Bad media batch, Burn, Drive, or what?

[Cornucopia]

Since I'm here so often, I figured I'd ask those who know better than I...

Doing DVD dubs using Pioneer 106 tower, Recording using Pioneer PRV-9000 industrial recorder...
Using (lately) ProdiscF01 media... (not the best, but haven't had any complaints)

All of a sudden, starting last week, we're (inconsistently) getting bad burns, incomplete burns, bad reads, etc.

From dub tower and recorder, and other players (though not all).

Started noticing that there is often (though not always) a suspicious ring and even more suspicious "speckle" marks at the same point on the media (but not every disc).

Here's a scan of one of the discs:


Do you think it's a bad batch of media (hopefully not the whole line), or that the recorders have finally worn out, or have taken a hit?, or that the lasers have gone bad/dirty, or a combination of both, or what?

TIA,

Scott

[CrayonEater]

Seems like it's the media. I don't see how a laser, even one with far-out collimation or focus, could cause those speckles.

[redwudz]

I think a bad batch of media. I used 4X Prodisc extensively, and with good results and no coasters for several years. When I went to 8X Prodisc, I had similar problems at times. I don't know if it was a bad batch or what. Switched to TY 16X now with no problems.

The blotches are the real sign to me of a problem disc. Just in my experience, the rings may be a burner problem.

I hope it's not that way with all the Prodiscs you have, if you bought a lot. I used my remaining discs for data and strangely enough, no reading problems with them in that format. But I did reduce the burn speed to 4X, just to be safe. But still the blotches are a very bad sign. All my discs with them were mostly unreadable. Fortunately only a few.

[Cornucopia]

Thanks, that makes me feel better.

AFA the rest of the lot: We had just ordered another batch of 1000 a day before this really started cropping up!
Hopefully, that batch will be ok (crosses fingers).

RE: burn speed:
These discs are rated at 8x, but we either have been burning them in the dupe tower at 4x, or using the recorder (obviously at 1x). Don't know how much more "safe" you can get than that.

Well, I think I've sufficiently impressed upon my boss the need to us better media (TY)... we'll see.

Thanks again. I feel vindicated.

Scott

[ROF]

IT has been from my experience that the noticeable rings are usually caused by drive firmware as it relates to the media being burned. No real issues there except your discs have a noticeable ring. The speckles on the other hand have usually been caused by either bad media(improper dye spread) or bad storage of blank media where minute dust particles settle on the disc.