PCA Forums

I'm in the process of burning some music CDs, and they won't play in my Denon CD player that I bought from the 90's. The slowest speed on the Asus DVD/CD is 16x. So I dug out my old LG portable player and burner and was I able to burn a disk at 4x and it works great. I wish I would have kept my old Plextor SCSI drives that I had 20 years ago. They always worked perfectly.

So the question: do they even make a burner that can burn at 4x?

As far as I know, any burner can use a slower speed. There's usually a speed setting in the burning software that overrides the automatic speed selection. I usually force my DVD burner to use 8x because 16x sometimes fails. I usually buy Asus or Liteon drives.

What software are you using?

I did a bit of Googling and it looks like modern burners do tend to bottom out at 16x for CDs now.

I have some older burners on the shelf. I never throw out a burner that works. Let me test a couple and see if they work at 4x.

Yeah all the new burners, the minimum is 16x even though your software may allow you to select a lower speed, it will still burn at the lowest the drive supports. The software I use is CD Burner XP.

For those reading this, keep your old burners if they still work. I just bought a new Plextor CD: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0167 ... UTF8&psc=1
I'll see how that works. Also bought some Taiyo Yuden (remember those blank CDs from the past)? They are working great. A lot better than the Verbatim which are a hit and miss.

Yeah, Taiyo Yuden is all I buy for CDs and DVDs.

It's hard to find specs that mention the slowest speed, but the plus version of that drive you posted specifically says it will do 8x on audio, and 4x on DVD for "better quality for enthusiast recording":

https://www.amazon.com/Plextor-Layer-Bu ... B01N8RSZ78

My new drives are on the way home arriving Monday. I'll report back to see how they work.

Update: I received my new Plextor drive and it works at 16x using Taiyo Yuden blank CDs. I then tried the Verbatim and it did not work in the CD player. There is a difference in thickness between the 2 blanks. The Taiyo Yuden are 0.0475" (1.205mm) thick. The Verbatim are 0.0426" (1.083mm), or ~0.005" difference between the two. I've heard through the gravevine that the thickness is important. I'm going to order more of the Taiyo Yuden before they go away of the dodo bird.

I haven't burned a CD or DVD in AGES. I still have stacks of blank DVDs, CD and 2 layer DVDs.

I have 2 Plextor CD burners on the shelf that I purchased off ebay years ago. Since I'm no longer limited by storage, I rip everything to .flac not and rarely burn CDs. If anyone needs a CD burner only drive (these are IDE drives), I'd be willing to part with one. I still have one in a P3 Win 2000 machine too.