Best external blu ray burner 2018 – [Buyer’s Guide]

Last Updated September 1, 2023

Best external blu ray burner of 2018

Below you can find 3 reviews of the best external blu ray burner to buy in 2018, which I have picked after the deep market research. So, what exactly would anyone want to know about external blu ray burner? I know most of us don’t really care much about the history and the origin, all we want to know is which of them is the best. Of course, I will spare you the history and go straight on to the best external blu ray burner. If you’re reading this, it is very likely that you’re scouting for the best external blu ray burner. After carefully examining the reviews and ratings of the people who have used them earlier this listicle has been made.

Test Results and Ratings

Rank	№1	№2	№3
Product
Total	4.8	4.5	4.3
Style	5 points	4 points	5 points
Materials	5 points	4 points	4 points
Durability	5 points	5 points	4 points
Quality	4 points	5 points	4 points
Awards

 

 

 

 

 

 

№1 – OWC Mercury Pro 16X Blu-ray

Why did this external blu ray burner win the first place?

I really enjoy the design. It is compact, comfortable and reliable. And it looks amazing! I don’t know anything about other models from this brand, but I am fully satisfied with this product. The product is very strong. Its material is stable and doesn’t crack. I was completely satisfied with the price. Its counterparts in this price range are way worse.

Style 5

Materials 5

Durability 5

Quality 4

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№2 – MthsTec Universal USB 3.0 External Blu-ray Burner/Writer with 3D Blu-ray Disc Playback and ODD HDD Interchangeable Case – Silver

Why did this external blu ray burner come in second place?

I like this product. For such a low price, I didn’t even hope it to be any better. It’s decently made. The design quality is top notch and the color is nice. Seems that the material is good. It has a very beautiful color but I don’t really like the texture. I really liked it. It is amazing in every aspect. It did even exceed my expectations for a bit, considering the affordable price.

Style 4

Materials 4

Durability 5

Quality 5

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№3 – ASUS Computer International Direct ASUS BW-16D1X-U Powerful Blu-ray Drive with 16x writing speed and USB 3.0 for both Mac/PC Optical Drive BW-16D1X-U

Why did this external blu ray burner take third place?

This price is appropriate since the product is very well built. It is inconvenient to use due to the size. I am going to get something different next time. It doesn’t squeaks nor bents. Looks great in my apartment. We are very pleased with the purchase — the product is great!

Style 5

Materials 4

Durability 4

Quality 4

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external blu ray burner Buyer’s Guide

Internal

Internal devices are installed inside your computer case and connect directly to your motherboard, usually through a SATA or similar connection. These devices are typically the fastest ones you can choose, but once installed, you cannot easily use them with a different computer.

External

External Blu-Ray burners, on the other hand, are not actually installed into your system and simply connect to your computer through a USB or eSATA port. These burners are sometimes slower than internal models, but it is very easy to unplug them and connect them to a different computer on the fly.

Cache Size

The cache size, or cache memory, represents physical memory in the Blu-ray burner used to temporarily store data before transferring it to a computer or writing it to a disc. This is a pretty simple specification and obviously the more memory/larger cache size is better. You should look for a burner with at least a full 1MB of memory but 4MB or more is definitely preferable. This helps ensure fast, smooth burning and minimizes opportunities for data corruption.

Burn Speed

Quite simply, burn speed indicates the maximum speed at which data can be written to a disc. In general, most Blu-Ray burners have about the same speed for older media types like DVD and CDs, so really look at Blu-Ray write speed. At the very least you should pick a model with a maximum speed of 12X (especially for an external device) but a speed of 16X is preferable.

An internal burner should have a maximum speed of 16X to ensure fast writing, but external devices usually burn a bit slower. One thing to keep in mind is that burn speeds to rewritable discs (BD-RE) are often much slower, so look at BD-R speed for burning to a standard Blu-Ray disc.

Access Time

The access time, also referred to as BD-ROM access time, indicates how long it takes for a drive to receive a request for data from a system and then fulfill it. What it comes down to is that you want to find a burner that receives and relays data quickly, which means lower times are better.

Look for an access time of less than 200ms for an internal device, while external devices will probably be closer to about 240ms. Anything above 300ms is going to be noticeably slower than other models when accessing data, so you probably want to avoid models with such high times.

Additional Features

As you consider different Blu-Ray burners, keep in mind any extra features and options provided by various models. The software included with a burner can be very important, including both burning programs as well as software for reading data. If you want to play Blu-Ray movies through your computer, then you should definitely look for a burner that includes software for playing media.

You should also consider models with M-DISC support, which is a type of media designed to withstand heat, erosion, and weathering. If you want to keep your data around as long as possible, M-DISC is worth looking for, though you then need appropriate Blu-Ray discs.

How we picked and tested

All the external Blu-ray drives we tested, from top: Pioneer XD05, Samsung SE-506CB, Buffalo MediaStation BDXL, Samsung SE-506BB, and Archgon MD-3107S.

