Looking to buy a DVD-RW with ultimate quality CD-R burns!

[Harrier]

Hey,
Could you guys recommend a few burners which are considered best for CD-R writing quality?

Thanks.

[bicomputational]

I use my dvd burner mainly to burn cds, so this is something important to me to. I've been using a Pioneer 111 and LG 10H, and gotten excellent burns form them, but both would be hard to find now. I've recently picked up a Samsung 182m and a Pioneer 112, also both terrific cd burners. The Samsung isn't quite the dvd burner the Pioneer is, but equally good at cds. Both are also available externally, which is nice. The Samsung is called the 184m in the external version and the Pioneer the 122.

[Ian]

I can think of a few to stay away from.. the GSA-H42 and GSA-H62 series. LG has some CD-R writing quality issues that they need to fix.

[SithTracy]

I can think of a few to stay away from.. the GSA-H42 and GSA-H62 series. LG has some CD-R writing quality issues that they need to fix.

Don't hold your breath if you go with an LG Renesas based drive... Firmware updates won't likely come for them based on LG's "new model each day" business model. I have a GSA-H62N... great DVD burner, but I use my Plextor PX-755SA (best of luck if you want to try and find one of these) and the Pioneer DVR-212D for any CD-R duties I need.

[bicomputational]

I would second the recommendation to avoid the LG's. I had a H42N briefly and it was an awful cd burner. LG used to produce some of the best cd burners, so that was a big disappointment. The Pioneer 212 is simply the 112 in a SATA rather than an ATA version.

[RJW]

another vote for the pioneer
It was the only drive of the ones tested that scored a + in C't test with Taiyo Yuden media.

Scroll down below for the summary in the folowing topic see link.
http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... &start=225

Which shows CD-r burning isn't what it should be on most dvd burners these days!

[DrageMester]

Unfortunately there seems to have been a number of users at CDFreaks who have experienced problems with the CD-R capability of their Pioneer 112/212 series drives being dead on arrival or dying quickly.

See my post here on CDFreaks for some links.

My best CD-R writer is my Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7170A. It's cousin didn't fare well in the C't test, but the quality control for drives these days is so bad (non-existing) that it's easy to get a bad drive.

In fact 3 out of 3 of my AD-7173A drives were DOA or died within a few months of light use.

[SithTracy]

I had issues with CD-R on my first 212D (MFG Date Dec 2006)... RMA'ed it and ended up with 2 drives new drives (MFG Date March 2007), both work great... One on my Asus P5B-Deluxe WiFi/AP rig with AHCI enabled on the Intel P965 and another on my Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe on the nVidia nForce SATA using the latest nForce drivers.

[TCAS]

Hey,
Could you guys recommend a few burners which are considered best for CD-R writing quality?

Thanks.

If you can find DVD drive brands (Connect, Compusa, HI-VAL, I/O Magic and Norwood) that they all are repackage of BenQ 1620, 1640, 1650, 1655 then you would be in the good hand.