Does burn speed effect quality?

[Thumper]

I burn svcd/vcd with VCDeasy/cdrao, and when I initally set it up to work with my burner it set up my cache size and burn speed automatically. But the burn speed it chose for me was 4x, while my burner is 8x. My question is if I change the speed to 8x, will I lose quality (ive read this on these boards)? Also, how do I determine the cache size of my burner and can/should I change it accordingly?

Thanks alot.

First time poster, long time reader!!

[marcusaxavier]

I can't say for certain on data burning as much as I can on music burning (although I guess they are the same), but burning at slower speeds is better. I have burned a CD at 8x, then burned another at 2x, and the lesser was of better quality. I always burn at 2x because it creates less of a chance for error. I have never tried to mess with my cache size, so I cannot comment on that. I use Adaptec CD creator for burning, and set to Disk-At-Once.

[poopyhead]

it's not really quality...it's more of compatibility...some standalone dvd players can only support cd-r's burned at slower speeds...so i usually burn at 4x rather than 8x...u should do that too

[GHUA]

I burn at 16x, always, and I've never had any problems. There is no way I'm going to wait 45 minutes to 1 hour just to burn 1 CD... Then again, I'm just a newb, so what do I know...

[Thumper]

Thanks alot for the feedback. I figured as much, as I have read on here before that slower is better/wiser. I guess until I hear different I will continue to burn at 4x. I've been ripping copies for about four months and have about 100 svcd/vcd, and Im currently trying to maximize the quality as much as possible. It's amazing the more I learn on this forum, I can really notice a difference from my first few rips to the ones I make now. I just downloaded the all in one DVD2SVCD just out of curiousity to see if it gives a better quality then be encoding with seperate tools with settings I manually set.

Oh yeah, has anyone tried out "kwag's" template? Just got that too, give it a shot just to see the quality of a one cd vcd!

Thanks again for the reassurance. Cheers.

[poopyhead]

I burn at 16x, always, and I've never had any problems. There is no way I'm going to wait 45 minutes to 1 hour just to burn 1 CD... Then again, I'm just a newb, so what do I know...

at 4X, entire CD completes in about 20 min....not 45 min

also, i'm referring to certain standalone dvd players...if you watch it on your computer, there won't be a problem....however, certain standalone dvd players just can't handle cd-rs burned too fast (not saying it goes for all...my pioneer can play just about anything, including non-standard resolution stuff that many other dvd players can't..but that doesn't mean that it applies to all dvd players)

[mrbass]

I burn svcds with two lite-ons 24X (4 1/2mins), one lite-on 32X (4mins), and one yamaha 16X(6mins) all at max speed at never had any problem whatsoever playing back in pioneer dvd standalone players.

[t0nito]

it's not really quality...it's more of compatibility...some standalone dvd players can only support cd-r's burned at slower speeds...so i usually burn at 4x rather than 8x...u should do that too

I'm sorry but I don't believe this is true because if you make a copy of a cd at 4x another copy of the very same CD at 8x both copies would be exactly the same! Both of the cds have to have the very same number of bits burned in them. So I don't think compatibility is an issue nor quality. The only difference about recording speeds is that the higher the speed the higher the risk of having a buffer underun, resulting in another cd to make a frisbie out of. So I don't think you will have to worry about quality if you burn at a higher speed.

But this is only what I think. I've burned cds at 4x and 8x and I didn't see any difference.

[silab]

And I burned at 24x and didnt see any difference with those ones burned at 4 and 8x

Higher speed is not a problem if Buffer underrrun is concerned because almost all high speed burners are equipped with anti-coaster technology

[vitualis]

it's not really quality...it's more of compatibility...some standalone dvd players can only support cd-r's burned at slower speeds...so i usually burn at 4x rather than 8x...u should do that too

I'm sorry but I don't believe this is true because if you make a copy of a cd at 4x another copy of the very same CD at 8x both copies would be exactly the same! Both of the cds have to have the very same number of bits burned in them. So I don't think compatibility is an issue nor quality. The only difference about recording speeds is that the higher the speed the higher the risk of having a buffer underun, resulting in another cd to make a frisbie out of. So I don't think you will have to worry about quality if you burn at a higher speed.

Actually, poopyhead is absolutely correct -- and a brief perusal of this forum of similar posts would make it obvious to anyone.

If you have a DVD player that is designed to read CD-R/W media, burn speed shouldn't make any difference assuming that both your burner and media can handle high speed burns.

However, many DVD players are not designed to read CD-R/W media. For these players, many subtle variables seem to be able to make a disc readable or not readable. One commonly described phenomenon is that lower speed burns lead to the S/VCDs looking better or can play at all (probably because there are less read errors on playback). This is not universal, however, as someone a while back also posted that very low speed burns (1x and 2x) lead to unreadable discs on his stand-alone player (but that 4x was okay).

Regards.

[poopyhead]

like i mentioned in another post, i heard from somewhere that the faster the laser has to burn, the less deep the indention it makes on the dye...and obviously the less deep the groves are burned onto the dye, the harder it is to read (of course, i could be wrong since i heard it from somewhere else)

[t0nito]

Well I do have to admit that it does make sense but since my burner only burns at max 8x maybe it's not fast enough to see any diference perhaps if I had a faster cd writer I could make a comparison.