Our Pick

Our pick was the quietest drive we tested, and it’s conveniently thin and light for storage or portable use. The Samsung was the fastest to rip a Blu-ray to an MKV file. It was a few minutes slower than the competition in our other tests, but all the drives we tested (except the pricier Pioneer) take more than an hour to rip and burn Blu-rays.

The best external Blu-ray drive for most people is the Samsung SE-506CB.

The Samsung comes with the CyberLink Media Suite for playing DVDs and Blu-rays. This software works only on Windows, though, so Mac users will have to purchase other software or use other programs which are free, but technically illegal in the US, to watch Blu-rays.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The Samsung’s biggest flaw is that it’s a little bit slower at burning and ripping DVDs and Blu-rays and the other drives we tested. However, it was within minutes of the competition in almost all our tests, which take over an hour each.

Who this is for

Over years of testing, we’ve found that external optical drives have few big differences between them—they tend to look alike and perform similarly. If you already have an optical drive that serves you well and works with the discs you have, you won’t gain much, if anything, from upgrading to one of our picks.

Pull Quote

If you still need an optical drive, but only sometimes, you’re better off getting one that connects via USB rather than buying a chunky laptop with a built-in drive.

You also shouldn’t buy a portable drive for a desktop computer that has room for an internal drive, because drives with a dedicated power source tend to be faster and cheaper than portable USB-powered options. Nor should you buy one to use with a tablet.

How we picked

The most important features for an optical drive are speed, size and weight, and noise. Price and availability are also important, as we’ve seen models disappear completely or become fare for third-party price-gougers as optical drives become less necessary to most people.

Speed: The speed of an external drive has two components, namely the drive’s read and write speeds, and the speed at which data travels between the drive and the computer. Theoretically, a 6x Blu-ray drive, for example, should need only a USB 2.0 connection, since the drive writes at a maximum of 2megabytes per second, and USB 2.0 reaches about 35 MB/s. In practice, however, the USB 3.0 drives we tested (such as our top Blu-ray pick) were faster than the USB 2.0 models. Most affordable models use USB 2.0.

Size and weight: About 7percent of the more than 300 people who responded to our survey said they used their external optical drive only at home, but enough people travel with one that both size and weight are important considerations. Plus, a more compact drive is easier to store when you’re not using it.

Noise: All optical drives make noise, but the drive shouldn’t drown out, say, the movie or show you’re trying to watch.

Sturdiness: Few external disc drives are pretty, but the case shouldn’t fall apart under light pressure, the connections shouldn’t be wobbly, and the buttons need to work when you press them.

Bus-powered (single-cable) operation: Most recent computers provide enough power to run an optical drive off a single USB cable, but some older laptops (such as the 20MacBook Air) don’t provide enough juice to a single port. For those computers, you’ll need a Y-cable that plugs into two USB ports to power the drive. Drives that come with a Y-cable, whether built-in or separate, provide some handy foolproofing. We didn’t test larger external drives that required their own power cord, as we saw those drives as being too expensive and bulky for most people’s needs.

With those criteria in mind, we scoured retailers for the best-selling and top-rated optical drives, and we checked manufacturer websites for models released since our previous update.

The competition

The LG GP70NS50 burned and ripped DVDs at about the same speeds as other drives we tested in 2017, but it currently costs more than our picks, and its silver paint scratched a few times in our travels. It’s a fine drive otherwise, and worth the investment if you can find it on sale.

The Samsung SE-208GB was our previous top DVD pick for this guide, due to its uncanny speed at ripping DVDs in Windows and its convenient top-mounted eject button and light. But it’s no longer available consistently at its prior price, and Samsung seems to have discontinued all of its optical drives after the bankruptcy of its TSST partnership with Toshiba. The same lack of availability eliminates the Samsung SE-218GP and the Samsung SE-506CB Slim Blu-ray Writer, also former picks.

At this writing, the Buffalo DVSM-PT58U2VB (aka the Buffalo MediaStation) costs more than our picks, but in our tests it ripped and burned DVDs at roughly the same speeds. It’s also a half-inch bigger on one side. The built-in Y-cable is worth paying for only to someone who travels a good deal with a low-power laptop.

In our tests, the Dell DW31was notably slower (by about 1minutes) at burning DVDs on Windows. It currently costs more than our picks, and it’s not always in stock at retailers other than Dell. If you were buying a Dell laptop and needed an external drive mostly for reading discs, this model would not be a bad add-on purchase, but you can do better otherwise.

The Pioneer BDR-XD0was a former Blu-ray drive pick, but the company has replaced it with the BDR-XD05B.

The Archgon MD-3107S is large, heavy, and expensive, and it doesn’t come with Windows software. We also encountered several errors when trying to play DVDs that worked without issue on the other drives.

The Pioneer BDR-XU0has positive owner ratings and is thin and light, but is too expensive right now.

