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Gear / Technical Help => Recording Gear => Recording Media => Topic started by: waltmon on September 06, 2013, 01:51:14 PM

Title: fave cdr
Post by: waltmon on September 06, 2013, 01:51:14 PM
I used to burn Fuji exclusively...curious what peoples faves are...just had a bunch of bad burns with Memorex...
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: scb on September 06, 2013, 02:57:41 PM
people still listen to cds? :)
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: waltmon on September 06, 2013, 04:21:45 PM
I saw that coming...lol
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: flipp on September 06, 2013, 05:23:11 PM
people still listen to cds? :)

I still listen to cassettes in one of my cars  ;), the other at least has a cd player (no aux input though).

After my stash of Fuji's ran out, I've had the best luck with Sony CDRs but even they are becoming more difficult to find.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: jbell on September 06, 2013, 06:26:11 PM
This is what I use

http://www.meritline.com/taiyo-yuden-cdr-52x-silver-thermal-lacquer-cdr80zz100sb-zm-blank-media---p-18204.aspx?source=fgmedia&gclid=CPq6yKXot7kCFepZ7AodCUcAvQ
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: H₂O on September 06, 2013, 07:04:59 PM
Tayo Yuden is the only way to go but I haven't listened to a CDR since 2005

Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: twatts (pants are so over-rated...) on September 06, 2013, 09:01:12 PM
Tayo Yuden is the only way to go but I haven't listened to a CDR since 2005

Taiyo Yuden is/was the company that made the "Made in Japan" Fuji and Sony CDRs...  I don't think they do it anymore, I ahven't seen Japanese CDRs in a long time, at least in stores...

Terry
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: waltmon on September 06, 2013, 09:27:11 PM
We need to dicuss transfers Terry.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: dnsacks on September 06, 2013, 09:32:50 PM
Since I now use cds exclusively for sharing music with my luddite buddies, I'm buying the cheapest taiwanese disks that have a finished top surface that I can find locally (a while back I had some issues with truly generic silver-topped cds, so I superstitiously steer away from those).  That way, I can painlessly take 'em back if I have a bad batch. The 100 disk spindle of windata brand I'm using now has been successfully burning at maximum speed in both my pc's combo cd/dvd/blue ray drive and my mac superdrive and I have'nt been advised of any skipping/etc.

The japanese taiyo yudens I purchased for shn/flac storage and stored on their spindles in the late 90s/early 2000s, (before hdd storage became affordable) etc. are still holding up quite nicely . . .
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: scb on September 06, 2013, 10:36:58 PM
I am in the process of moving and threw out all of my cds, dvds and dats last week.  It was a very weird feeling, but they were taking up so much space
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: jefflester on September 06, 2013, 10:39:45 PM
Still plenty of quality options (Taiyo Yuden, MAM-A - AKA Mistui) at American Digital:
http://www.american-digital.com/

I think it's cool that they still have a record of my orders all the way back to 2000 when I was buying DATs.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: twatts (pants are so over-rated...) on September 06, 2013, 10:51:18 PM
I threw out all of my dats last week.

This makes me sad...

Terry
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: twatts (pants are so over-rated...) on September 06, 2013, 10:51:31 PM
We need to dicuss transfers Terry.

I'm always here for you!

Terry
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: F.O.Bean on September 06, 2013, 10:54:06 PM
I exclusively use Verbatim CDRs/DVDRs! I dont want to jinx myself, but Ive had great luck with them ;)
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on September 07, 2013, 10:18:27 AM
I buy Taiyo Yuden CDR and DVD-R from here - awesome prices on 100 packs.  Can't remember ever having a bad disc.  Look at "top sellers" on the right:
www.rima.com (http://www.rima.com)
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: 404 Not Found on September 07, 2013, 11:08:30 AM
Had at one time purchased Fuji's by the case load when I had a contact who worked for BASF/Fuji in N. NJ.  My favorite was the ceramic white faced BASF's That I would also get from BASF/Fuji direct, but they discontinued them. I would use these specifically to transfer my DAT's back in the day, of which had been deteriorating quite fast.  The days of D.I.C. Dat's (1996-97) and the intro of the Panasonic SV250...nightmare products! 

Worst CDR's I ever had and dumped due to errors would be HHB Gold and Maxell's.   

The only time I use CD's today are for the car, as I do not have an Aux jack. I have been seeing quite a few new radios these days that offer the SD and USB jacks.  The new Fiat 500L has the SD reader and Aux jack as a standard feature.

Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on September 07, 2013, 11:29:44 AM
I buy Taiyo Yuden CDR and DVD-R from here - awesome prices on 100 packs.  Can't remember ever having a bad disc.  Look at "top sellers" on the right:
http://www.http://rima.com/ (http://taperssection.com/)

link fail

 ???

Fixed, thanks.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: dactylus on January 30, 2016, 04:37:11 PM
I buy Taiyo Yuden CDR and DVD-R from here - awesome prices on 100 packs.  Can't remember ever having a bad disc.  Look at "top sellers" on the right:
www.rima.com (http://www.rima.com)

Thanks for the Taiyo Yuden link!

Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: seethreepo on April 23, 2016, 12:12:16 PM
Thanks for the Rima link. 
ordered enough cdrs to keep me going till the end.  (of time, of me, of music as we know it. )
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: jagraham on April 24, 2016, 11:40:15 AM
You guys are still burning CDRs? For what purpose? Not trying to be a smart ass, I just don't see the purpose. The only thing I can think of would be for use in the car, but it seems a cheap FLAC player would be more cost and time effective. I moved over to HDs in 2009 and I felt I was a little late on that. I have a CDR archive in the basement I need to organize and search for rarities.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: seethreepo on April 24, 2016, 12:49:21 PM
I still like cds for work and car playback, the two places I spend most of my time. Also all of my friends are technophobes so anything more advanced than a cd they have no clue.   
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: bombdiggity on June 13, 2017, 09:27:09 AM
Not sure why this was coming up as a recent unread topic but as with everything look to where things are manufactured. 

For CD's I always try to buy made in Taiwan though would prefer Japan.  Since I only make them for giveaway or car players I opt for inexpensive and conveniently bought. 

Just like hard drives, but there look for made in Thailand.  Those are getting harder and harder to find these days since the Chinese are taking production over... 
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on January 10, 2020, 12:19:43 AM
In case this interests or reassures anyone, I'll report the following.

