Source for reference CD/DVD media?

[FUBARinSFO]

Hi:

Looking for a source for CD/DVD reference media with which to test and qualify devices and platforms. Trying to identify device profiles by eliminating one source of variation (the media).

- Roy Zider

[smitbret]

I know Rima.com used to sell archival grade media. Are you just looking for consistent, good media? If so, just pick up some Taiyo Yuden brand online.

[jman98]

The ONLY media sold in the USA that is 100% certainly top quality is either Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim's DataLifePlus (NOT their infamous Life series!) series of discs. You'll need to buy those online at places like rima.com or supermediastore.com. Many of us are skeptical of the claims of "archival grade" media and some very rough comparisons I did with some CD media sold as "archival grade" suggested that it's actually somewhat lower quality than run of the mill CD discs you can buy in any store.

[aedipuss]

you can't even count on datalifeplus anymore. i had some delivered recently that was made in china - yuck.

[FUBARinSFO]

Thanks, but I'm not looking for media to use for recording. I'm looking for pre-recorded reference media I can use to test the device-platform setup. I already use Taiyo Yuden TYG02, for instance. and Verbatim MKM 003, both from supermediastore.com.

[jman98]

you can't even count on datalifeplus anymore. i had some delivered recently that was made in china - yuck.

Where did you buy them from? And what type were they? (DVD-R, etc.) I've been buying DVD-R, DVD+R, and DVD+R DL DataLifePlus discs for years from rima.com and I've yet to see any single layer DVDs not made in Taiwan and any DL media not made in Singapore. I hate to say it, but I've got more faith in Made in China than the rather infamous Made in India discs. But Made in Taiwan or Made in Singapore are infinitely preferable as Verbatim has a long history with those MCC plants.

[aedipuss]

they show up as Manufacturer ID: MCC 03RG20. don't look fake, just a new plant.


came from meritline - who are usually really good.

[usually_quiet]

I'm not sure what you mean by "pre-recorded reference material". Commercial video distributed on burned discs, commercial video distributed on pressed discs, or discs made for the purpose of calibrating various equipment?

[edDV]

The reference?

One was Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner"* (aka The "Mother of the MP3")

See the story here. If you have any hipster cred, you knew is ... This was like 1986.

The "Mother of the MP3" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom's_Diner


* also later Seinfeld's diner

[edDV]

To make it easy...

An article in the now defunct magazine Business 2.0 revealed that "Tom's Diner" was also used by Karlheinz Brandenburg to develop the audio compression scheme known as MP3 at what is now the Fraunhofer Society. He recalled:

I was ready to fine-tune my compression algorithm...somewhere down the corridor, a radio was playing "Tom's Diner." I was electrified. I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a cappella voice.[7]In a 2009 documentary about the history of the song by Swedish SVT, Brandenburg said:

I was finishing my PhD thesis, and then I was reading some hi-fi magazine and found that they had used this song to test loudspeakers. I said "OK, let's test what this song does to my sound system, to mp3". And the result was, at bit rates where everything else sounded quite nice, Suzanne Vega's voice sounded horrible.[8]

Brandenburg adopted the song for testing purposes, listening to it again and again each time he refined the scheme, making sure it did not adversely affect the subtlety of Vega's voice. While the MP3 compression format is not specifically tuned to play the song "Tom's Diner" (an assortment of critically analyzed material was involved in the design of the codec over many years), among audio engineers this anecdote has earned Vega the informal title "The Mother of the MP3".

Still sounds awful on Youtube.

[edDV]

All internet versions suck. Buy the CD.