[Metal]

I just bought a Que Fire 10x12x32 cd burner, and I have a couple questions

-What CD burning software should I use and which version.
-What color CD should I use for audio and data information.
-I heard that the Que Fire crashes when burning audio cds, is there ANYWAY to make it not crash and still record it.
-Does the quality of the audio decrease as the speed of the recording increases? If it does decrease, what speed should I record at?\

Thank you for reading this.

[Kbee]

I suggest blue/green as the color to use for data. I would recommend you get a copy of Toast Deluxe 4.1.1 as quickly as possible. About the crashes and the audio I don't know.

Cheers
Kbee

[exa]

First off, use Adaptec Toast, it's the only way...

Secondly, the media... usually blue is good (or gold or platinum); green is not that great. But it varies. A good way to figure out what is good and what is not is to hold the cd up to a light; if it is transparent, it is not good, if it is solid, it is good. Some low quality cds can get REALLY transparent, it sickens me. I use Memorex and Imation (imitation, heh) brand cdr's and they are good (not very transparent, blue coat).

As for recording audio cds, the slower is better; 2x is usually good. However, I doubt you can tell much difference of quality at higher speeds unless you get really picky...

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"If you can't beat them, buy them"
- Microsoft

[Metal]

Since the sound quality does decrease when the recording speed increases, is that the same with data cd's?

[seanyepez]

TDK's "Isopure" CD-R line serves me quite well. Then again, I haven't had much trouble with cheap brands. I don't treat my CD's that roughly, I suppose. I recommend blue as the data side's color.

[Cipher13]

I use Verbatim DataLifePlus - deep blue. Very cool. Never a prob.

Cipher13

[Misha]

I've never heard of (nor have I experienced) lesser audio quality as a result of burning audio CDs at high speeds (4x, 8x, 12x). It's all digital information... a bunch of zeroes and ones. Whether the zeroes and ones get written qucikly or not shouldn't matter... no?

[bil207]

I have a QueFire cd-rw and have had no problems burning audio or data cds at any speed. Before I installed the Adaptec Toast from the CD that shipped with the QueFire I checked the Adaptec web site for updates. Since the the copy of Toast that came with the cd-rw was 4.0 and Adaptec had 4.1.1 on their site I skipped installing the version that was on the cd and and downloaded the updated version.

[drewman]

Misha,

About recording audio CDs at higher speeds,

Audio CDs require more precise burning than data CDs to correctly play in some Audio CD mechanisms. For instance, if I burn an Audio CD at 4x (my max), it won't play in my wife's Miata with factory CD player, but if I burn one at 1x or 2x, it will play back fine.

Basically, an audio CD is not a data CD which is why you don't get as high an X factor in Toast with it.

Also, ripping a new audio CD directly from an exisiting audio CD can cause many problems at higher speeds. If you are writing at higher than 1x speed, the reading mechanism has to do Digital Audio Extraction at a higher rate and then burn it again. Where a CD reader can do more error correction at 1X then at 4x, you can get many more pops and errors on your copy.

This is not a definitive guide, just my experience...

drewman

[Cipher13]

If you have access to an electron microscope, look at CD-R's under it.
Burn one at a very fast speed, one at a slow speed, and look.
You will be unpleasantly surprised to see the rather big difference in the way its written.

Cipher13

[Misha]

Originally posted by drewman:

Audio CDs require more precise burning than data CDs to correctly play in some Audio CD mechanisms. For instance, if I burn an Audio CD at 4x (my max), it won't play in my wife's Miata with factory CD player, but if I burn one at 1x or 2x, it will play back fine.

Ah, that actually explains quite a lot, drewman. I've noticed this as well, but I always thought it was the media at fault. I recently started burning audio CDs at 8x and 12x and my Panasonic portable CD player has problems playing them, but the Bose doesn't have an issue.

I'm not sure what's better, losing some compatibility with certain players, or having to wait 40-80 minutes to burn a CD mix...

I have found, however, that using a high quality CD-R disc I am able to burn an audio CD (QPS 12x10x32x) at 12x which will play in all my CD players; car, home, portable, friend's, etc.

By the way, Plextor, which manufactures the APS mechanism, provides a media guide which suggests which media to use to achieve the highest quality recording.

Last, while the QPS device has been know to have DAO problems (See other discussions) Toast and SoundJam work excellent together; SoundJam allowing you to drag and drop MP3 files to create an audio CD playlist which can be directly imported into Toast. The MP3s are converted on the fly while the audio CD is being created. About 6 minutes for the whole process.

Drawback with the QPS drive: Can't copy an audio CD outright since this invokes DAO process.

[marka]

Toast 4.1.2 update has fixed my problems burnind DAO mode with the QPS Que!Fire 12x10x23x drive. This update also fixed my intermittent problems with a snippet of the previous track's audio being inserted at the beginning of the succeeding track.