In the 1970s I did a large amount of documentary sound recording onto Dolby B cassettes. In the 1990s I bought a second-generation Philips 2x SCSI-based external recorder, about the size of the main unit of a standard desktop computer, and started transferring those cassette recordings to digital. Blank CD-Rs at that time typically sold for around $25 apiece. In some cases I also made data CDs containing the .wav files, but it was quite time-consuming and expensive to make additional discs. Years later when DVD-R drives became available, I started copying the contents of those CDs to DVD-Rs. I used Plextor (SCSI-based) CD drives to extract bit-accurate .wav files from the audio discs. But I still kept all the CDs, since I was afraid of losing any recorded content.

For many years these discs sat on my shelves. In the past few days I've started transferring all this material to a portable SSD. I can report that the materials have held up VERY well. Very nearly all the old discs have been completely readable. I've made binary file comparisons between ALL the source CDs and the DVDs that I copied from them 20 years ago; absolutely all the data has verified 100%. I'm talking about 1000+ CDs and hundreds of DVDs--almost 2 TB of data so far.

Worst case, the Pioneer Blu-Ray drive that I'm using to read these discs has had to slow down occasionally to read some data (evidently retries are occurring at some low level). I've found that in most cases, if I carefully wipe the disc surface with a cloth, the same disc can then be read without the slowing down. Also, in such cases, before/after comparisons have shown that if a file on a data CD or DVD can be read successfully at all, the binary data that's received is the same, no matter how much extra work the drive had to go through in the process. (I always clear the PC's memory cache by putting a different disc into the drive in between the trials; the discs were definitely being re-read physically in these comparisons.)

In the intervening years I had made other, previous attempts to extract digital audio from some of the audio CDs, and had encountered read errors on a handful of them. These errors, however, mostly cleared up on later attempts when a different DVD or BD-R drive was used. The drive that you use really matters to a considerable extent, particularly with digital audio extraction.

The very few mishaps (maybe two so far) were recorded CD-Rs that appeared completely blank to the drive. But still, that's a separate case from bad data from a disc that could be read, which I still haven't seen.

--best regards

P.S.: During this project it occurred to me that I might wear out my BD-R drive, and I started looking around for a backup. The model that I have (Pioneer BDR-208D) is no longer made, and most of what I'm seeing on the market now is "slim-line" portable stuff that isn't as fast or solid. Probably that stuff is being made for people trapped in the Apple universe, where optical drives are now available only as external USB devices, and there's a premium on the drive being USB-powered.

I eventually found an updated Pioneer model that looks like a good potential replacement; I'll buy one just in case. A few Plextor drives still exist in the universe as well (which do a better job with CD-Rs and DVD-Rs than anything else I know of). But this is maybe something to think about--for those of us who have large collections of material on CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, what would you do if your current player crapped out? I'm concerned that in a few more years of this price- and volume-driven market, there may be nothing but slower, less reliable drives available for reading those discs.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: pohaku on January 10, 2020, 01:00:25 AM
Thanks!  I find this quite reassuring.  Time to go research available drives and pick up a just in case back up drive.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: rigpimp on January 10, 2020, 03:30:06 PM
All of my data discs are long gone but 95+% of them were Fujis and held up just fine for their purpose as data backups. 

For audio, almost all have held up just fine but the ones that people spent a lot of money on were Mitsui's and I have seen more than a couple with what I would call "blisters".  You see the blister on the disc surface and touch it in wonder it pops into silver dust and you are left with a gaping hole in your disc that can never be repaired under any circumstance.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: twatts (pants are so over-rated...) on January 10, 2020, 03:41:32 PM
All of my data discs are long gone but 95+% of them were Fujis and held up just fine for their purpose as data backups. 

For audio, almost all have held up just fine but the ones that people spent a lot of money on were Mitsui's and I have seen more than a couple with what I would call "blisters".  You see the blister on the disc surface and touch it in wonder it pops into silver dust and you are left with a gaping hole in your disc that can never be repaired under any circumstance.

I haven't touched my CDRs in many years, but I did go digging last year looking for my Masters...

I didn't test all of them, but it seems that all of the ones on Made in Japan Fuji and Sony discs (branded Mitsui discs) are still doing just fine.  Anything on other brands seemed to be hit or miss...

I never used unbranded Mitsui discs since the foil tended to flake, pit, or peel off if you even looked at them the wrong way...

Terry
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: rigpimp on January 10, 2020, 06:41:53 PM


I never used unbranded Mitsui discs since the foil tended to flake, pit, or peel off if you even looked at them the wrong way...

Terry

I didn't even know Mitsui made undranded CD-Rs.  All of my failed Mitsui's were branded.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: twatts (pants are so over-rated...) on January 10, 2020, 08:02:00 PM


I never used unbranded Mitsui discs since the foil tended to flake, pit, or peel off if you even looked at them the wrong way...

Terry

I didn't even know Mitsui made undranded CD-Rs.  All of my failed Mitsui's were branded.

You could buy them bulk.  They didn't have any labeling and only had a plain silver face.  Here is the current version, though I think they are all made in China now...

https://www.mediasupply.com/cd-r-media-mam-a-silver-thermal.html

I occasionally got them via trade.  Sometimes someone would stick a post-it note right on the silver, and when you peeled it off, the silver came with it... 

I always just bought the Fuji and Sony discs at Best Buy or where ever I could find them Made in Japan...

Terry

Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on January 10, 2020, 11:14:37 PM
JFTR the ones I used, that turned out to be so reliable over all these years, were mainly branded as TDK and Kodak. The dye on the TDK discs was deep green, gold for the Kodak.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: rigpimp on January 11, 2020, 03:45:59 AM
JFTR the ones I used, that turned out to be so reliable over all these years, were mainly branded as TDK and Kodak. The dye on the TDK discs was deep green, gold for the Kodak.

I think I cried a little the day they stopped making those Kodak Golds.  That was early in the CDR game.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on January 11, 2020, 07:29:11 PM
Some further notes: Since I no longer have a Plextor drive (which came with special software for bit-accurate DAE), I'm using "Exact Audio Copy" to extract the WAV files from the audio CDs. The program generally works well, except that it seems to be oriented entirely toward "ripping" commercially-available CDs. It continually compares the checksums of my tracks with entries in a remote database, and its responses depend on whether there's a match between my tracks and anything in that database; of course my tracks are never there, except for an occasional "false positive". I wish that I could turn that feature off, but I don't see any way to do so. It also results in the checksums of my tracks being added to that database, which only increases other peoples' rates of "false positives".

