The media to look for is Taiyo Yuden. It's the actual manufacturer, other companies put their name on them. I use Fuji branded ones, they're labeled as 32X, will burn at 40X and work GREAT in my 4 year old Sony CD deck in my truck. The Fujis that are Taiyo Yuden are the blue wrapped spindles that are made in Japan.
Or, search for Taiyo Yuden on Yahoo Shopping, you'll find un-branded ones for $28/100 spindle.
Burning speed makes little difference. To play reliably, I have to extract the tracts and re-burn them as standard audio files. A clone-CD operation will not work. Going over 640MB wont either. Burn speed at 4x or 8x. This is burner dependant. My 24X burner only does 4x reliably, but that's true for everything I burn(go fig), so it's not an audio problem. Setting your burner to max speed WILL cause problems. The speeds they claim are advertizing and not reality.
I use Verbatum or similar CD-Rs and it works fine. The trick is to find ones that are as close to silver in color as possible. Greenish ones (dark) are junk in most older players. Best so far - Verbatim Data Life 700mb. bought 50 cds - not one coaster.
Using this technique, I've never had a CD I burned fail to work in even ten year old players that date from before CD Burners were around.
P.S. - CD-Rs last a few months in a typical CD changer at best, (scratches/wear/etc) so don't expect miracles.
I agree with you on the silver color. My SIL is a computer guru and he has learned by experimentation that the branded silver tend to have a very low failure rate. When I installed my Sony burner, he told me to buy Maxell silver and I've run through hundreds without a failure. I've only burned audio and data files on them (no MP3 or MP3 pro) so I can't vouch for anything else. My drive is rated at 52x but the highest I've ever used is 38x. I have a couple thousand LP's 45's and 78's (I collect them for fun only) and I'm currently using the Musicmatch jukebox plus program and the Clean Ultra program to edit them and put them onto CD. With all the work I do on those audio files, I can't afford to have a lot of failures.
As far as them lasting only a few months, mine last much longer, even the ones used in the car and they tend to be played repeatedly for weeks at a time. I do, however, burn a master of any made from LP's and these are used to make "play" copies (I do the same with all my tapes, too). I run my CD's through numerous brands and types of CD players and have found only a couple that have problems with them (and they tend to have problems with some commercial CD's too).
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