How long does an 80 minute CD last?

Simon RodgersSimon Rodgers Posts: 4,693
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I know it's a strange question but someone once told me that CD players need 2 seconds spare on a disc in order to give the laser time to warm up and work correctly. Therefore an 80 minute CD can only hold 79 minutes and 58 seconds. Is this true? Or could it be the discs are 80 minutes WITH the two spare seconds?

Or is the laser warm up thing a load of baloney? I've tried looking online for the answer to this but to no avail.

Can anyone advise me here please?

Comments

  • whoever,heywhoever,hey Posts: 30,992
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    sounds like an urban myth to me from 10 years ago.
  • s2ks2k Posts: 7,410
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    You can usually overburn up to about 82mins if your drive supports it. Anything more than that is a bit of a gamble.

    Some burning software like Nero will inject a 2sec pause between each audio track by default but you can change it to zero if you need it to be completely seamless for a mix or whatever.

    As for the warming up stuff, no idea but I can tell you I have burnt discs at full 80mins capacity and have had no issues on any of the players I have used it in.
  • goldframedoorgoldframedoor Posts: 1,649
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    s2k wrote: »
    You can usually overburn up to about 82mins if your drive supports it. Anything more than that is a bit of a gamble.

    Some burning software like Nero will inject a 2sec pause between each audio track by default but you can change it to zero if you need it to be completely seamless for a mix or whatever.

    As for the warming up stuff, no idea but I can tell you I have burnt discs at full 80mins capacity and have had no issues on any of the players I have used it in.
    Even if your drive supports it, don't you risk damaging your drive if you use overburn? :confused:
  • Simon RodgersSimon Rodgers Posts: 4,693
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    Even if your drive supports it, don't you risk damaging your drive if you use overburn? :confused:

    Is it possible to overburn as such?
  • Simon RodgersSimon Rodgers Posts: 4,693
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    s2k wrote: »
    You can usually overburn up to about 82mins if your drive supports it. Anything more than that is a bit of a gamble.

    Some burning software like Nero will inject a 2sec pause between each audio track by default but you can change it to zero if you need it to be completely seamless for a mix or whatever.

    As for the warming up stuff, no idea but I can tell you I have burnt discs at full 80mins capacity and have had no issues on any of the players I have used it in.

    Have you managed to burn 82 minutes as well then?
  • Helmut10Helmut10 Posts: 2,431
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    Basically a garbled fact at a guess.

    It's the mechanics that have to start up i.e. spinning up the CD takes a couple of secs and the stabilisation, reading the TOC etc. Obviously the electronics including the laser diode would warm up in that time as well.

    That however has nothing to do with the capacity of a disc. The time actually only relates to the CD Audio format (80 min), with MP3 files (700MB)

    Those are just approximate numbers on the box/disc. You'll have to look it up but it might be something like approx 79:53 min or thereabouts, I forget.

    It's not a hard limit as you can burn longer (overburning) with the risk of a CD Reader not liking it.

    The 2 sec number refers to the standard gap between tracks on an Audio CD. You can do gap less recording but the CD drive has to support that.

    http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Burning_music_files_to_a_CD

    Going on to the 700 MB for say an MP3 music CD then in that case you have to have room for the Table of Contents (TOC) this is the same for any Data CD. This is very approximately up to 10 MB varies a lot depending on the complexity of the Disc. Thus a Data CD has a nominal room of say 690 MB for MP3 music tracks.
  • s2ks2k Posts: 7,410
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    Have you managed to burn 82 minutes as well then?
    I think it may have been just shy of 82. It was what I had my burning software configured to use as the maximum. Anything more than that and you would probably run into problems - either a failed burn or a final track that couldn't be played quite the whole way through on some players.
    Even if your drive supports it, don't you risk damaging your drive if you use overburn?
    Well thats what some of the disclaimers say. As far as I remember none of my burners failed from doing it. If you are using a laptop it would probably make sense to be a bit more cautious since the drives are a lot more expensive to replace.
  • goldframedoorgoldframedoor Posts: 1,649
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    s2k wrote: »
    I think it may have been just shy of 82. It was what I had my burning software configured to use as the maximum. Anything more than that and you would probably run into problems - either a failed burn or a final track that couldn't be played quite the whole way through on some players.


    Well thats what some of the disclaimers say. As far as I remember none of my burners failed from doing it. If you are using a laptop it would probably make sense to be a bit more cautious since the drives are a lot more expensive to replace.
    I've got a laptop, and having accidentally physically broken a disc drive in an older laptop, I'm not prepared to take the risk in using overburn with my current laptop's disc drive.
  • Simon RodgersSimon Rodgers Posts: 4,693
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    Has anyone burned over 80 minutes on a CD then? What happened?
  • alan1302alan1302 Posts: 6,336
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    Has anyone burned over 80 minutes on a CD then? What happened?

    sk2 said they did and it was fine
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