The Outer Limit: CD-Rs with 80, 90 and 99 Minutes

Overburn: Speed Is Of The Essence

In creating oversized audio or data CDs, our tests have shown that the right burn speed is crucial. Especially on the outer edges of a blank CD, the precise control of the laser beam - which ultimately depends on the drive mechanism - is what matters most. In general, a CD-R80 medium cannot be overburned at a high burn speeds (e.g. 12x). At the latest, the burn process will be aborted beyond the 80-minute limit. The only thing that will help in this situation is a burn speed that is as low as possible. Single or double speed will always work successfully. One exception is the new LG GCE-8160B: it burns oversized audio CDs even at 8x speed. In the test we were able to write to our audio CD of just less than 92 minutes at 8x speed without any errors. On the other hand, all audio CDs could only be compiled at a maximum speed of 2x on the Mitsumi burner. Otherwise (at 4x and 8x speeds) the burn process aborted with an error message - and the blank CD was destroyed.

Low CPU load during CD burning.