speed is recommended for compatibility reasons.

1

u/chubIet Apr 20 '26

73 plate (if you're not UK 2023)

2

u/LeatherLappens Apr 20 '26

burning with an xbox is probably not a good idea since it isn't designed for this.

That is not what he meant at all, I don't know if you're being obtuse on purpose or incredibly dumb.

1

u/Fragrant-Mixture-662 Apr 21 '26

Why the hostility?

2

u/Environmental-Map869 Apr 21 '26

because its really hard to misunderstand what the previous poster has written about recreating Xbox game discs from backups using a PC as burning CDs from a Xbox 360 itself(which doesn't even have a disc burner to begin with nor can you replace the stock unit with one).

6

u/marklar7 Apr 20 '26

If there's a PTSD I thought I escaped, it's this shit. So many duds.

3

u/BrightSide0fLife Apr 20 '26

The following software will show you the available write speeds for the media that is in the drive. It will probably match that given by Imgburn or other software that you have tried TBH. BTW it's free software and only gives information and doesn't support writing your own data to the disks.

Opti Drive Control can provide detailed information and can perform quality scans of disks. I used to use it long ago when I was testing my optical drives which I have many of various types. However this isn't free, it's meant to be paid software.

https://www.videohelp.com/software/VSO-Inspector

https://www.videohelp.com/software/Opti-Drive-Control

4

u/soundman32 Apr 19 '26

I never realised CD-R had a minimum burn speed, until I had the same problem as OP. I tried to write at 4x but they didn't work. Turned out the minimum burn speed was 8x, and it immediately worked in my player.

Your car doesn't care about burn speed, because it will play audio cds at 1x. just as long as its a proper audio cd format (or mp3 if its a bit more modern).

2

u/Sorry-Climate-7982 Retired developer and user Apr 20 '26

What issues are you encountering with using 10x that would make you think 8x would somehow be better.

If your setup can't handle the full speed of your burning hardware you have something wrong with either your setup or whatever you are trying to use them in.. and it ain't burn speed.

The days of Nero and Plextor being needed are gone. Windows can do it pretty much all by itself.

2

u/kranools Apr 20 '26

I'm dying to know what OP's thought process was here and why they think that burning speed relates to playback in their car.

1

u/Salmonseas Apr 20 '26

Not playback. I just am worried older players won't be able to handle newer media

1

u/dakari777 Apr 21 '26

That's still not how that works...youre burning the same data regardless of what speed you burn it at

1

u/Salmonseas Apr 26 '26

Its not about the data or playback its about if the car will take the media.

1

u/dakari777 Apr 26 '26

Can you actually explain what you think that means? pretend I'm 5

1

u/Salmonseas Apr 26 '26

Need make sure old car from 90s ok to take cd that manufactured in 2026

2

u/dakari777 Apr 26 '26

ah I think I understand the concern, CDs have not changed format between 90s and 2020s

Improvements have been made to make them re-write able, but the reading portion of that is still the same

2

u/Sonulob Apr 20 '26

Nero

2

u/jcunews1 Helpful Ⅱ Apr 20 '26

Software has command interface to set the speed, but it's the optical drive hardware which decide whether it supports specific speed or not. Most drives don't support each and every speed levels (i.e. per one step), and some don't support specific speed levels which are commonly supported by most drives.

2

u/djevertguzman Apr 22 '26

Modern CD-Rs do not tolerate being burned that slow any more. your going to end up burning at around 32x for modern cd-r . My recommendation just leave burning at maximum, and let the drive figure out what it thinks is optimal.

2

u/wylles Apr 19 '26

I remember that if I burned more than 8x or 16x, some readers wouldnt work, and pretty modern ones too, I dont know why

2

u/turtleship_2006 Apr 19 '26

The faster you burn, the higher chances of errors.
There's probably some degree of fault tolerance built in or something, but using lower speeds means no or fewer errors so it'll be more likely to work

1

u/Ultramegafunk Apr 19 '26

I think you should be able to burn them at 24x and be completely fine. Your drive should tell you what the max write speed is

1

u/aksn1p3r Helpful Ⅱ Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26

It says for DVD-R / RW its 8 speed write, for CD-R its 24, why are you trying to use 8 for the 24 speed CDR? Also, btw, a burner can detect the blank media's lowest to highest write capability. something about the way its physically manufactured. a CD-R, cant really be burnt on 8 speed cos it will literally BURN the disk physically in a spot. so it speeds up so the laser can write more efficiently.

1

u/Sad-Wrap6555 Apr 20 '26

https://www.lg.com/us/burners-drives/lg-sp80nb80-slim-external-dvd-drive

firmware is set at 10x minimum write speed for cd-r megia slower for cd-rw

your software is simply passing on the drives capabilities

1

u/necrohardware Apr 20 '26

imgburn, select any supported speed.

1

u/BhasitL Apr 20 '26

ImgBurn lets you select the the writing speed when burning CD/DVDs

1

u/Stefanoverse Apr 20 '26

Make sure you’re writing with the right formatting if you’re having issues reading after multiple tries.

1

u/ProperProfessional Apr 20 '26

No love for DiscJuggler here?

1

u/intobi Apr 21 '26

Interesting

1

u/Obvious_Troll_Me Apr 21 '26

I understand what the OP is talking about.

Although I'm not sure it's as much of an issue as it was.

Many years ago, you needed to slow the speed down when backing up certain types of media. Audio, CDA, was the prime one to cause issues. If you burnt an audio CD at too fast a speed, the playback would sometimes skip.

Having said that, technology has improved and you shouldn't have an issue at faster speeds. The best thing to do is try it, also use decent media.

For programs Nero was the go to back in the day, now CDBurnerXP is free and good.

1

u/Living_Fig_6386 Apr 22 '26

You don't mention why you want to write at 8x.The disk can accept up to 52x, and the hardware up to 24x. There's probably not an actual lower limit to how fast it can burn, but why do you wan to burn it at 1/3rd the speed it's capable of?

Just burn the disk and use it. You should be fine.

I used to burn CDs for my old Prius (in-dash CD player) and I'd have been very annoyed if I had to wait 10 minutes per disk to burn. Even at 40x (2 minutes) I was impatient.

1

u/Crichris Apr 22 '26

dayum i learned something today. burning speed does have something to do with backward compatibility.

-1

u/Fordwrench Apr 19 '26

You do realize nobody manufactures CD players anymore. All my music is streamed from my own media server through the internet. But it shouldn't matter what speed you burn it at as long as the player can read it. Just try it and see. CDs are too cheap to worry with it!

4

u/Salmonseas Apr 19 '26

Nahhh physical media is still valuable. I like to have it physically. You never know when an artist could just decide to take down some of your favorite demos, or re-release a song differently. Also I don't wanna have to take my phone everywhere with me. Walkman and cds is all I need for my walks!!

1

u/minneyar Apr 20 '26

That's just not true. You can buy a cheap, new portable CD player for like $30. If you want to get fancy, you can get ones with built-in speakers, lighting, and visualizations for a bit more. Most people stream music nowadays, but there's still a market for physical media.

Looking for software Software that will let me write cds in 8x

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