Verbatim 16x physical defect cause?

kramer81 2006-06-04 00:25:17 UTC #1

So I recently got a Benq DW1655 as a secondary drive to my Benq DW1650 which I've had for a while. Solidburn is enabled on both via Qsuite. On the DW1650 I had 1 bad burn where the DVD looked like it had a couple of shadows the size of raindrops on it. After doing a quality scan, the quality rating was 0.

On my new DW1655 2 of the first 4 burns were bad. (had those raindrop size shadows on them) All these burns were at 12x on Verbatim 16X R+ MCC04 from the same spindle. My DW1650 only had one bad burn with after using alot of Verbatims from other spindles. After reading a few of the threads at CDfreaks I switched to BCDB for my DW1655 and BCFC for my DW1650. I also turned off Solidburn for "known" media but the problem persists.

Here's some pics of my defects if you're interested. (dark shadow spots that can only be seen at certain angles close to the light; not really "rings") This is with Verbatim 16X MCC04 burned at 12X. Prior to burning, the physical media looks defect free under a lamp. The defects are occuring the the same area on each disc and have the same pattern. Eg. \ /

Any ideas what the culprit is and what causes these "shadows"? I'm using the same spindle and it seems that I get these defects more often on my DW1655 and not as much on my DW1650. It could be a bad spindle and I do have another spindle I could test.

kg_evilboy 2006-06-04 01:40:01 UTC #2

Are those discs MIT, MII or MIS?

SantaKlaus 2006-06-04 02:14:40 UTC #3

I've had some Made in India Verbs with the same "shadows". I didn't like that. But nothing special showed in the PIE/PIF scans, so I stopped worrying. How do you PIE/PIF scans look?

kg_evilboy 2006-06-04 02:24:58 UTC #4

MIIs are known for their possibly low quality...

SantaKlaus 2006-06-04 02:31:04 UTC #5

I don't 100% agree. They're known for their variation in characteristics (which is a real problem as depending on burners this can cause a dramatic drop in the resulting quality), and possibly lower quality than the CMC-made ones.

In Benq drives with SolidBurn enabled I never had issues with the MII Verbs. So I think that quality in itself is not really the problem. But I conceide that the end result, depending on the burner/firmware, may be just the same as if the quality was actually lower. :iagree:

Whatever. About the original poster's 'issue', some scans are needed..!

kramer81 2006-06-04 10:37:11 UTC #6

Thanks for the replies. They are MIT and are the CMC ones. I mostly burn games and when it comes to installation they often freeze at the part where these shadows occur. Quality/pif scans look okay till you get to the "shadow" part and then all hell breaks loose. Alot of errors and the quality drops to zero.

I'm trying to narrow it down between the media (which I've never had problems before) or my new unproven Benq 1655.

JayC30 2006-06-04 10:41:48 UTC #7

How do you know for a fact that they are freezing at the point where the defect is. Any way you should install from the originals.

_buck 2006-06-04 10:51:11 UTC #8

It looks to me like you got defective media.

Could you upload a CD Speed disc quality scan?

Arachne 2006-06-04 10:56:19 UTC #9

I'd bet on the media being the problem, not the drive. I too would like to see a scan

kramer81 2006-06-04 14:02:29 UTC #10

Here's a quality scan. Some extra info:
- I've burned 10+ CD-R's a while back and they don't have these shadows.
- When these shadows appear, basically any data on that section is corrupt/unreadable.
- When shadows don't appear, the quality rating is usually 95-96%.
- With the current spindle, the shadows appear on about 40% of my burns.

kg_evilboy 2006-06-04 14:36:02 UTC #11

A stamper flaw or dye defect, most likely.
Oddly, MBI discs are known for stamper flaws around the 0.75 gb mark.

_buck 2006-06-04 14:43:17 UTC #12

Yeah, that's a physical defect of some form another. You could return them to the place of purchase, or if they won't take them back, I'm sure Verbatim would be more than pleased to replace them.

kramer81 2006-06-05 18:18:40 UTC #13

Thanks for the help guys! I will crack open another spindle of 25 pack MIT CMC Verbatim 16X's and give those a try. (they were bought at a different time and a different store)