Static and deterioration on burned audio CDs
 

I'm using Nero 6.6.0.13 I got from a torrent to burn audio CDs from mp3 files I have on my hard drive. Some files are variable bitrate, some are constant, but lately, I've been getting really bad discs when I've been burning my cds. I've been using 80-minute Memorex discs, and in the past there have been no problems.

But now, whenever I burn my CDs, the first several songs play perfectly, and then the songs in the middle and towards the end start to have static all over the songs and sometimes it will skip horribly or not even play at all. I tried playing these CDs in several car CD players and in my DVD drives of my computer and they are all fucked.

I've been burning the CDs real slow at 4x speed and caching them or whatever option Nero has before burning. Verification of the CD after burning also shows that it is good, but the CD is really jacked up. Does anyone know why this is happening or what I could do to fix it? I've never had problems burning on this drive before. The only thing I can think of right now is to convert the mp3s to wavs before burning or trying to burn on different media.

This other Nero program shows this when I scanned the burned disc if anyone knows what it means:
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/4509/81908137rd6.png

Cheap media will yield cheap results. Do some research before buying another brand. There is a lot of discussion over many different brands and qualities.

After a bit of reading, I've been using a brand called Taiyo Yuden for a while now, and they've been excellent.

Yes, CMC Magnetics media is highly irregular in quality. Seems like a crapshoot sometimes.

You get what you pay for, alas. If you have no backups, try reading at a lower speed - maybe you can still copy from that.

As for reading the quality, all you need to look at is "Disc Quality", which in your case is 0. 80 and above is acceptable. 95 is very good. Guess what 0 means :p

Please allow me to add a second endorsement of Taiyo Yuden, because they are by far the best discs I have ever used. Just look out for fake TY. Buy only from respectable dealers.

Thanks for the tips. How can I know if a dealer is respectable or if the discs I get are actual TY discs though?

Word of mouth I guess. I use SVP here in the UK, but I heard that Rima are the way to go for Americans.

http://www.rima.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv

The packaging for one. TY usually discs come in a distinctive cakebox that holds 100 discs. It is slightly tapered towards the top. You'll learn to recognise it after your first batch. The second thing to note is that real TY have a code printed on the hub which should be something like TG00xxx, GG00xxx or GH00xxx. There are others, but it should be at least something of that style. Fakes tend to lack that code altogether.

I've actually had this problem as well...I've always used Memorex CD-R's and they worked fine, but recently, I've gotten basically the same problems in the initial post. It's totally random now...I'd say there's a 30% chance I'll end up with a bad disc, but then I just throw it away and hope I get a decent burn. On the same hand, I have a stack of Fujifilm discs and I haven't gotten a single one to play right in my car stereo.

So, hmmm...Taiyo Yuden. Might have to try them. Thanks!