Burning a CD

I mainly use the most generic of media purchased for $15 per 100 from Compusa. I've never had any of the problems I occassionally read about in these forums. I admit to not listening to many CD's in my music room often, preferring that medium in my truck. I did a test after reading this thread by retreiving my oldest (3 or 4 year) CD's and playing them in my system, comparing them to the originals. I have none of your complaints. Beyond storage and handling changes, I can offer no suggestions.

I have to respectfully disagree with Slipknot1 about the "audio optimized" blanks. The only difference between the "audio" blanks and the rest is that the "audio" have the coding to work in consumer class non-computer cd recorders. The extra money goes to a fund to pay royalties, or something like that.

As to the problem, what do you mean by "jittery"? What does it sound like? Jitter is an often over used and misunderstood term. Jitter is the annoying tinny/grainy noise which is caused by clock errors created in the A to D or D to A process. It is highly unlikely that a disk would play fine one day and then have "jitter" a few months later, since the jitter is caused by the DAC, not the disk. If your original source was also digital (ie, another CD), then your DAC or CD player can be the only source of the jitter.

If you are hearing scratchy noise or pops and clicks, then you are experiencing drop-outs, which is possible. CD-R's are made with a softer "wax" than the professionally produced CD's. As such, they are more heat sensitive and, depending on storage conditions, they may degrade. They are certainly not so heat sensitive as to be delicate, but over time they can degrade.

Hope this helps.

Sorry to hear about your problem. I own a commercial media duplication company, and we've had quite good success with both Imation and Mitsui blank discs. We've also tried the HHBs at times; but for commercial applications the HHBs are just way too expensive.
The first question I think you need to ask is how good was the hook-up you used for transfering your material? Did you actually test it first before burning your discs? Do be aware that computer sound cards and computers themselves often induce noise into a recording. Also, did you record these discs faster than normal playback speed.
We often master discs here for clients; and they are recorded at normal (1X) play speed only on a standalone commercial CD recorder. In the two plus years we've been mastering discs for clients - (we are a 13 year old company that started out in video only) - we've NEVER had a complaint about our mastering work. In fact, two of the larger CD duplicators in out market refer clients to us regularly.
Another item you may want to check is the actual CD recorder mechanism itself. Way too often, the CD drives put into computers are the least expensive the maker can find. Sorry to say it but "quality" is a term rarely used in the computer industry.

I think Avideo may have hit it on the head. I would recommend doing a test burn of the same CD at 1x speed and see if you experience the same problems.

Gboren is 100% right on about the audio optimized blanks.

When you burn an audio CD on your computer don't burn at super high speeds. I don't recommend burning higher than 4x. Doing so will sometimes results in too many errors and will cause erratic behavior in audio CD players - it will also result in the drop-outs that some folks have mentioned. If you burn at 4x on good quality media you will end up with discs that sound great and last a long time.