I've been trying to get some CD-RW Audio Discs (or Music discs as some suppliers call them). Our Club uses them when composing our 'masterpieces' but despite trying all the usual places and even the internet, they seem to have disappeared completely.

Usually you can rely on John Lewis but even they don't stock them anymore. They do have 'High Speed' CD-RWs but having bought some earlier, they are mainly for use with computer music and are not compatible with some earlier CD players which is no good to us at all.

TDks website shows all the CDs and DVDs they produce, but the not type I'm looking for. I typed all the necessary details in the Search Box and it didn't recognise any of it.

Any ideas anyone?

Audrey

Hi Audrey

No such thing as music CD-RWs, this is determined by how the data is written to the disc. (As per usual manufactures added extra names to their discs so that they could charge more to those that didn’t understand what was going on)

Old CD Recorders could only burn discs up to a certain speed, and as higher speed discs emerged they became incompatible with earlier drives, (Theoretically if a disc covers the speed of your drive then it should work, but in practice it’s not that easy)

Early CD players also could not read any form of CD-RW.

As CD players don’t cost much these days, you might as well buy another one. (Same with drives in computers)

Hope this helps

Bill

Thankyou for that Bill.

I understand exactly what you're saying but unfortunately I have an expensive setup that will burn the latest CD-RW discs but they are geared to 'media' rather than CD players. When I saw the word 'media' I thought it would cover music, photos, and possibly videos but apparently not. Although it burned successfully, it will not play back on my Sony Player/Recorder but it will play on the computer. The young man in Maplins told me I need to get Music or Audio discs and it does say exactly that in the Sony Manual, but where do you get them - even Maplins no longer stock these discs.

However, for whatever reason, it appears shops are no longer selling them. What really gets me is that my recording 'gear' is less than 5 years old and I cannot get discs for it. I have the KN7000 keyboard and a Canon 'Sureshot' very expensive camera, both using SD Cards for storage and these too seem to be in very short supply. I know there are SDHC cards about but neither can be used with the camera or the keyboard. It is so frustrating. Shops are moaning about the lack of customers, well what do they expect when they stop stocking goods that people want.
O.K. so most things are available on the internet, but there are still a lot of people who do have (or want) a computer.

I think I'd better stop right here as it wont do my blood pressure any good at all, but thank you again for your explanation Bill, sorry to have 'bent your ear' as they say.

Audrey

Hi Audrey

Try here as Maxell still seem to do them.

Also contact Sony to see if there is a firmware update for your recorder to allow it to play the latest discs.

Hope this helps

Bill

Thank you Bill - that's a good idea, I hadn't thought of contacting Sony.

I was in Staples today and the young assistant told me that there are lot of people complaining about the manufacturers doing this without any prior warning or producing something that will carry on working with older 'gear' I think his comment "they're only after your money" is quite true.

I'll take a look at the site you suggested. I've used Maxell quite a lot in the past and never had any problems with them, so it would be great if they are still producing them.

Thanks again.

Audrey

Hi Audrey,
Ever since it was possible to burn CDs containing music from one source or another, I have always just used 'normal' CD-R disks - never the so called 'Audio CD-R' type or CD-RW.
Do you have a particular reason for using CD-RW disks? I've come across some CD players which don't like the Re-Writeable Disks.....

CD-RW disks are often not readable by some older CD players. The reflectivity of CD-RW disks, is far below that of CD and CD-R, so the laser which 'reads' the CD-RW, often does not receive a good signal and an Automatic Gain Control Circuit is needed to compensate. This circuit is generally not included in many older players, since they were manufactured to play only Commercially available CDs. Recordable CDs i.e CD-R/CD-RW only became available about 5 years later......

In theory the CD-R’s made for data will not work in some stand-alone CD recorders that are designed to hook up to your stereo system or those that come with certain boom boxes. This is because music CD-Rs contain a Data Code that some stand alone CD players look for. The data CD-R does not have this code.

However, I have yet to encounter a CD player which will not play any of my recordings made on 'bog-standard' CD-Rs.....