Apparently the only tech support for EAC was on a Yahoo user forum, but it is closed now because Yahoo has left that business, and I don't see any replacement for it.

--I used to be concerned about the "timing problems" that the program reports, but am less so now. After one extraction had slowed down noticeably and five or six such "problems" were reported in one track, I cleaned the disc, renamed the extract file, and ran that track again. This time the extraction happened at full speed, and only one "timing problem" was reported. I then did a binary file comparison with the previous extraction, and it was bit-identical throughout.

--best regards
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on January 12, 2020, 07:58:13 AM
DSatz,

AccurateRip is only one component of EAC.  Over the years, I have used it to rip primarily classical CDs, also which often are not in the database.  I don't use that component.

The primary benefit of EAC is that it will read the same sector multiple times if necessary to recover information other programs might read incorrectly or simply report as an error.  That is often why EAC is slower than other ripping programs; it is attempting to be more thorough.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on January 13, 2020, 06:20:12 AM
Are you able to disconnect or disable the "AccurateRip" aspect of EAC? How, if so?

By now I've used EAC with a long succession of different CD-R, DVD-R and BD-R drives; it behaves rather differently depending on the type of drive you use it with. What I find excellent is the way it susses out the precise capabilities of each type, and takes strategic advantage of whatever capabilities you give it to work with. It's still most efficient, of course, with drives that are well designed for accurate "ripping" of CD audio in the first place.

--best regards
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: heathen on January 13, 2020, 09:09:57 AM
Are you able to disconnect or disable the "AccurateRip" aspect of EAC? How, if so?

By now I've used EAC with a long succession of different CD-R, DVD-R and BD-R drives; it behaves rather differently depending on the type of drive you use it with. What I find excellent is the way it susses out the precise capabilities of each type, and takes strategic advantage of whatever capabilities you give it to work with. It's still most efficient, of course, with drives that are well designed for accurate "ripping" of CD audio in the first place.

--best regards

I believe it's "EAC" menu > "Drive Options" > "Offset/Speed" > "Use AccurateRip with this drive"
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on January 13, 2020, 03:44:30 PM
Hey, yes, it's there of all places. Many thanks; I would never have found it, since there's no logical connection between this functionality and the drive that I'm using.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: seethreepo on May 21, 2020, 11:17:01 PM
Thanks for the Rima link. 
ordered enough cdrs to keep me going till the end.  (of time, of me, of music as we know it. )
. Turns out end of time /cds was 2019 when I bought a new car sans CD player

Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on May 22, 2020, 11:29:13 AM
Thanks for the Rima link. 
ordered enough cdrs to keep me going till the end.  (of time, of me, of music as we know it. )
. Turns out end of time /cds was 2019 when I bought a new car sans CD player

My new car that I bought last year also was the first without a CD player.  I must say I haven't played a CD once in the 4 previous cars that had them, though.

The only optical discs I am buying now are BD-R, which I use for backups since hard drives are unreliable for long-term storage.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on June 09, 2020, 06:32:37 AM
After a couple of months of other activities, I'm back to transferring the remainder of my CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. It's still going well. I had many more of these things than I'd realized! The collected data is approaching 2 TB now.

- As a comment on "Exact Audio Copy": When it reports occasional "timing errors" during a transfer, I've learned not to be too concerned. As an experiment, with several different discs that had such errors, I've taken the extracted data, then cleaned the discs very thoroughly and run them again (usually getting far fewer if any such errors), then compared the data. So far I haven't found any differences in the actual, recovered data. Of course this could be player-dependent, so YMMV.

- As a further report on media longevity: In addition to the old (green dye) TDK and (gold dye) Kodak holding up the best among the CD-R types that I used, TDK DVD-Rs have been the real "sweet spot" in the collection. Of course they're all data discs, so their contents are transferable without the need for DAE ("ripping"), plus they're inherently much faster to read. They've been rock-solid reliable, with maybe one exception that I fortunately had a redundant copy of.

For certain purposes a somewhat obsessive personality can be an asset, even if it's not considered "cool" socially ...

--best regards
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: heathen on June 09, 2020, 09:53:46 AM
I recently finished transferring all my old shn CD-R backups to my hard drive and I didn't have any problems with any of the discs!  Most are the higher quality CD-Rs, but some were run-of-the-mill stuff I probably picked up because there was a good deal.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on June 09, 2020, 10:24:11 AM
I keep telling people that well cared-for optical discs are going to be more reliable over the long term than hard drives...
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: WiFiJeff on June 09, 2020, 11:51:05 PM
I keep telling people that well cared-for optical discs are going to be more reliable over the long term than hard drives...

I'd like to believe that.  I also have been spending a lot of isolation time transferring things from CD-R to files, from before I started to archive high resolution files in 2015.  Most of my burns from 15-20 years ago seem fine (except where a disc cracked, or was, I suspect, never correctly burned - copies I sent friends have made up the lacunae).  But I also tried to transfer some CD-Rs from the '90s that I purchased from Truesound Transfers, they did very nice and honest digital transfers of early cylinders and shellacs.  I am finding that most of these are now totally unreadable.  I noticed one or two dying several years back, and got no satisfactory reply from the German company, not even to my offer to repurchase these items now deleted from their catalog.  I am only regretting not ripping them immediately back when I bought them.  I have saved the CDs (with paper labels, maybe the glue did this?) hoping to find something that can read them, but none of my three ripping DVD/BluRay drives nor any CD player from ancient times can get anything.  Rats.

Jeff
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on June 10, 2020, 09:04:01 AM
I keep telling people that well cared-for optical discs are going to be more reliable over the long term than hard drives...

I'd like to believe that.  I also have been spending a lot of isolation time transferring things from CD-R to files, from before I started to archive high resolution files in 2015.  Most of my burns from 15-20 years ago seem fine (except where a disc cracked, or was, I suspect, never correctly burned - copies I sent friends have made up the lacunae).  But I also tried to transfer some CD-Rs from the '90s that I purchased from Truesound Transfers, they did very nice and honest digital transfers of early cylinders and shellacs.  I am finding that most of these are now totally unreadable.  I noticed one or two dying several years back, and got no satisfactory reply from the German company, not even to my offer to repurchase these items now deleted from their catalog.  I am only regretting not ripping them immediately back when I bought them.  I have saved the CDs (with paper labels, maybe the glue did this?) hoping to find something that can read them, but none of my three ripping DVD/BluRay drives nor any CD player from ancient times can get anything.  Rats.

