I was wondering if people know what is the best CD burner to use for highest quality/minimum errors. Adaptec ECDC came with my Dell system, but I was wondering if it would be better to invest in Nero 6. I occasionally burn master CD's which are then sent on to a pressing plant, so minimum error is my highest priority.

Thanks in advance,

Gregg.

For audio CDs Feurio! is supposed to be excellent.

I use Nero for everything.... never tried Feurio! either but I've heard good things

Have you looked at Sonic Foundry's CD Architect?

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/products/showp...uct.asp?PID=780

I have been using nero 5.x for some time now. Was using Roxio stuff :x back in the dark ages when I still used IE :x

I'm thinking error related problems are more of a cause from the actual brand of CD-R's/CD-RW's that are used, however this has been brought up dozens of times. I've seen where some people have good luck with a particular brand while it absolutely stinks on my equipment and is difficult to read immediately after creating a disc.

ECDC in my views is alright, however I can only comment on the Platinum version 5 which I currently use. Sure some people hate it, and call it a disc destoyer, etc., but I think it comes down to what you're comfortable with - and if it gets the job done.

I do like the features Nero has but when reading through the documentation of the Nero version that came with my CD-RW drive (January 2003) I was grossly put off when I read that only a retail purchased box version could close a disc, hence the reason I don't use the Nero version that came with my CD-RW drive, or any downloaded version.

Roxio or Nero? None. B)

AFAIK, burning software should not affect burning quality unless something strange is happening.
The important point for quality is burner and media.

Feurio has the best burning engine, so it's less likely that BurnProof is activated. It's impossible to burn in TAO mode in Feurio!, so you can't get that wrong (one less thing to configure).

If you have a LiteOn or Premium drive, you can check the quality of your burns.

It's weird no one mentioned CDRDAO-based burning programs yet.
That opensource engine is great! Has never let me down...

Burrrn and burnatonce are based on it, for example.

Before you spend money, check out Burnatonce, which is a free lightweight CD burner with built-in decoding support for Vorbis, Mp2/3, Flac; and ad-ons for Ape and AAC.

If you need a lot of additional cool features, such as the ability to burn DiVX files directly to SVCD format, Nero's the way to go. I use it and haven't though about switching to anything else.

But do leave EZ CD Creator alone...

I'd have to agree with minix...they either burn properly or don't. The software merely hands off the data (OK...there is a possibility then...but it would be manifest itself as read errors) to the burner. Features are what count...such as BurnProof support. Stomp RecordNowMax is unbeatable as general burning software. Very easy to use and solid. Some of the (more obscure) higher end stuff it won't do...yet (such as directly making an audio CD out of ogg's, flac's, etc.). Nero is more extensible in this regard. ECDC is a good package, too. Never had any trouble with it.

xen-uno

Although it wasn't asked for, and you probably won't use it, there's always a special place in my heart for CDRWIN. It's not suited to burn audio CDs, but the options you have at burning Data CDs is quite frightening.

After using NTI CD Maker 5.x exclusively for burning audio & data, I'm gradually moving to PrassiCD, because of its rock-stability and low system requirements/usage.
BTW, Prassi's burning engine is the heart of several apps: Sony CD Extreme,
Stomp Record Now, Stomp Click'N Burn, Veritas MyCD, etc.
LIF

Burnatonce get my vote to!
In addition to the formats you listed it also has MusePack support.

i prefer nero!

I have been to at least three customer sites that were using EZCD. They had problems burning. I installed Nero 5.x. The problems went away.

That being said, I swear by Taiyo Yuden and Mitsui media. Sure, I might be able to save a few pennies with cheaper media. I am not willing to waste my time with the problems I see people having with the cheap stuff. Even when a CD burns 'OK' on the cheap stuff, I have seen read problems on different CDROM drives. I have seen it enough times to believe the results. For my IT work, no cheap stuff.

If you want to go to a retail store and get something, I recommend Sony. From what I have seen in the past, Sony throws it's label on Taiyo Yuden and Mitsui. Therefore, not surprisingly, I have had no troubles with Sony media.

If you can't stay away from the cheap stuff, try dropping to 8x write and you should see an improvement.

Yes, it's good, but it doesn't lock memory in Windows98/ME like Feurio does.
Another point that I like is showing the state of the buffers, it's good to know if there are buffer underruns. At least, burnatonce doesn't show it.

Burnatonce is great but it's still in beta stage, and it's easy to find bugs.
And Nero doesn't deserve any confidence after months of versions that cut the end of tracks (5.5.0.0 to 5.5.7.8)... the kind of errors not to make in a master CD: I'd choose CDRWin before Nero to make something like that (although I don't like the burning engine).

can there really be quality differences between burning softwares? (besides bugs)

My vote is for burnatonce (or Burrrn) too.

You're wrong, burnatonce show the state of the buffer during the burning process, and it has a command log with all the relevant information. Example:
Wrote 10243 blocks. Buffer fill min 100%/max 100%.

Wrong again: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=11534

Please, report those bugs in the burnatonce forum, maybe they could be solved.
http://www.burnatonce.com/forums/index.php

True. I saw it a month ago but I didn't remember it. Not very nice, but enough (the size is still measured in capacity instead of time, and we're audio freaks )
Isn't burnatonce beta software? I thought it would be until version 1.0...

I had problems trying to test the pregap/postgap functions with a track of 19 seconds (no problems with normal tracks). (Error: Requested length (0 + 851424 samples) exceeds length of audio file "D://09-TEL~1.WAV" (851328 samples at offset 0).
The STPI interface didn't seem to work at first (the famouse error 5, I think), and lack of burning speeds, but now seems to work well.
Tomorrow I'll try to post at the burnatonce forum.

When I close the program, and I want to recover the last compilation I had, how do I do it?
It asks me if I want to delete the temp folder when I close the program. What happens with those files if I don't delete them?

Stomp Inc RecordNow Max.

www.stompinc.com

This is the best!!