As far as I am aware, apart from the 'Data Code', there is no real difference between the 'Audio' CD-R and the standard CD-R. The extra cost for the CD-Rs marketed for music rather than data, comes from the royalty fees paid to the music industry. This is the same fee that is applied to blank cassette tapes. This fee does not apply to CD-Rs marketed as data discs.

Here is some light reading about optical discs which includes CD

http://whatis.techtarget.com/reference/Fast-Guide-to-CD-DVD

Enjoy

Bill

I looked at the techtarget.com site and although it goes more into the technology it says much the same as my Sony Manual does to quote:- "When you buy a CD-R or CD-RW please note you must buy an AUDIO CD-R. A CD-R DESIGNED FOR COMPUTER USE WILL NOT WORK IN THIS UNIT." Two types of logo are shown one AUDIO CD-R(compact disc digital audio) and the other AUDIO CD-RW(compact disc digital audio reWritable) It then explains how to use them, where, and why some are not compatible with CD players.

To answer your question Bill - at our Club we like to produce our own CDs. These are recorded to a CD-RW first, simply because a few days later when played back, what we thought was our great 'masterpiece' sounds absolute rubbish so using a rewritable allows us to delete and re-do single tracks wherever it is on the CD-RW. When we are happy with our efforts, we finalize and copy to a CD-R (one for each member) which can then be played on any CD Player.

This is what our club is about, learning, playing and having fun - a sort of workshop if you like.

You might like to know, I called in Staples today and they have plenty of both types selling under their own label. They also clearly state music BUT, I have to say I've seen that before on a label which turned out to be for computer music tracks only, so are completely useless to those people who do not use a computer.

Anyway, thanks everyone to your comments and suggestions, they are much appreciated.

Audrey

Hi Audrey,

CD blanks today are sooooooooooooooo cheap, buying one hundred. One thing that has not been mentioned is that you must FINALIZE your music if you want it to play on an older CD player. Because CD blanks are so cheap (In America, at times $12.95 for one hundred) just throw them away if your "masterpieces" are not up to snuff.

Mark

Hi Mark,

Yes I know about finalizing but in any case, my Sony CD Recorder/Player will ask whether you want to finalize when using CD-RWs and it automatically finalizes the CD-Rs - so no worries there.

As for using CD-Rs and disposing of them, we do not want to waste time having to record all the songs/tunes again (sometimes as many as 22 tracks) that is the whole idea of using CD-RWs because you can delete and replace a single track at a time anywhere on the disc.

By the way, I tried one of those CD-RWs I was sold by Staples which clearly show 'music' on the labels and guess what? It loaded in the usual way and then 'Data only' came up on the screen.
Grrrhhhh! I could scream. Needless to say, I'll be paying Staples another visit tomorrow.

Audrey

Have a look here http://www.bamaed.ua.edu/cse489/CD/cdrw.html

Thankyou for this information Casarosa.

I have read what it has to say, although I couldn't get the pictures to come up. However, this is exactly what I've been trying to say in my posts. There ARE differences between Music/Audio and Data discs but as yet, most shop assistants do not appear to know this. They think if the label mentions 'music' then "yes madam of course it will record and play your music" but this is not the case. Unless you purchase the correct discs, you're wasting your time and money.

I've been making my own CDs since I purchased the Technics KN7000 in 2001. When I first started to do this, I bought a Philips Recorder which I was happy with until I heard a recording made, using the Sony Compact Disc Recorder/Player RCD-100. It really is a brilliant machine. If a disc needs formatting, it will come up on the screen telling you it is going to format the disc. If it needs 'Finalizing' it will ask whether you want to or not. It has an (a) deck and a (b) deck and if you inadvertently put the discs in the wrong section, you also get warning messages.

Before finalizing, you can even name your tracks and if, like us at the Club, you then want to make copies to CD-Rs, all the track names are automatically added to those as well.

It might sound complicated, but it's much quicker than using the computer as most of the work is done by the Sony.

Thanks again, the layout of the pages are the simplest and easiest to understand that I've seen in a long time.

Audrey