dbminter

There's no such thing as inkjet silver printable. Inkjet and silver shiny are two different kinds of surfaces. Since that's not a link, I can't see what you're referring to just by the name.

Depends on the burner. A CD/DVD one is less expensive than the enclosure. A BD one is more expensive.

I'm not familiar with ACM so it may not be supported. Are they MP3? If no one else can help, you could try and see if you can convert these audio files to FLAC with an audio converter software. You may need to install madFLAC to get FLAC supported for CUE creation in ImgBurn.

SATA is faster than USB 3.0. USB 4 should close that gap. There are USB ports on the front of this Dell. However, the time I'd take swapping enclosures in and out, I'd probably not save any time I'd gain from a faster write. Are you sure those are shiny surface and not silver lacquer or thermal printable ones? I've used several shiny surface ones before but have never had a case of the surface peeling away or a fluid being underneath the surface. I've never used silver lacquer or thermal printable ones so I wonder if those are maybe the ones you had in this case?

Be aware that the current Taiyo Yuden is not the same company of old. The old company used to make some of the best quality media out there, and then they decided to get out of the market. Their brand name was bought by CMC Magnetics, which makes the worst media on the market. So, it goes to reason that CMC probably just slapped a well known name on their junk media to mislead people.

USB enclosures have their own power supplies. Internally, there's a power cable to connect to the drive. Why crack open the case to add a card when connecting by USB is so much easier? And with USB 3.0, you've got enough speed to communicate with a BD drive's need for data.

What I do since it's hard to find actual prefabricated USB BD burners anymore that are of quality that aren't slim line models is I buy an internal BD drive and put it in an enclosure. You can't always go by what it says on the box as for the maximum write rate. Pioneer and LG drives say BD-R is rated at 6x max but you put in a Verbatim BD-R and you will generally get 12x in the Pioneer BDR-2209 and LG's WH1xNSx0 models. DVD Video discs are just data discs. In fact, everything but an Audio CD and some Playstation 1/2 game CD's (PS2 DVD games are data discs.) are data discs. DVD Video has just had some file system specifications particularly set for the DVD standard. So, there's really no way to burn a DVD Video disc as anything other than a DVD Video disc and expect it to play in a standalone DVD player. It's already a data disc.

Yeah, the dual lasers being a reason why my BD writers never got to 24x even though they're LG's was my possible explanation. I don't know that, of course. Just a shot in the dark. All my drives are external so I can't really "stack" them inside a case like I used to since Dell removed half height bays from their cases. And I just barely have room on my desktop for the external BD I've set up. Even then, that writer has to sit on its side. So, I've pretty much limited to just one and I don't want to have to swap in and out a drive just to get some possible faster writes. I've used both the inkjet printable and branded DVD+R DL just fine. I always use the inkjet just in case some day I get a label capable printer someday and can print labels to them. And, if I don't, I can write to the surface with a CD marker. If you never plan on using a CD label printer, you can save a good amount of money going for the branded surface. Or, if they make them, I don't know, you can get the silver shiny surface kind to use a CD marker on. You'll have the entire surface area to write a note on instead of the relatively useless little amount of space on the branded surface ones.

I use the 8x Verbatim DVD+R DL myself. But, I don't do things like disc scans to see how they turn out. As long as they burn and play all the way through, it doesn't really matter to me. Of course, if you get the slower media, it should burn "better" but you had been getting miscompares on slower burns with other types of media. So, it's sort of a toss up.

Yes, I should have been clearer before about the Create CUE File function. That won't create BIN/CUE files, just CUE files that write the converted audio files directly to a CD-R as an Audio CD.

Depends on what you're intending to do. Are you trying to create BIN/CUE from discs with WAV files on them or are you trying to create audio CD's from the WAV files on these discs? If you're trying to create BIN/CUE from discs, use the Read mode in ImgBurn. (If you select in the settings to create .CCD files for Virtual CloneDrive/CloneCD, then you won't get BIN/CUE but IMG files.) If you're in the EZ Mode Picker, you'll want the Create image file from disc option. If you're trying to create audio CD's from the WAV files, you'll want the Create CUE File option under Tools.

I really couldn't say. Here in the US, we only have the one kind of Verbatim BD-R, which doesn't say anything about being AZO like some of their higher quality CD-R and DVD-/+R/R DL. However, they seem to be of high quality because I rarely have write errors that aren't the result of bad/dying hardware. At Office Depot here, they sell 10 packs of Verbatim BD-R for about $17. At the current exchange rate, that's about 13 Pounds. So, you're getting better deals. But, I get a better deal from Amazon.com ordering 25 of the same thing for $20. I only get the Office Depot ones when I need some right away.

LG made the slim model BD in the Dell XPS 8930 I got last year. But, it's a real stinker. Only writes at about half the speed of my half height LG WH16NS60. If it's just a DVD writer, then I wouldn't be interested in it, probably. I need BD writing now, too, as a lot of my backups go to BD-R. BD writers may be capped at 16x because they use 2 lasers, one for CD and DVD and one for the wavelength of BD. Maybe having 2 lasers would cap the ultimate write speed of the DVD laser? Don't know.

