Wondering if you can actually use “For Music Use Only” CD-R for other things beside music?
Yes you can,but it’s actually a waste of money because those discs are more expensive than cd-r and are initially meant for using in a standalone audio cd recorder,like for example,a Philips CDR770,.
Those blanc discs are more expensive than a pc cd-r because they contain a copy protection bit which means that no digital audio copy can be made of such recordings,only analog copies…
What if the price is the same? Any downsides to using “For Music Use Only” CD-Rs for say video playback or video gaming instead?
Hmm, I did not realize that the music CD-R discs had a copy protection bit encoded on them. I thought they were priced higher to provide royalties to the artists and the music industry. I never used them anyway.
@ Lycian,no real downside that I’m aware of,except that most brands have a limited burning speed…
@ Vbritt,you’re right about that extra cost…but in this case,the manufacturers also have to pay royalties… not only consumers…
And you’d be correct.
The only difference between CD-R for Consumer and regular CD-R is that CD-R for Consumer is tagged during the production process in order to work with standalone CD recorders.
A nice read here
I had one of those recorders.
The “trick” described in that article did work, at least in that it allowed you to record on a non-certified blank.
The problem is that the burn quality could take a hit too.
Not stated in that article was the fact that, upon insertion of the CD-R blank, the recorder did more than just look for the “general use” bit in the ATIP. It also did an OPC run on the media, in order to reduce the start-up time when the user pressed the RECORD button. This is why you only got 99 uses out of a single “music” blank; eventually the allocated space for OPC was used up.
It was usually pretty impossible to find a data-certified blank which was optically identical to the “music” blank that the OPC was performed on. (I usually used TDK-branded music and data CDR’s which looked identical, but really weren’t).
So essentially the drive was recording onto a blank which it had not self-optimized for, with variable results. Witness that most of my discs, so recorded, would not play in my car without skipping; while discs recorded to the same media using a Philips computer burner at similar speeds, fared better.
All of purely historical interest at this point…
Relating to the OP though, and their question. Some music-only CDRs also had dye formulations that were optimized for 1X recording. If you try to use one of those at 52X in a modern burner … well … YMMV.
Just one bit
I still have my CDR770,in great condition,as I never had the intention to try such tricks…actually,I think I’ve burned no more than 60-70 discs with it…
Why?Because after a few months owning the Philips,I bought my 1st cdwriter,a HP 8110i (8200A) and never looked back…