Jeff

That's sad to hear.  I wonder if it is just a case of the recording media that company used was not the best?  I think the oldest CD-R discs I have are some TDK's from the mid-90s, which still work.

Here's just one of several studies that subjected different discs to a torture test, and found that the chemical composition of the layers made a significant difference:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4849567/ (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4849567/)

Regardless - in general, optical media is going to be stable for much longer than any magnetic media, and with hard drives you have to consider the likelihood of mechanical failure on top of that.  I can reliably read optical backups from 20-25 years ago.  I don't have any hard drives that old to compare against, but my experience as a PC repair tech tells me they aren't going to hang on that long.  Not only that, anything that old is probably an IDE drive, or maybe SCSI if it's an enterprise-class drive.  You would need to purchase an adapter card to even access it.  External hard drives are probably a worse prospect.  They run in a small, poorly-ventilated enclosure, are often oriented vertically (more stress on all moving parts), and are moved around making them more likely to get bumped, dropped, etc.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: WiFiJeff on June 10, 2020, 10:42:37 AM
I am backing up in triplicate.  I have an older laptop, and cloning my so-far 2 TB of rips takes several hours. When I am done, an optical backup to BluRay (likely to run 4 TB or 200 disks, I have not tried the larger multi-layer ones and the few DVD fails I've had have been double layer 8GB ones) is possible.  A backup to playable CDs would take months and swamp my storage areas.

For the moment optical drives are easy to find, but as we discovered trying to gift a nephew (in the tech industry!) with a music CD, people don't have access to them anymore.  He refused the gift, even his home computer didn't have an optical drive.  I have multiple players for my Edison cylinders and acoustic-era 78s, but I have to repair them myself, and have done so for simple issues.  Not sure any of us is ready to fix an optical drive or would be able to find the parts even if we were capable.

Backing up to Edison cylinders is a fun idea.  It might use all the free storage area in Manhattan, but they have lasted 120 years, even if the recordable blanks tend to be somewhat fragile!


Jeff
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DavidPuddy on June 10, 2020, 10:51:03 AM
Can anyone recommend a good BluRay writeable drive? My Mac does not have a cd drive. Thanks
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: jb63 on June 10, 2020, 12:43:44 PM
I've had to do with whatever was available at the local stores and always looked for the bargain sales and bought spool after spool in the last 10 years. Mainly DVR because 24/96 archiving doesn't help your budget. I've spent a lot of the quarantine running tape units, hard drives, etc trying to get the stuff done that there never seemed time for. I've found that MOST of the CDRs will still rip no matter how old they are or what brand. Had no problems with DVDR at all.

the only problem I have discovered is when labels were applied to the CDRs they warped them over time and the data is unreadable.

i wish there were a Reader that could read them. I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I've found putting them in the freezer for 10 mins can sometimes get me a few tracks. I've not found a reliable way to get the labels OFF and still save the disc, but I've found that sometimes that unreadable labeled disc will play just fine in the car. WTF.

Anyway, the best CDRs I ever bought were Gold Mitsui CDRs from antiquated internet sources. They made silver ones, too, that have a great top surface for sharpies and can take a beating on the burning side.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: heathen on June 10, 2020, 01:58:27 PM
I always wrote in sharpie only on that clear plastic circle at the center of the discs.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on June 10, 2020, 09:48:09 PM
Can anyone recommend a good BluRay writeable drive? My Mac does not have a cd drive. Thanks

I have this Pioneer (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H2GTXKS) and it's solid.  I have a PC though, so I can install whatever I want.  ;D  I assume you need an external drive?  If so, here's some recommendations. (https://www.windowscentral.com/best-external-blu-ray-drives)

Or if it doesn't need to be compact, just external, buy one of these enclosures (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XRCCV44) and then an internal drive from Pioneer, LG, or Plextor.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: rigpimp on June 11, 2020, 01:24:49 PM
Can anyone recommend a good BluRay writeable drive? My Mac does not have a cd drive. Thanks

I use an ASUS BW-16D1HT that I had flashed by Alex Coluzzi so that I can rip Bluray to my NAS
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on June 11, 2020, 11:31:10 PM
Let me take back some of what I said about how perfectly all these discs have held up--there is one "clunker", which is Memorex DVD+R double-layer discs. They're slower than 4.7 GB DVD-Rs to begin with, and I've had a few of them just now which were recorded as late as 2010, that my drive sees as being entirely blank now.

So far, my habit of making redundant copies has kept me from losing any material, and fortunately I've transferred almost all such discs that I ever recorded on. But I don't think that was a very good product.

[edited later to add:] I'm also finding that, when I had made multiple audio CDs from the same set of WAV files, each track of each CD often extracts differently in Exact Audio Copy. The file lengths are always identical (so far at least), but the binary contents are mostly not. Nearly all these discs get "self-consistent" results if "Test & Copy" is run multiple times on them; they're just not consistent with one another. (Though I just hit a case where two old audio CDs of the same material extracted absolutely identically.)

I haven't used an audio editor [yet] to compare the files and see what the deal is; for now, I'm hell-bent on copying all the discs.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on June 12, 2020, 06:07:46 AM
Let me take back some of what I said about how perfectly all these discs have held up--there is one "clunker", which is Memorex DVD+R double-layer discs. They're slower than 4.7 GB DVD-Rs to begin with, and I've had a few of them just now which were recorded as late as 2010, that my drive sees as being entirely blank now.

So far, my habit of making redundant copies has kept me from losing any material, and fortunately I've transferred almost all such discs that I ever recorded on. But I don't think that was a very good product.

I have only ever burned a few double-layer discs, but never for long-term backup purposes because I wasn't as confident about their stability.  The way I think about it, if there is dye bleed on the top layer, that could potentially affect the readability of the bottom layer because the laser will have difficulty getting through or returning back unscathed.

