When burning music to CD is it better to use a CD RW or CD R - I understood that the CD RW is best as it will play on all CD players and that CD R may not play on all - I can't remember where I got this info from or if it is correct so would appreciate yay or nay on the subject. Thanks Zante.

It shouldn't make any difference whether you use CD-R or CD-RW, both should behave identically, although the CD-RW can be erased and used again. If either is going to cause a problem on a CD player it is more likely to be the "rewritable" CD-RW.

Thank you Mike. Much appreciated. Zante.

Thanks for that - always good to know 'why' - Zante.

Your welcome.

PS:
Good morning.

Husband was walking through a shop a couple of days ago and there on the shelf was a machine that burns 78’s (and others) straight onto CDs. Different to the little one we already had – (better quality – twice the price! $450.00 Australian)

It is a Lenoxx Model: CD117B

Sound quality is excellent.

East to use. Now comes the really weird and unnatural part … we read the instructions just a little while ago.

Well – it says to use good quality CD RW’s – must let them finalise and they will play on any other CD player.

We feel all funny now after having actually read the instruction booklet and we are going to have a Milo and a Milk Coffee biscuit to settle our nerves!

Cheers, Zante.

PS Husband is rustling about behind me and has just discovered that there is a tape deck in the side of the machine! Can also burn from these to CD!

In general, a CD/DVD ROM drive (ROM = Read Only Memory) can only read disks that have been "Finalised" or "Closed".

A CD/DVD RW drive (RW = Rewriter) should read disks that haven't been Finalised.

If you burn a proper "Audio CD", the tracks on it will all appear as .CDA files, probably of only 1kB each, and the disk will always be finalised.

If putting other files, such as MP3s, on a CD to play on a domestic/car CD player, the disks would have to be finalised.

Although I have only used CD RWs on a very few occasions, a couple of times I did finalize the RW disc, and from that point onwards it was of no further use as a RW disc as it would then not let me "wipe/format" the disc to be able to use again.

However that was a long time ago and I have to admit that may have been down to my inexperience of using RW (Re-Writable) disc's.

More news from the INSTRUCTION booklet - CD r's won't work in the machine - that is they won't allow the music from records to record onto the CD R

Have done a couple of CD RW's successfully and finalised them and they so far are working great in all our CD players and in the car.

As far as wiping CD or using it again that will not be a problem with us as we are doing these old 78's so that we can keep the music to play on discs without having to use the 78's.

Oh tra la la la .... for ever new gadgets for us to fiddle with!

Cheers, Zante.

As there seems to be some interest in these machines I will put up a picture of this one (I have done this on Dave's page as well)

it's not a particularly pretty machine and the tape deck in the side is a bit funny and it's a fairly big machine being about twelve inches high - 13 front to back and about eighteen inches wide.

Web address is www.lenoxxelectronics.com





Cheers, Zante

Ah ha .... we learn more! The front loader is evidently a different model to the one we have - it might be a CD117c or later maybe. I have no idea Old Fogey but I will ask Husband to check it for you - we are happy with it as the CD RW's we have so far done work well, are easy to do and have good quality sound, well as good as the original record has - some of the old ones will be of course a bit echoey. I know I heard him muttering something about being able to plug in other stuff he has here (presumably other tape decks etc.) and recording through them or something! as you can tell that is his hobby - mine is the computer! Still it is interesting just the same. Cheers, Zante

I appreciate that it may not matter, but the only reason that it would concern me with only being able to use CD RWs is that apart from them being slightly dearer (yes I'm a skin-flint) they may not also always be as widely available.

Otherwise I would be inclined to copy the CD RW to the HDD then re-burn to a normal CD.
(Not forgetting that normal CDs also come in a variety of lengths and not just 80 minutes)

Yes, we will do that because we will want a couple of copies anyway so good idea. I have never found CD RW's hard to get - they are readily available here in all shops that sell that sort of thing and even in the bookshops and the Post Office, the latter seems to have become a shop in it's own right now even selling things like printers and toys and all office paper stuff etc. Cheers, Zante