To be honest, I wasn't sold on the firmware being the problem. BD media has never been problematic over the firmware releases over the years. It was DVD-/+RW. So, don't worry about regressing the firmware as that won't help. As I said, I'm more betting on the Verbatim BD-R media fixing the issue.

I'd wait and see what your results are with the Verbatim BD-R first before I'd be worried about anything else. I've never used nothing but Verbatim BD-R in many Pioneer BDR-2209 units and the 1 BD-209 that I had with very few issues. However, it has to be said that Pioneer keeps borking their firmware releases for the BDR-2209. That's why I no longer recommend their BD burners. The latest 1.52 firmware destroys 6x Ritek DVD-RW and 8x Ritek DVD+RW will always fail Verify until the first write of these discs in another non Pioneer drive (Or a Pioneer with firmware 1.50.) is performed on them. If you're adventurous and don't want to wait for those Verbatim to arrive, you can always try regressing the firmware back to 1.50 and see if you get better results. 1.50 was the last working firmware for that drive, IMO. You'd have to snag the 1.50 firmware from firmwarehq, extract it with 7-Zip, and find online the tool to reflash older firmware to the Pioneer BDR-209. It's some work, but there's information out there. And, if you look around on this forum, I posted somewhere else how to regress firmware on a Pioneer BDR-2209. I've done it a few times regressing borked firmware 1.32 and 1.33 back to 1.31 before 1.50 fixed all outstanding issues I had found. Also, I've never used an SATA to USB adapter with a BDR-2209 before. I've used VanTech and Other World Computing Mercury Pro ODD enclosures. The VanTech is junk, but the Mercury Pro does the trick with one issue I encountered. But, that's somewhat technical to get into. It's definitely better than the VanTech, which drops communication randomly with the drive!

My experience with LG's as readers is they're not the best. I've had several discs where LG's wouldn't read them but my Pioneer would.

What LG drive are you using where you're getting 24x write rate on DVD+R? I'm using the WH16NS60 BD writer. And I'll be switching over to DVD+R soon, so I'm curious if I can get 24x on mine, too.

Funny story; I actually DID have a disc fly out of a drive once! I had just finished a read operation and ejected the tray manually. The disc flew up out of the tray like a helicopter! Didn't go high but high enough. To this day, I still can't explain how it actually physically happened.

I'm surprised you'd ever actually get to 24x write speed. On my 16x media, a full DVD-R just barely gets to 16x by the time 100% of the data is written to it.

Yeah, the whole write speed strategy thing seems to be hit or miss. I've seen discs within the same spindle that are rated at like 8x only write at 6x, even though they supposedly contain a descriptor for 8x in ImgBurn. And then others in the same spindle write at 8x just fine. You're actually getting 24x write strategies returned? Except for CD-R/RW, I can't think of anything that writes at 24x. Did a little digging. Seems there actually is a 24x DVD-R I had never heard of before, but only Princo makes it. Princo holds the unique distinction for me for being the first junk media I ever encountered. Wrote one and a year later it wasn't readable.

What exactly are the capabilities you're looking for? If you're looking just for a drive that supports the AZO DVD+R DL, an LG or Pioneer BD burner will do the trick. I recommend the LG over the Pioneer (now) and I recommend the LG WH16NS60 over the WH16NS40. The NS40 is cheaper and doesn't support Ultra HD BD, if you're not interested in that. But, it is a terrible writer at BD DL media, failing 9 times out of 10, repeatedly and not just reported by me. The NS60 passed all tests I threw at it. I used to recommend the Pioneer BDR-2209, but with the latest firmware, it borks writing to Ritek 8x DVD+RW and completely DESTROYS Ritek 6x DVD-RW! This is the third or fourth firmware revision Pioneer has screwed up, adding new mistakes each time. So, I gave up on them.

I'd first try a DVD-R other than those made by Ritek. (Disc ID: RITEKF1) Ritek can cause a lot of burning, Verify, and playback issues. Try Verbatim DataLife Plus/AZO media. NOT the Life Series media you find in brick and mortar stores; that's worse than Ritek! You'll only find the good stuff online. I'd first rule out if it's the Ritek discs.

That doesn't make any sense. I had a few of the LG BH16NS40 units and it does not destroy rewritable media like the BW-16D1HT did. I had 2 of the BW units and they both did that so it was a problem with the BW unit itself, not just the one unit I had. Although it seems a firmware update has been released since I had the BW unit so maybe they fixed it. But, since the LG WH16NS60 model works just fine for me, I'll stick with that.

Yes, I had in the back of my mind that VCD only supported mounting BIN file, not CUE. That's why I enabled CCD file creation in ImgBurn.

The internal model I had must be ASUS made. I never had an LG or Pioneer that destroyed ALL rewritable media until it. The current firmware of the Pioneer BDR-2209 does destroy Ritek 6x DVD-RW, though.