Even though I run all of my backups to BD-R now, I stick with single-layer 25 GB discs rather than 50 GB dual-layer for this same reason.  Maybe it's not as much as a concern as I think it is, but I prefer not to take the risk.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on June 12, 2020, 06:17:41 AM
One important note about BD-R discs: make sure you are buying HTL discs, and not LTH.  Here is an explanation of the two manufacturing processes and why HTL is the much better choice for long-term storage:
http://blog.digistor.com/not-all-blu-ray-discs-are-created-equal-but-does-bd-r-quality-matter/ (http://blog.digistor.com/not-all-blu-ray-discs-are-created-equal-but-does-bd-r-quality-matter/)


These are the discs I use, and they have never let me down.
https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-Original-Spindle-Printable-Blueray/dp/B008F5M2OY/ (https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-Original-Spindle-Printable-Blueray/dp/B008F5M2OY/)
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: morst on June 12, 2020, 03:10:30 PM
So far, my habit of making redundant copies has kept me from losing any material, and fortunately I've transferred almost all such discs that I ever recorded on. But I don't think that was a very good product.
I always tried to make my doubles on a different brand of disc, just in case...
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on June 16, 2020, 09:34:48 AM
voltronic, since my last message (which I've updated with additional ramblings), I've come across several unbranded, double-layer Blu-Ray discs which were entirely unreadable. The drive saw them as blank, unrecorded discs. That was the symptom with the unreadable Memorex DVD+R DLs as well.

I've set the discs aside to try reading again in a different drive. But if I ever record on optical discs again, I will definitely avoid dual-layer anything.

P.S.: In several instances, the drive reported DVD+R DLs as unrecorded, but then I noticed that I still had "Exact Audio Copy" running. When I closed the app and tried the discs again, the drive was able to read them.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on June 17, 2020, 06:43:11 AM
voltronic, since my last message (which I've updated with additional ramblings), I've come across several unbranded, double-layer Blu-Ray discs which were entirely unreadable. The drive saw them as blank, unrecorded discs. That was the symptom with the unreadable Memorex DVD+R DLs as well.

I've set the discs aside to try reading again in a different drive. But if I ever record on optical discs again, I will definitely avoid dual-layer anything.

P.S.: In several instances, the drive reported DVD+R DLs as unrecorded, but then I noticed that I still had "Exact Audio Copy" running. When I closed the app and tried the discs again, the drive was able to read them.

Having a 50 GB backup disc that you cannot read must be intensely frustrating.  I wonder of those BDR-DL discs you have are the HTL type?

That doesn't explain the DVD+R DL issues you are having though.  My assumption (and that's all it is) is simply that DL discs increase the likelihood that something can go wrong.  I only have ever bought one small spindle of TDK DVD+R DL discs, which I used only a handful of before switching to the Verbatim BD-R discs I linked earlier.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on June 17, 2020, 06:56:41 AM
Slightly off topic but I've had occasion to "back up" a few DVDs and the preponderance of them were DL discs. I've bought enough of them to have run into a frustrating spate of verification failures after a burn... always halting at 50-51% of the way through.

I went to the length to replacing the drive to no effect. I changed discs with some success. What I think was really the problem was the disc wasn't "jumping" from layer 0 to layer 1. Somehow, the meta data that tells the burner where that last sector ended was not being found or honored during verification.

It's almost like you need to treat the two layers as two different discs, or two sides of a vinyl LP.   

Eventually I managed to uncover a tract  (http://www.gearsoftware.com/howtoguides/dvdvideobreakpoint.php)that discussed the mechanics of what might be bugging me. This software company had an Excel sheet for free download that helped to manually set the track break point for future burns if need be. The antique software that I'm using does allow the user to customize this sector value, so I went to work and it often helped. It also could still have been a disc quality issue. One old UK site I found was quite high on Verbatim discs, so there's an OT referance. I've used them as well as HP.

Trader's Little Helper (http://tlh.easytree.org/) includes an option to split your tracks at sector boundaries.  This was a fairly active topic of discussion around here at some point.  I never bothered doing this, because I rarely ever burned audio CDs of my recordings and kept everything as FLAC files on data discs or hard drives.

You will find a lot of recommendations about certain media brands, but you have to be careful.  Some of those old recommendations are no longer valid, as some companies are known to have moved their production to cheaper locations and processes.  Case in point: Taiyo Yuden used to be considered the top quality CD-R, but they were bought out by CMC Taiwan and the quality is no longer considered the same.
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/since-ty-death-what-brand-of-cd-r-do-you-buy.595221/ (https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/since-ty-death-what-brand-of-cd-r-do-you-buy.595221/)
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on June 17, 2020, 07:34:20 PM
I will be on my way to my storage room shortly to look for stragglers, but apart from whatever I may find there, this afternoon I finished transferring any and all audio or video data that I had on CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, and BD-Rs to a parallel pair of hard drives. It amounts to some 2.67 TB.

This marks the end of a ~25-year phase in which those discs embodied much of my personal history. With very few exceptions I've been disposing of the discs as I went along. It's strange to have just a few dozen special personal items left. Actually, toward the end of the process I was more and more glad to be rid of the damn things.

I felt the urge to "share" about this milestone, and this is the place where I think it will best be understood.

(Actually I was trying to figure out when I started recording on CDs; I think it must have been around 1995 or 96. My first recorder was a Philips CDD-522 external SCSI unit (http://www.hughsnews.ca/philips%E2%80%99-cdd522-is-evolution-not-revolution-0055892) rebranded as "Smart and Friendly"--it cost about $2400 as I recall, and blank discs, which were available at first only in 63-minute (550 MB) capacity, cost around $20 to $25 each when you could get them, which wasn't always. That recorder was a big forward step from the first-generation recorders, which failed at least half the time, ran at 1x speed only, and the blank discs cost $75. They had one of those at the company where I was working back then; it was made by Yamaha and I don't know what it cost, but it was several thousand dollars for sure.)

Next, the cassettes ...

