It's marketing mostly... a 48x CD will burn at 48x, but more than likely it won't be a problem buring 48x on an 8x CD-R.

Simply the data transfer is faster, physicsally there's no difference. The chips and components that read the information from the lasers will have a faster response time.

Obvisually the cd would spin faster, besides that the laser that reads it is the same, same structure and so on.

the 16x cdrom speed is the max speed your cdrom drive can use to burn...you can't take it to a 48x burn speed cause the cdrom is just 16x...

the cdrom drive "auto-detects" the burn speed the cd is built for......



anyways, what's the difference between a 16x cd from a 48x cdrom....what i mean is structurally.....

if you try to burn the 16x cdr's you'll teke them probably out of there specification. nothing will be destroyed (i hope) - but maybe the data won't be readable.

i learned to burn audio-cd's and vcd/svcd at a lower speed to use them in consumer systems.

the best would be to do same tests, burning several cd's with growin' speed and try to read them on ANOTHER drive.

keep on groovin'

kapi

I think that the "rated speed" is actually stored on the cd some where on some cds. I know that on office depot brand cdrs, it is not. I can buy a pack of 24x, and nero will still let me burn at 32x on them. Some cds, like memorex, do have that info stored on the cd somewhere.

If your burning software will allow you then I would try the higher speeds, it wnt hurt the drive and there is every chance that a decent 16x cdr will write at 48x

Is it safe to burn at a higher speed than the cd-r media is rated at? Before purchasing my new 52x24x52 drive I bought a 100 pack of cd-r's rated at 16x. While I have been burning at 16x speed, I would like to take advantage of higher speeds. So will my cd blow up if I burn it faster? Thanks.