The Need for Speed

Understand your CD "speed limits"
Sure, there's not a police trooper with a radar gun in your CD burner, but are you creating CDs at the right speed? By making sure the speed of your media matches the speed of your burner, you'll save time, media, and money when making CDs.

Do you know what your burner speed is? Those numbers on the drive and on the media let you know the capabilities and limitations of your burner. Whether a CD-Recorder (CD-R Drive) or a CD-ReWriter (CD-RW Drive), the first number is always the record speed, and the last number represents how fast the drive is able to read pre-recorded optical media. For CD-ReWriters, the middle number is the speed at which you can rewrite to the media.

For example:

• A CD-Recorder listed at 48x40 has a CD-R recording speed of 48X, and reads recorded media at 40X. This drive will work best with CD-R media rated at 48X.
• A CD-ReWriter listed at 48x12x40 has a CD-R recording speed of 48X, a CD-RW write and rewrite speed of 12X, and reads recorded media at 40X. This drive will work best with CD-R media rated at 48X and CD-RW media rated at 12X or less.

As you'd expect, bigger numbers are better when you want speed. Thanks to improvements in today's technologies, the newest CD-R and CD-RW burners and media hitting the markets offer increased read and write speeds. You can still use media with various speeds in older burner drives, but you'll need to make sure it recognize your own drive's speed.

To avoid unwanted errors and ensure high quality, use media that is certified to the fastest speed of the drive. For example, if you own a 48x10x20 CD-RW drive, use CD-R media certified for 1-48x media. If you get a great deal on a spindle of 32x media, slow the recording speed down to 32x or less using your CD-burning software control panel.

Take a look at the time you save with faster drives and media:

• CD 1X records 650 MB in 74 minutes
• CD 4X records 650 MB in 19 minutes
• CD 8X records 650 MB in 9 minutes
• CD 12X records 650 MB in 6 minutes
• CD 24X records 650 MB in 3 minutes
• CD 48X records 650 MB in 90 seconds!

In general, CD 1X is equal to approximately 150 KB per second, or close to 9 MB per minute.

Still, if you've got an older CD drive and can only find the faster new media in stores, don't despair: You can still get great results by recording media at a slower speed than its maximum certified speed — for example, recording 1-48X media at 16X. The reverse isn't true, though — don't try to record old 4X media at the fastest speed of a 32X CD-Recorder. You'll only waste your time and your CD with unwanted errors.

Updated September 20, 2002