--best regards

Edited later to add: At my storage rooms I found another large carton of recorded discs, so my posting (and all those feelings) was/were two or three days too soon. It's OK; that'll be one large carton fewer, and one large carton closer to the day when I can combine everything from three storage rooms into "only" two.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: jerryfreak on June 18, 2020, 02:31:11 AM
ive had some have the dye eaten up by what looks like a mildew/fungus from the edge

cool dark and dry is def best
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on June 18, 2020, 07:00:04 AM
DSatz,

That sounds like quite the undertaking.  I do hope you are not disposing of all of your optical discs and relying solely on the two hard drives.  As many have said before, all mechanical drives will fail at some point.  I urge you to have single-layer BD-R backups alongside these drives.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: jb63 on June 18, 2020, 04:42:15 PM
My Drobo 5n just decided to stop working. It has everything I've taped in 10 years on it. The "advice" I got for out-of-warrantee tech support is, essentially, buy a new one, put the drives in and hope it doesn't erase them. So make sure you have a lot of multiple backups!
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on June 18, 2020, 06:37:48 PM
My Drobo 5n just decided to stop working. It has everything I've taped in 10 years on it. The "advice" I got for out-of-warrantee tech support is, essentially, buy a new one, put the drives in and hope it doesn't erase them. So make sure you have a lot of multiple backups!

What flavor RAID were you running?  Depending on what it was, you might be able to pop them into a PC and still read them.  If it's RAID 1, you might be able to just put one of the drives in and get it all back.  If not, maybe one of these things might help.  I don't do RAID arrays and have tried none of this.

https://www.ufsexplorer.com/articles/how-to/recover-data-drobo.php (https://www.ufsexplorer.com/articles/how-to/recover-data-drobo.php)
https://www.stellarinfo.com/blog/how-to-recover-data-from-your-nas/ (https://www.stellarinfo.com/blog/how-to-recover-data-from-your-nas/)
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on June 18, 2020, 10:14:10 PM
voltronic, I do have further plans, and I certainly understand that spindle drives have a limited service life--plus ten or twenty years from now there may be no such thing as USB any more, at least in the form that we know it now.

Thanks for your concern, though--and I mean that 100%.

--I wanted to post one further note. I've kept a lot of my discs in the "beehives" that many of the blanks came in, but I've also put a lot of them into loose-leaf notebooks of the kind shown in the photo below. The only thing was, when I started using these, if I fished a disc out of a compartment, the flap had a tendency to cut my fingers. So to avoid that, I started putting the discs into the pockets on top of the flaps as shown on the left-hand side of the photo.

Unfortunately, over time (between 5 and 15 years, depending), some chemical in the flaps interferes with the coating layer on the disc. Much of it can be cleaned off, but some of it can't, and it's causing read errors on some of the discs at that point. So again, this is just a product that turns out not to have been so good in the long run.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on June 19, 2020, 06:41:31 AM
I store my BD-R discs in individual sleeves (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000JJSQ58?tag=duckduckgo-ffab-20&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1) somewhat like those in your 3-ring binder, but they have no top flap.  Only the woven fabric contacts the disc surface.

I suppose the safest storage option is something that does not contact the disc surface at all, but I have broken more plastic jewel cases than I can count.  I have hundreds of audio CDs in their original cases, but I am very careful with them - the plastic seems to break if you look at it the wrong way.

This is another option (https://www.amazon.com/Maxtek-Clear-Transparent-Round-Clamshell/dp/B00X4WVYBK/) I used to buy.  The plastic is slightly flexible and semi-opaque.  It feels like the stuff used for Schoeps storage tubes.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: heathen on June 19, 2020, 01:15:28 PM
My Drobo 5n just decided to stop working. It has everything I've taped in 10 years on it. The "advice" I got for out-of-warrantee tech support is, essentially, buy a new one, put the drives in and hope it doesn't erase them. So make sure you have a lot of multiple backups!

Friendly reminder about RAID and backups... http://www.petemarovichimages.com/2013/11/24/never-use-a-raid-as-your-backup-system/
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: perks on June 19, 2020, 02:55:32 PM
I use paper envelopes with a glue-less flap that can be closed to store my archival copy DVD's. The envelope is made from paper that I have to assume was bleached to achieve that clean appearance. The envelopes also have a cellophane type of plastic window that enables me to read the identifying information I have written onto the clear plastic center of the DVD.

While I have yet to have any archival DVD's fail is there some risk that I'm not considering?  For example will the chlorinated chemicals on the envelope and the chemicals used on the writing surface back of the DVD start to interact over time resulting in a loss of data? I have roughly 1500 archival DVD's so  an oversight or a lack of understanding on my part could be catastrophic to my backup plan. I do use other methods to back this same data up. The data files on a DVD was the one approach that I considered the safest bet to keep my data safe but this thread has me wondering if I'm relying on  method that is known to fail.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: jb63 on June 19, 2020, 04:51:12 PM

Friendly reminder about RAID and backups... http://www.petemarovichimages.com/2013/11/24/never-use-a-raid-as-your-backup-system/

this is the smartest thing I've ever read. It more than QUADRUPLES the cost of maintaining this stuff and I am pretty sure taping and archiving, esp. in 24/96, is a really expensive task.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: voltronic on June 20, 2020, 07:40:09 AM

Friendly reminder about RAID and backups... http://www.petemarovichimages.com/2013/11/24/never-use-a-raid-as-your-backup-system/

this is the smartest thing I've ever read. It more than QUADRUPLES the cost of maintaining this stuff and I am pretty sure taping and archiving, esp. in 24/96, is a really expensive task.

Yeah, this is why I almost invested in a separate RAID setup, but never really went for it.  It's an expensive addition for not much more peace of mind.

I haven't done it, but offsite backup is really the way to go in case of catastrophic failure.  I set up a family member who doesn't know how to run local backups with Backblaze, and that works well.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: WiFiJeff on June 20, 2020, 12:03:34 PM
I have been using EAC in "Secure" mode and wondering whether just ripping in much faster "Burst" mode would suffice.  It won't, for me at least.

Mostly if there are errors shown in secure mode they clear up if I use another drive to rip the problem tracks.  In several cases this did not help, but doing a burst mode rip produced a file that played fine, I examine these burst mode tracks in iZotope to spot issues.  But recently in some 2006 material I found two CDs with bad digi-glitch problems over four or five tracks that would not rip in secure mode but ripped in burst mode with only a "sync error" warning.  I suspected perhaps equipment issues in the original recording, but...  I had sent backups of these to a friend overseas (when postage was still reasonable for that), he ripped FLACs and sent them to me, they are perfectly fine.  His copies were on fancy printed CD blanks (I was into photos as well as program listings) while my "masters" were on unprinted CDs with only Sharpie writing.  The fancy printed CDs were all cloned from these now problematic masters.

