Problem with Philips CD-R's

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Mark wrote:

> I just bought 2 new batches of Philips CD-R MUSIC CD-Rs for use in my
> Philips CDR 560 audio recorder. These discs are clearly labeld
> DIGITAL AUDIO which I know my recorder requires. These discs all fail
> to record giving OPC FAIL.

I doubt it has anything to do with audio vs. "data" CDs[1]. From
what I understand, there is an area on the disk (the Power Calibration
Area) meant to allow the drive to test various power levels for the
laser. The drive writes some test data at various laser power levels
and then reads it back to see which worked best. This process is
called Optimum Power Calibration, or OPC.

So, unless your drive coincidentally picked this moment to start
dying, it sounds like they're bad blanks.

- Logan

[1] I put data in quotes because, well, isn't it all data?

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Mark wrote:

> I just bought 2 new batches of Philips CD-R MUSIC CD-Rs for use in my
> Philips CDR 560 audio recorder. These discs are clearly labeld
> DIGITAL AUDIO which I know my recorder requires. These discs all fail
> to record giving OPC FAIL.
>
> The CDR560 works fine with TDK and Fuji Music CD-Rs.
>
> It seems there is a bad batch of Philips CD-Rs out there.
>
> Anybody else have this problem?

I also have been using a Philips CDR 560--nice lightweight machine--and
this year ran into massive problems with "music" blanks from Maxell. Same
symptom as you report. Sorry to say, this Philips model may be headed for
obsolescence since its range of laser power settings doesn't seem to allow
for the way blank discs are made nowadays (for very high-speed recording)--
even though relatively few people would normally use "music" CD-Rs at high
speeds, since the "data" blanks are less expensive.

The one thing I'd say is: Even if you can get one or more of the discs
to pass OPC, don't use them--the material may be unrecoverable later on.
In particular do not record on the disc and then eject it without having
finalized it, even if you're in a hurry. What happened with me was that
I tried to go back and finalize the recordings I'd made on the Maxell
blanks, but the second time around the recorder reported OPC FAIL on the
same discs so there was no way to finalize them on that recorder at all.

For further discussion see these two recent threads in this newsgroup:

- 'POWER CALIBRATION ERROR"
- CD-R (music) failure in live recording