On Dec 18, 2003, at 8:42 PM, Ed Skinner wrote:

>      I'm going to be burning some music(-rated) CD-Rs over the next 
> couple of
> days. I have all the necessary steps and equipment and have done so 
> before.
> But my question has to do with play-ability of the resultant CD-Rs on
> different players.
>       Specifically, although my CD burner will burn at a top speed of 
> 32X,
> will I get a "better burn" at a lower burn speed? I've noticed that 
> some of
> the music-rated CD-Rs that I've made are troublesome on some audio 
> players
> and was wondering if burning at a lower speed (on the 32X machine) 
> would
> improve portability. ("Speed" is one of the parameters to the cdrecord
> command so I'm assuming I can specify a slower speed.)
>       Anyone have any experience with this? Does it help?

I see that you already have several responses so I'll just weigh in 
with my opinion. I think with a fairly new recorder that has a big 
buffer and 'overrun protection' you will have good luck at top speed. 
With older hardware, you will do well to slow it down a little. In fact 
I wrote some commercial CD software at one time and we actually  had 
tables that told how fast to drive various models of recorders that 
were derived empirically. When Lynn David Newton says that he can trust 
Toast it is precisely because if Toast recognizes your drive make and 
model. it will be conservative about drive speeds. But if Toast doesn't 
have data on your drive, it can make coasters as well as the next 
program. That's why it has manual settings.

I suppose this is just a long-winded way of saying 'it depends.' If 32X 
works with your machine, use it.