I purchased a 100-pack of Ridata CD-Rs at OfficeMax today. Most of the discs have defects on them, often a couple of discs have a defect in the same place. For example, a few discs have a little dot on top in one place. A couple of other discs have a little line on the bottom running from the outer part of the disc near the center on the bottom. Could it be that Ritek packages their "reject" discs and sells them under the Ridata brand? Or could it be that the discs were damaged in shipping, especially considering the packaging (only plastic wrap) on the discs? I saw a tiny piece that looked like top coating on top of one of the discs. At least they were free after rebate....

It's not a secret that RiDATA is usually made by RiTEK.

I bought some too and mine were beat all to hell. One cd near the bottom was even cracked(!). I went right back and returned them, the second package I got was flawless. I've burned a few just to make sure and so far so good.

I returned mine for another package also and my second pack is fine. I was offered Imation discs instead (they said those would be better) but they gave me Ridata's when I asked.

those are the shrink-wrapped bundles with no spindle. I suspect they are getting shipped in loose packaging, instead of the factory cases that are designed to hold them. Lord knows what happens to them in shipping to the store, and at the store itself.

Despite all the unpleasant stuff, you still did the right thing when choosing RiDATA over Imation, which is CMC.
Here's the same material written accordingly on CMC & RiTEK, so I guess they lied to you, lol.

These discs don't like to be burned at full speed in the LTR-48246S, I get a few hundred C2 errors at the end. When burned at 40x they are error free.

How come the Lite-On 52x burner does just fine with these? Did they forget to update the FW for the 48x drive?

@scottmso
Sounds like a typical case of someone not knowing what they are talking about...going by brand name only.

Me and a friend bought a pack and a disc or two on each end was a little scuffy up, but after that they are clean. I bought these for data and my mooching buddies so I can save my TYs for me!

He-he. The (above) stuff is just read by LTR52,
but the majority of my audio is being burnt by Yamaha F1E, Audio Master Mode - that is @ around 8x.
Also, as it's always been said, the LTR52's are better readers & writers than the LTR48's -
I used to demonstrate those visual differences.

I wasn't actually referring to your test results. I'm having a conversation with someone on another forum that gets zero C2 and very low C1 errors when using a LTR52.

He also has a LTR48 and was thinking of flashing it to a LTR52 and see what happens with these discs.

Too bad !

What happens ?! Not much. Not everything depends on JUST firmware.
There were tests and scans regarding this subject upon the first KProbe releases.

Media scaned w LTR40@LTR48 and back to LTR40 (when ZS0P was released)
The media ID is false - the bug in KProbe 1.1.9 (fixed in KProbe 1.1.10)



The same media scaned w the real LTR52 ( it's now hard to find those scans made by LTR48@52)



You know what I meant by saying "better readers & writers" ?