I have both a DVD burner and a CD burner. Is there ever a need to use the CD burner?

Question

I'm new to "burning". I've researched and found out the differences in the +/- formats, also the r/rw formats. I bought some blank DVDs & CDs prior(!) to learning the differences. Now, a couple of questions are occurring to me: first off, do I REALLY need to use the CD burner, if I also have the DVD burner, and almost as important, I'm noticing that some blanks are sold as "data" and others as "music". Is there REALLY a difference? Should I always have both? And what are movies(music or data)?

Answer 1

"first off, do I REALLY need to use the CD burner, if I also have the DVD burner"
Usually you won't need the CD burner anymore, since most DVD burner can burn CD too, but you might want to keep it as a backup or for some direct CD-to-CD copying.

"I'm noticing that some blanks are sold as "data" and others as "music". Is there REALLY a difference?"
No, there is no technical difference between music blanks and data blanks. BUT, there is an important fact that music blanks are usually more expensive because when you buy music blanks you're prepaying for the music license that you're going to burn later. This way makes burning copyrighted music on them legal, but illegal on a data blanks, unless you used other ways to pay the license. Nevertheless, you could use them interchangeably, and no CD player could differentiate them (except for the label).

"Should I always have both?"
Probably, if you do care about paying music license. But you can live with data CD alone, which is cheaper and you can even burn music on it too.

"And what are movies(music or data)?"
As said, there is no difference between blanks. To burn a movie, you just need to set the burning program to burn movie. Note: If you only want the movie to be played on a computer (you never intended the movie to be played on a VCD/DVD player you can burn it as data too)

The reason a burning program such as Nero has several options on burning data, music, and movie is because if you put a movie/music as a data format, a (V)CD player wouldn't be able to understand the format (they could read the CD but they can't understand it), so there is some specific ways to write a music/movie data to a CD so a (V)CD player could play it, using specific file formats or how the directory is arranged.

Answer 2

You probably don't need two burners but the second CD unit can act as a nice easy way to copy Cd's.

The Cd's labelled music are probably the old 74 minute variety and the data are the newer 80 minute variety. You can make a copy of a music CD to either and you can copy data to either just less of it.

The other thing to consider is the speed of the CD burning on both the DVD burner and the CD burner. If the CD burner is really fast then you might want to use it instead of the DVD burner.

Answer 3

The DVD burner can do anything the CD burner can do.
So ... the answer is "No" you don't really need it, however, having both of them will allow you to burn a DVD & a CD at the same time.

There is no difference between the data & music media. The only difference is in how their storage sizes are calculated.

The CD industry standard uses a term for storage called "RAM".
The "MB" for RAM (MUSIC) means 1024x1024, but for hard drives (DATA) it means 1000x1000. A data CD that can hold 650 "RAM" MB of data holds about 682 "disk" MB of data.

Examples of Data or Audio storage on CDs:

63 minutes == 283,500 sectors == 553.7MB CD-ROM == 635.9MB CD-DA
74 minutes == 333,000 sectors == 650.3MB CD-ROM == 746.9MB CD-DA
80 minutes == 360,000 sectors == 703.1MB CD-ROM == 807.4MB CD-DA

regards,
Philip T

Answer 4

There's no functional difference between Music and Data CDs except for the label.

MOst likely you DVD burner will burn a CD. It's nice to have two (I have three). Sometimes it makes life easier. But really, use whatever one you like.

Answer 5

If you want to copy disc to disc without first ripping to your hard disc you can use one of your cd/dvd drives and copy directly to the other one. That is the quickest way to copy a cd. I would keep both drives just for that purpose. As far as the music/data cd thing there is no difference.

Answer 6

re -installation your application in case you could, if it play's on a cd participant, and is nice, I actual have have been given around this subject regardless of recent ones ,i'm getting a eco-friendly felt pen , on the sting of the cd mark in on the skinny part with the pen, the laser will nonetheless be able to repeat what's on the disc , once you reproduction the cd , take it out placed a clean one in and notice if this cd burner will reconize it. it is one way around it.