Regarding CD writing on cheap CD's

[indian_samosa]

Ok... here is a weird situation.Some days a friend of mine wrote a cheapo CD with a mp3 and a video from my place and watched it at his place.He says the quality of the music + the video is not upto mark...then later he burned the same stuff on a moserbaer cd and now he says the quality is fine.How can this be ?

When we copy digital stuff from different media the source and target is a 100% copy of each other ..right ? So there should be no reduction in quality anyhow.But when we burn stuff on CD's even though the cd might have been burned perfectly if however there are reading errors like maybe a 1 or 0 missing will this show up as a glitch in the video/mp3 or will it be so fine that we will just miss the error while playback?

His view is, since the cd's are el-cheapo the material might be dropping some amount of data from being read by the drive (very small amounts ie) and therefore we dont get good fidelity while watching...

My question to you all is.... can this be true ?

PS: I havent checked the video which was burned on that cd yet.We had a very heated discussion about the matter today.

[dOm1naTOr]

i dun think its true. There are more chance of data loss with cheap CDs but something like this is impossible.
Maybe the drive is not fully compatible with the cheap CDs and therefore due to reading problem, the video seems pixelated. Thats why

[indian_samosa]

^ yup data loss due to fading of the dye after certain time is fine.I have no problem against it.

He was saying if there are fine alterations at the dye level then there are chances the 0's and 1's not reading properly.By 0's and 1's I mean the pits and lands.Now if the CD's dye layer is such then it will not get burned in the first place right ? Then there are also corrections built in..which will take proper measures in such cases.

2 questions here ... can such a cd be written properly ? If yes ...then while reading it from other drive will it be properly read?

I know these are sort of detailed questions about the actual mode of cd writing technology .... but if you guys can settle this "zhagda" to rest.

[dOm1naTOr]

Most cheap CDs haf problem with some drives like Sony,Samsung. Liteon, Benq etc haf better compatibility over cheap CD as far as my experience go.
Try burning at lower speeds like 32x or 24x. Or burn the discs on some Benq or LG writers. Benq has the best writing quality than most others.

U can chech the quality of the data written on a disc and also the quality of an empty disc using nero CD/DVD speed utility.

[indian_samosa]

^^ .. yup .. mine is LG ...while his is samsung.Thanks man for the prompt relpies.

[dOm1naTOr]

Samsung is notorious for reading issues on almost all kinda mediums, even with some gud CDs like HP.

[Charan]

When you make a copy of any digital content , the copy the exact replica of the original. there will be absolutely no losses as in the Analog Tapes of yesteryears . The playback can be a problem if its being played directly from the disk of low quality. But what your friend is talking about is utter BullSh!t. Cause if he burnt the files on the moserbaer CD after copying it to the HDD then it proves that the cheap CD had retained all the data without errors. I hope you get the point and your friend too.

[indian_samosa]

^^ No ... He didnt burned it after copying the cheapo CD to HDD ... He came to my place and burned it off my hard drive.

Both the CD's were written off my drive.(LG)

[ax3]

simple fact ..... cheapo manufacturing = cheapo products .....

thats it ....

or

u wont get same performance from "Shiney A" as u would get it from "Hritik R" .... do u ever expect "Shiney A" 2 perform in DHOOM2 ... wont u .....


same funda na .......

[indian_samosa]

^^ LOL ... Thats fine dude.

But my question is a bit twisted ! I/We needed to know the actual process (not in too much detail ..but should be in laymen's terms)

"Cheapo" is right .... but in what sense? May be if you keep 1 cheapo and 1 goody for some amount of time in a storage ....and find out that cheapo is not working properly ...thats totally fine.Thats NOT our problem.

We were discussing about freshly burnt Cd's.

He was saying since the dye layer is not upto mark there will be fine errors like for reading single 1's or 0's which would accumulate while playback and produce a bad quality albeit watchable video/audio.My question is .... Is there any sense in the above statement ??

Its his freaking theory...

OK .. I ll try to put it in different words.Lets say we a have file ...a mp3 file of say 10MB.Now the file will be a long string of 1's and 0's ( I am not sure if its hexa or pure binary ..someone please correct me) Now of those 0's and 1's you just remove some "intermittent" 0's and 1's so that the file size reduces but not so much.So now when you will playback the audio .... what will happen ??
1.There might be audible glitches OR 2.The glitches might be so fine barely audible but when listening to the mp3 one could come to the conclusion that the mp3 lacks fidelity or sharpness or whatever "quality term"

My question is Can the above happen in reality ? Or the Mp3 wont just play at all ?