I am now wondering whether "Secure" mode does in fact guarantee the files are good-as-new.

As if Covid were not making us all paranoid enough!

Jeff
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on June 21, 2020, 12:26:43 AM
WiFiJeff, the CD medium was invented for audio, and the CD-ROM format was built "on top of that". The audio CD format was designed to tolerate a certain amount of read errors. Audio CD players not only have error correction, but where that isn't possible, they go into error concealment modes (sample value interpolation or in extreme cases, sample value "holding") that generally fool most people's ears most of the time, and if the damage is so great that even error concealment can't be applied, they mute for a few milliseconds and go on.

But error concealment (which falsifies the data) is unacceptable for CD-ROM data retrieval; a single wrong bit in an executable file (if the CD-ROM was a software distribution disc) could crash the user's computer. So the CD-ROM format was designed with a considerable amount of additional, redundant data so that (a) even moderately severe disc damage still wouldn't cause any read errors, but just as importantly (b) the system would never allow a read error to "slip through" unnoticed--the hardware would always report such errors as failures. That way, incorrect data would never be read from the disc under the mistaken impression that it was correct data.

(By "never" I mean, with such a low probability that the odds were, it would never happen in many thousands of years with many, many users--although it's not completely, 100.00000000000% impossible; it would, however, require coincidences that are nearly unthinkable, like the same person winning the lottery jackpot every day for several months running type of thing.)

Anyway my point is, if you record .wav or flac files AS FILES rather than as audio tracks, the reliability of the system increases enormously--for all practical purposes, if you're able to read the files from the CD, you've got the right information. Whereas with audio discs there is a certain looseness, because it's well known that the ear is rather easily fooled up to a point. For example, in the cases where I had made two or three audio discs from the same set of WAV source files, sometimes EAC would extract the same wav files from some tracks on multiple discs, but not other tracks from the same discs. It has been rare that two audio CDs, both made from the same set of WAV files on the same recorder on the same day, have extracted exactly the same--even though EAC reports no errors, and if I extract the same tracks multiple times from either CD alone, I get consistent results for each disc--just not the same results from all (or both) the discs.

Moral of the story is, from an accuracy standpoint, audio CDs aren't as good for long-term storage as data CDs (or data DVD-Rs) that contain your wave audio as data, whether as uncompressed linear PCM or as FLAC files.

My apologies if you already knew all this stuff, but it's been a long time since it was new information that had to be thoroughly discussed, and I don't know whether you were around back then (1980s) or not.

--best regards
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: WiFiJeff on June 21, 2020, 02:11:46 AM
I started recording on DAT in 1999 (my experience with computer files goes back to programming FORTRAN on punch cards when a computer was a large building).  I started burning audio CDs because most people I know did not have DAT players, and I kept mostly making audio CDs as finished product until a late switch to archiving high resolution iZotoped files in 2015.  When I left DAT for the Edirol R1 in 2005 (then Sony D1,  D50, Sonosax Mini R82, reverting to Tascam DR 2D and DPA MMA-A when security got tighter), I also archived raw files, but re-editing these from DVD is way too daunting a project.  So I am going back to the CD audio files 1999-2014 and ripping the audio files to hard drive.  I have also archived (2015- now) finished (iZotope processed) high resolution files to BluRay storage, I used iZotope from 2009 on but stupidly did not archive the high resolution files right away.

I am saving the ripped stuff to three copies on USB hard drives (5 TB).  I do not intend to burn BluRay discs of this older stuff, but I guess it wouldn't be hard to add that kind of backup once the project is finished. 

Anyway, the number of problem CDs back to 2006 so far is manageable, but not zero.  I just hope the more primitive CDs from earlier don't give greater problems.  The bad errors I have gotten have sounded often like digi-glitched recordings, EAC burst mode has read the CD but gotten a file with noises and drop-outs that my early clones of the CDs sent abroad do not have.  Even secure mode copies that finish but have reported errors are sometimes sounding okay but other times have digi-glitch sounding problems that were not originally there.  The older Truesound Audio CD burns are sometimes like this as well; they played when new, then the bits melted away.  Some very old ones are seen as blank, others have some tracks blank, others that play like noisy hell.  None of mine so far that rotten.


Jeff
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on June 25, 2020, 08:22:56 PM
Continuing, and quite possibly concluding, my travelog: I am very nearly done transferring all the discs from the further caches that I'd squirreled away. I have again had problems with dual-layer discs, including four BD-Rs (total threatened loss, up to 46.6 GB per disc!).

But here's the thing I'd like to advise people (besides not entrusting ANY further data to ANY such discs): If you put a disc into the drive and the drive starts acting as if it's a blank disc, but you know that you've recorded on it and finalized the recording, wipe the disc off as well as you can and try again--several times if necessary. Eventually I was able to read and copy the data from all four discs, but not until I had passed through the valley of despair about them.

--best regards

[edited later to add this P.S.:] At least with the drive I'm using and Windows 10, the access pattern with dual-layer BD-Rs (Blu-Ray discs) makes them EXTREMELY slow when a large number of small files has to be copied from them. I'm currently copying a disc of archived work data that has hundreds of thousands of files on it including many that are just a few KB; I started it around 10 last night, left it running while I slept, and now twelve hours later it's still not done. "Time remaining" discouragingly says "More than 1 day", but I think that's because it's currently in the middle of several thousand small files, and has no way to know the mix of file sizes that remain (unless it were to average them ...).
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: jb63 on June 26, 2020, 12:25:20 PM
I'm still in the valley of despair level. On top of all the other stuff, today my DAT machines-- BOTH of them just started reading nothing but errors.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: morst on June 27, 2020, 02:44:29 PM
--I wanted to post one further note. I've kept a lot of my discs in the "beehives" that many of the blanks came in, but I've also put a lot of them into loose-leaf notebooks of the kind shown in the photo below.
I never trusted those notebooks for anything important.
Always seemed like a scratch vector short term, and potential chemical interaction or adhesion issue long term.
Keeping them on the "Beehive" spindles is great, because the hubs of CDs and DVDs are just a bit thicker than the data part, so they don't scrape or stick.
I tried to keep the cd-sized round label paper from the top, so I could flip it over and label the spindle with year and month range of contents.
Worked great for my DVD backups from about 2003-2006, which now reside on hard drives again.


