If you are like I am, you use your Compact Discs in more than one place. I have found that listening to CDs in the car, more often than not, they can get scratched up and destroyed. So, what can you do besides fork out another $12 to $18.00 for a replacement CD?

Myself, I make back ups of my CDs for use in my car and office. The original Compact Disc stays home safe and sound in my living room in alphabetical order by artist, and chronological order by album release. Now that you know a bit about how anal retentive I can be about my CD collection, you can imagine that I am the same about the medium used to record them, and you would be right.

Before I discovered printable CDs, I just burned copies of my favorite albums and mix albums onto generic blank CDs. They usually didn't get labeled, because I was afraid of problems the labels would cause. Sometimes I would mark the jewel case, sometimes I would scribble something on with a sharpie, or just hope that I remembered that the green disc was the one with my aggressive driving mix songs on it. While listening to mellow rock from the 70s on the way to work, I realized that this system really doesn't work.

Enter the VERBATIM PRINTABLE 52X CD-Rs

After buying an Epson R200 printer that allows you to print directly onto the appropriate DVDs and CDs, I set out to purchase a package of blank printable CDs. This happened to be on sale at CompUSA, so its the package that I got.

General Description

This was a spindle package of 50 CD-Rs rated at 1X-52X (meaning that with the appropriate burner, you can burn at lightning speed). The cost was $20.00 plus tax, not bad at all, less than 50 cents each (yo do the math, I'm not an accountant). The CD-Rs have a shiny silver surface on the label side that you can print on.

Print Side Details

Have you ever looked at your original CDs? Most have your artist name, the list of songs, perhaps some logos and such on a shiny silver surface. The surface of these printable CD-Rs is just like that. You use the right program, and you can print text and graphics onto the surface, leaving the background the natural silver CD color. It looks fantastic! You really can't tell these apart from a professional CD, especially if you print out all the copyright info and the logos on their. Got a band? You can make your own professional CDs for distribution with these CD-Rs. If you choose to, you can also print a full color graphic onto the CD-R, and you will get photo quality that looks stunning. With my Epson R200 photo printer I can print right on these discs with very professional results.

Burn Quality

Well, if you know anything about media, you know that the cover ain't nothin without good quality in the disc itself. I have had nothing but excellent results using the Verbatim CD-Rs for data and MP3s. The burns are flawless. I have used my build in CD-RW burner (25X I believe) in my 3 year old Compaq Presario computer (where my MP3 collection is saved as a dedicated music server and hooked up to my surround sound system via optical digital cable) for burning, and I have also used my Memorex 16X Dual Layer DVD burner which burns discs at the rated 52X. Both systems have shown no problems making error free recordings or data backups on these discs.

Storage Capacity

Its a CD, so you can only store 700 MBs which equals 80 minutes of lossless uncompressed music, or many more, depending on how compressed your MP3 files are. Keep in mind that you should burn music CDs uncompressed in the 80 minute format to be able to use in most CD players. Some of todays players will recognize MP3 discs and play the more compressed MP3 discs, but many will not. Of course your MP3 files should play on any computer when backed up onto a CD-R. For regular data, well, 700 MBs is a lot of Word Docs, quite a few photos, and a fair number of MPEGs. I usually use CD-Rs to backup photographs, Word Documents, MP3s and Outlook files. I've yet to have a problem with these. (although to be perfectly fair, I have rarely had a problem with any blank CD medium, except for the lack of a printable surface)

Speed/Compatibility

52X is pretty darn fast. On my old CD burner in my Compaq, a burn takes about 4 minutes, but on my Memorex 52X CD burner (16X DVD burner), a whole CD can be duplicated in a minute or so. (longer if you need to read the disc you are burning, many of my Compact Discs are already stored digitally on my computer) Since the rated speed is 1X to 52X, that means you can burn on even the slowest of burners.

Quick word about quality of MP3s v. WAVs

If you do use these CD-Rs to record music, do it in wav form because that is a lossless form with no dropout if you plan to play the Discs back on high fidelity equipment. There is a noticable difference between WAVs (lossless uncompressed files) and Mp3s (compressed lossy format files). On my system, I can clearly hear the difference between the original CD and a burned CD of MP3 files, I CANNOT hear the difference between the original CD and a copy burned in the wav format.

Summary

I really like the quality of Verbatim Discs. I love the shiny silver printable surface that allows me to make very professional looking data discs and back up music CDs. I love that they are error free. I love that they burn in record speed!

Other Blank Media (DVD /-Rs)
Here you can read about my quest for the perfect blank media to burn back up DVDs.

Verbatim Printable 8X DVD-Rs (50 Spindle Pack)
Memorex Printable 8X DVD Rs (20 spindle pack)
Memorex Printable 16X DVD Rs (50 spindle pack)
Maxell 8X DVD-Rs (25 spindle pack)
TDK Printable 8X DVD-Rs (25 spindle pack)


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