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Does the transparency of a disk affect how well my cd drive can read it?

Discussion in 'Storage and Networking' started by erwin1978, Mar 15, 2002.

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  1. erwin1978 Newcomer, in training

    Does dye transparency of a disk affect how well my cd drive can read it? I bought a 50 pack, store brand, CDRs. My dvd drive is slow in recognizing back up copies of disks, but my burner does fine. These disks are more transarent than what I have seen before and others say this shouldn't have any impact on the quality of the disks.

    I also have one Verbatim CDR disk with azo blue dye and I'm saving it for the ultimate backup. It's very pretty with it's deep-dark blue bottom, kind of like PS2 disks. My logic tells me that having a darker dye will produce stronger contrast after recording and thus cd drives will pick up the disks a lot faster.

    Also, when I look at the ATIP of these disks, it says "long-strategy" or "short-strategy"; what do they mean?
    erwin1978, Mar 15, 2002
    #1

  2. boeingfixer Newcomer, in training

    Hey erwin1978,

    Check your CD-R manual or web site for listed types of media. I have found some to work great and some that didn't I try to shy away from "white label" store brands and stick with name brands Like Fuji, Imation, and Pengo.

    Those brands have never given me any trouble. I used a major makers "Black media" and have had less than satisfactory results.

    Good luck
    boeingfixer, Mar 16, 2002
    #2

  3. Mictlantecuhtli TS Special Forces

    It shouldn't affect much. The laser operates at infra-red spectrum range so as long as the cd reflects infrared, it should recognize it.
    Inside a CD-R recorder there are electronics that convert the sequence of electronic pulses corresponding to the information to be recorded into laser light pulses. "Write strategy" is the term used for the rules by which this conversion takes place. A long strategy stretches out these pulses; a short strategy shortens them a bit. The purpose of write strategy is to provide some compensation for the way different recording dyes behave. Typically a long write strategy is used with cyanine dye media and a short write strategy is used with phthalocyanine dye media.
    Mictlantecuhtli, Mar 16, 2002
    #3

  4. T-Shirt Newcomer, in training

    T-Shirt, Mar 17, 2002
    #4

  5. uncleel Newcomer, in training

    Rick had an excellent post on the subject in the old forums. I concur; just colors dyes w/o much effect.
    uncleel, Mar 17, 2002
    #5

  6. Rick TechSpot Staff

    Well, I'm not too sure.

    Darker colors mean more visible spectrum absorbtion...
    I'm not entirely sure what this means for how CD ROMs detect infrared, but if it does something similiar, this is not ideal.

    Lighter colors will reflect light more (That is why they are brighter). If it is translucent though, that means light passes through and that portion of the light does not get reflected.

    I would assume that the purity and brightness of the color has little to do with anything though. Just look at the contrast between PSX and pressed audio discs. Both of them are very readable by almost any drive.

    Lastly, infrared energy is not like light. Light is reflected while infrared is emitted from objects. This may mean that infrared works differently than you might think and color saturation may be negligable.
    Rick, Mar 30, 2002
    #6

  7. MrGaribaldi TechSpot Ambassador

    One thing to remember though is that the visible specter for a cdrom is not the same as the human eye... By that I mean that a cd which is (more or less)translucent to the human eye, could very well act like a mirror (reflecting all the visible colors) for the cdrom ...

    .02$
    MrGaribaldi, Mar 30, 2002
    #7
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