Friendly reminder about RAID and backups... http://www.petemarovichimages.com/2013/11/24/never-use-a-raid-as-your-backup-system/ (http://www.petemarovichimages.com/2013/11/24/never-use-a-raid-as-your-backup-system/)

Very true. RAID is fantastic if it's worth paying for power and wear-and-tear to have constant and rapid availability of data.
But each RAID array must be treated as a single device in terms of backup and archiving strategy.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on July 01, 2020, 11:03:38 AM
jb63, have you tried again since your last posting, and how's it going if so?

I've also fetched all my DAT recordings out of storage, and find that I need to transfer some of them that I missed before (or whose transfers I've misplaced somehow)--and nothing is working yet for me, either. I have two good DAT decks, both Sonys, one of which (a DTC-75ES) apparently stopped working while it spent two years in storage; I'm currently looking for a place to get it repaired. Apparently the problem that it has is common with the group of Sony models that use that same transport control system. My other good deck (a TCD-D10 Pro) is working well, but it has a proprietary digital I/O connector--and Sony no longer makes the cables that fit it. I have the AES/EBU I/O cable for it, which seems to be OK, and my format converter lights up saying that it's receiving a valid signal from it. But the converter still isn't putting out an S/P-DIF signal that my R-44 can recognize, and I don't know why.

So that leaves the portables--TCD-D7 and TCD-D8, which have only half-size head drums, and so aren't nearly as reliable for playing back old tapes. Plus they have the same issue with proprietary digital I/O sockets. It will probably take more digging in my storage rooms and another day or so of futzing around before I can transfer anything. In the meantime, I fortunately have other things to do, so I'm not completely stalled.

I tend to have a "binary" approach to clean-up duties in general: Either I'm not dealing with it for long periods of time, or else I'm the demon who Must Not Be Stopped.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: morst on July 01, 2020, 05:26:11 PM
My other good deck (a TCD-D10 Pro) is working well, but it has a proprietary digital I/O connector--and Sony no longer makes the cables that fit it. I have the AES/EBU I/O cable for it, which seems to be OK, and my format converter lights up saying that it's receiving a valid signal from it. But the converter still isn't putting out an S/P-DIF signal that my R-44 can recognize, and I don't know why.
my D10ProII doesn't have a working head right now, so you can borrow my cables if you want. Let's see what I have handy... Well I have the AES ones here, like you already have.
Both of the rubberized strain relieves(?) at the XLR end of mine hve become very hard, and are now broken off into two rubbery cylinders around the 2 parts of the Y cable.
I can test it for pinout routing if you would like to conmpare, probably a good idea to at least test continuity on yours (and mine) before considering a replacement. I figure if you stick a VERY thin solid wire in the special connector, you can probe around until you figure out which XLR pin it connects with.
I own the Coaxial S/Pdif version too, but it's not sitting on my desk right now like the AES.
I also have the rather rare DCP-80 voltage converter which is shaped like the internal battery of the D10. It is needed in order to power the deck from external DC. I may have gotten the last one Sony had, in 1996, I suppose.


Sounds like your issue is getting the Edirol to sync though...
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: DSatz on July 01, 2020, 06:15:36 PM
morst, that's very kind of you. I have a working AC supply that also fits into position like a battery, which I'm using now. And in the meantime I was able to get a Canare transformer that steps the 110-Ohm AES/EBU output down to 75 Ohms unbalanced for use with the S/P-DIF input of my R-44. (Dale Pro Audio had it in stock, bless their hearts. Support your local pro audio dealers!) So as of five minutes ago I'm in business, subject to the rather considerable deterioration of these tapes.

It turned out that the first tape I tried to transfer must have been recorded via the analog inputs of a D7 or D8, because it's at 48 kHz. The R-44 wouldn't accept the input from the format converter only because I had set the R-44 to expect 44.1 kHz. It all seems so clear after one has figured things out ...

--best regards
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: morst on July 02, 2020, 02:22:56 PM
I have a working AC supply that also fits into position like a battery, which I'm using now.
Yeah, that's the stock power adapter.
In order to go mobile using DC power with this portable unit, the DCP-80 was needed.
Glad you got it sorted.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: jb63 on September 27, 2020, 07:46:29 PM
jb63, have you tried again since your last posting, and how's it going if so?

I've also fetched all my DAT recordings out of storage, and find that I need to transfer some of them that I missed before (or whose transfers I've misplaced somehow)--and nothing is working yet for me, either. I have two good DAT decks, both Sonys, one of which (a DTC-75ES) apparently stopped working while it spent two years in storage; I'm currently looking for a place to get it repaired. Apparently the problem that it has is common with the group of Sony models that use that same transport control system. My other good deck (a TCD-D10 Pro) is working well, but it has a proprietary digital I/O connector--and Sony no longer makes the cables that fit it. I have the AES/EBU I/O cable for it, which seems to be OK, and my format converter lights up saying that it's receiving a valid signal from it. But the converter still isn't putting out an S/P-DIF signal that my R-44 can recognize, and I don't know why.

So that leaves the portables--TCD-D7 and TCD-D8, which have only half-size head drums, and so aren't nearly as reliable for playing back old tapes. Plus they have the same issue with proprietary digital I/O sockets. It will probably take more digging in my storage rooms and another day or so of futzing around before I can transfer anything. In the meantime, I fortunately have other things to do, so I'm not completely stalled.

I tend to have a "binary" approach to clean-up duties in general: Either I'm not dealing with it for long periods of time, or else I'm the demon who Must Not Be Stopped.

Whew! Months later...

this sounds exactly like me. i ignored my decks for 3 years and now they won't read past errors. i mean nada, zilch. no music, just errors.
i DID save all my digital recordings, though, by buying another drobo and swapping the drives into it. so yay to all the 15 years of tape on there.

next step is to get a working DAT player and organize, but now i'm homeschooling kindergarten, so i may get lost again.
Title: Re: fave cdr
Post by: morst on September 28, 2020, 10:01:33 AM
Whew! Months later...
this sounds exactly like me. i ignored my decks for 3 years and now they won't read past errors. i mean nada, zilch. no music, just errors.
i DID save all my digital recordings, though, by buying another drobo and swapping the drives into it. so yay to all the 15 years of tape on there.
next step is to get a working DAT player and organize, but now i'm homeschooling kindergarten, so i may get lost again.
next step should probably be to back up that Drobo