Reliable Non-CMC Media for Project + Other CMC Questions

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Hello, all!  Long-time ImgBurn user and forum lurker; first-time poster.  I'm VERY sorry for the long post.  It consists of two questions.

 

I have scoured these forums until I'm ready to pull my hair out and have not yet come to a conclusion on what are considered some reliable, non-CMC media, which I want for a huge project I've been working on for a long, long time.  I'm particularly looking for CD-Rs, DVD-RWs, and DVD-Rs, in order of most important to least important.

The project:  Rip all of my CDs to my computer as 320kbps .mp3 files and use ImgBurn to make exact copies of each CD (with a second, backup copy of the rare/expensive ones).  I was a music history major in college and have accumulated and lost so much music that I feel the need to archive what I have and back it up.

Yes, I know about FLAC, etc. but .mp3s were the best that I was aware I had to work with when I started, so I continued from there.

 

Upon searching for samples of each brand/type of recordable media I've used, they've all come up as CMC. Every... last... one -- regardless of brand.  Regardless of what I search for on Amazon, it always comes up with CMC-positive media.  It's like I can't escape.  For what it's worth, I live in the U.S., so ordering shouldn't be a problem.  Every time I search for TY on Amazon, their "CMC Pro" line pops up, which seems to make no sense re: all the good stuff I've heard about TY and all the terrible stuff I've heard about CMC media. 

 

QUESTION 1:

Can anyone list one or more non-CMC media of the types mentioned above so I can start making truly reliable backups of my most important stuff?  If they're available on Amazon, all the better; if not, I'll buy from wherever if I must.  I make only enough money to get by, but I can save up to shell out some money if I can't get any... "affordable"... answers.

 

QUESTION 2:

(2a)  What is the major difference between, say, a CMC CD-R and a non-CMC CD-R? 

(2b)  What are any other differences?  Is it just shelf-life (and if so, any estimate of the longevity difference?); level of sensitivity to adverse environmental conditions such as humidity or temperature; or a noticeable, life-altering difference in sound quality, etc.?

 

 

Thanks in advance.  And thank you to the software author(s) for creating ImgBurn and providing it for free, so secretaries like myself can afford to use it.  :0)

----Michael

[dbminter]

I live in the US so you can get what I recommend off of Amazon.com, mostly.

 

 

TY doesn't make media anymore so whatever you find will probably be pretty old leftovers.  TY made great CD-R but I got some TY labeled BD-RE SL that were CMC.  And I wasn't aware TY made BD media to begin with, so I think they were fakes.

 

 

What you want is Verbatim media but NOT the Life Series you find in brick and mortar stores like Office Depot.  You want DataLife Plus media, which you can only find online.  And Amazon.com has them.  Last I checked, I got one of the last few remaining DataLife Plus CD-R cake stacks Amazon.com had.  They still have the DataLife Plus DVD-R I've used for years, last I checked.  As for DVD+-RW, I'd try Verbatim's DataLife Plus first, though I've never used them before.  I only use Ritek's DVD+RW because Ritek was the only company making 8x DVD+RW.  (They no longer do and they're no longer available anywhere on the web.)  Ritek/Ricoh also made the 4x DVD-RW I've been using for over 10 years for Office Depot.  Some of them are still going strong.  But, Office Depot no longer has their own brand of DVD-RW that were made for them by Ritek.  Amazon.com has some DataLife Plus rewritable DVD media.  If you can't find the DataLife Plus CD-R or DVD rewritables on Amazon.com, try Verbatim's web store.  They won't be as cheap as on Amazon.com, but it may be the only store that still sells them, given how so many markets are drying up for optical media and hardware.

 

 

The primary reason to avoid CMC is they will fail to burn or fail to verify 50 percent of the time, rendering them relatively useless.  I don't use them so I don't know about the longevity.  I just know from my burn results that they're to be avoided at all costs.  I had some CMC DVD+R that, when DVD Video was burned to them, no DVD player recognized them as playable discs.  PC would play them, but nothing else.  And, that was one of the death knells for me for CMC.  My first exposure was when Optodisc switched from their own quality brand to CMC.  Half of the discs wouldn't finish burning.  Those that did, many were unreadable.

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Since TY stopped manufacturing discs, I believe CMC bought their name/equipment/possibly manufacturing processs and that's what's now being sold under the CMC Pro name.

 

I don't know if they're as good as the original / real thing, but hopefully they're better than their 'normal' stuff!

[dbminter]

I was wondering where that whole CMC label on TY discs came from.  I saw those red and white CMC wrappers on stacks of discs and it was confusing me.  Why would TY sully their good name by slapping CMC on their product?  Now, it seems, CMC probably just bought up their name and slapped their good name on CMC's bad discs.  First CMC swaps around the letters of MCC, a good manufacturer, to trick people and now this? 

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So I still need to ask, since this strongly impacts my archiving (data, DVDs, AND music): 

(1)  Do CMC media have a shorter overall lifespan than their non-CMC counterparts (e.g., if I were to pull out two well-kept discs, both exactly 15 years old, would the CMC media fail to read/write/copy/etc.)?

 

(2)  If I were to make two image-based copies of an audio CD using ImgBurn -- both from exactly the same .bin/.cue files -- using one CMC and one non-CMC disc, will the non-CMC disc have lower-quality audio upon playback?

Also, of note:  I have had only a few burning failures while using ImgBurn, and as we know, i have been using CMC this whole time. Maybe I'm lucky?  Really lucky?

By the way, thanks to everyone for all your advice so far!

[dbminter]

As I said, I don't know what the shelf life of a CMC disc is IF it manages to burn and verify correctly and is readable by a player beyond the PC.  I know that non Verbatim cheap DVD media can become unreadable after a few years.  I had some Ritek Office Depot DVD+R DL's once.  5 of them as a test run.  3 of them were unreadable even on PC in under 5 years.  Vanguard used to make DVD-R.  I had one DVD Video that was completely unreadable after under 5 years as well.  So, I can't see CMC's having a long shelf life given how low reliability they have simply for burning, verifying, and being recognized in a player.  Once I learned that CMC was responsible for my faults with the Optodisc, I went over ALL of my existing DVD and CD media and copied and reburned all CMC discs to quality Verbatim DataLife Plus media.  Those CMC were still readable but they weren't very old.  I did come across some CMC CD's that managed to skip this process.  They were a few years old at the time, but still readable.

 

 

Media quality does not affect the quality of the audio on playback except for one case.  A lower quality disc may have a lower reflectivity rate.  This would mean that even though your player recognizes the disc is inserted, it may not play it back correctly.  There may be hisses, skips, and pauses in playback.  However, this is down to several factors including how well your burner burned that lower quality disc, the player you're going to put it in, and how well that player likes that particular manufacturer of disc.

 

 

Bottom line is, when in doubt, don't use CMC.  Use Verbatim DataLife Plus.  I only use Verbatim DataLife Plus media, except for 8x DVD+RW, which the only option left was Ritek.  And even though DataLife Plus does not make a BD-R, Verbatim's BD-R in the US is quality Verbatim, non CMC media.  The same CANNOT be said of Verbatim's BD-RE SL, which IS CMC!  But, their BD-RE DL is Verbatim quality media!  Go figure!