Pawtec’s drives (in black, orange, and red) have poor ratings, and the red model does not write Blu-rays.

Sources

Similarly, if you only want a drive to play DVDs or CDs, then a cheaper model will be fine. While external DVD burners are still very reasonable at a starting price of around £20, deciding on what you will be using the drive for is the best starting point.

Connecting Your Drive

There are currently two versions of USB slots around. USB 2.0 is the standard variety that nearly all computers have while USB 3.0 is the faster version that is the future. USB 3.0 offers transfer rates that are ten times faster and will become the norm in the future, but at the moment the two versions can cause issues.

Many newer laptops will have at least one USB 3.0 port, which is usually blue. Some of the best external DVD drives will be powered by USB 3.0 and will often clearly advertise the fact.

Write Speed

Write speed is the time it takes for a drive to create a new disk. Copying movies or music onto a disk is one of the most useful features of a disk drive and the write speed determines how long that process will take.

Choosing a write speed is all about what the drive will be used for. If you just want to watch movies on the go, a low speed is fine but if you plan on copying a large amount of files, then go for one of the best external DVD drives with something above 20X.

An external DVD drive and writer is the only way to play and burn files onto CDs and DVDs if you do not have a built-in disc writer on your laptop.

Special Features

Silent Play – Reduces noise when playing or writing discs.

Buffer Underrun Free – Prevents common errors when burning discs.

TV Link – Connects to any TV that supports flash drives and allows you to access files on the disc drive.

Slim and Lightweight Design – Will be of importance to you if you plan on taking the device travelling.

Generally, manufacturers term the above features differently for their own branding but they pretty much do the same thing.

Audio Support

In the early days of the Blu-ray format most players could not internally decode HD multichannel audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD MA. Some players could decode either Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD Master Audio, but not both. Buyers without a receiver capable of decoding of the compressed audio would often seek that feature when considering which player to purchase. Today, most of the players on the market (even the inexpensive models) are capable of decoding all the Blu-ray lossless audio formats and sending them as a LPCM signal to your receiver or HDTV. If you have a high end home theater receiver, you might prefer for the Blu-ray player to bitstream and have the receiver work the decoding. Bitstreaming (sending the compressed HD audio signal to the receiver as a raw digital stream) is also supported by most of the current players.

Format support for SACDs (Super Audio CD) and DVD-Audio discs are essential features for lovers of high resolution music. SACD and DVD-Audio compatibility are usually not included with inexpensive players, but as a premium feature on medium or higher priced models.

USB Port

Connects a digital camera or thumb drive to view video or music. The port can also be utilized for external memory needed in many BD Live features.

The player comes equipped with all the devices required for it to access a wireless network.

Wireless or USB Keyboard Support

Backing up to optical media is becoming increasingly more popular – especially for photos, audio files and video. This optical drive includes all the software you need to archive your data on either a Mac or a PC. Don’t let your only copy be the one on your hard drive – optical media is durable, portable and easy to store.

Gallery

If your OWC or NewerTech brand product should require service during the warranty coverage period, we are committed to delivering the fastest possible service.

Upon receipt of your unit, OWC will make every attempt to service it and arrange shipping back to you all within 4weekday (Monday-Friday) business hours, excluding U.S. national holidays. This warranty service timeframe does not include data recovery attempts, out of stock items/components, or upgrade/product replacements.

Internal vs External

This is probably the single most important decision as you look at different models on the market.

Internal devices are installed inside your computer and connect directly to your motherboard. These are usually the fastest models on the market, thanks to the direct connection and stability, but you cannot easily swap them between computers. External DVD burners can easily be unplugged from one system and connected to another, but they are also usually slower than internal devices.

ROM Access Time

The ROM access time of a DVD burner indicates how quickly your system is able to read data from a disc and access it. Faster speeds mean lower times, so you want to look for a burner with the lowest time you can find. Anything around 150ms is quite good, and below that is what you want to look for. 145ms is great for both internal and external devices, but look for an access time of around 130ms for the best read speed possible.

Slot Loading

Slot loading burners simply have a thin opening you insert the DVD into, while tray loading drives eject a tray that you place the disc in and then the tray retracts into the burner. Slot types have fewer moving parts to worry about, but are somewhat rarer.

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You could be forgiven for thinking that CDs and DVDs are outmoded technologies. With flash memory getting cheaper and the cloud becoming ever more pervasive, storing data on circles of plastic-coated aluminium seems little better than chiselling ones and noughts on slabs of stone.

Here are 1disc burning tips to help you squeeze more data onto a disc, burn audio discs and more.

ImgBurn

I used to use ImgBurn. It’s a lightweight CD/DVD HD-DVD/Blu-ray burning application that you can install both on Windows and Linux PCs. It’s the most fully-featured burning program out of all competitors. If you’re looking for something advanced and with lots of features ImgBurn is the best candidate.

Beware, though! The ImgBurn installer comes with Potentially Unwanted Programs (how to remove PUPs). You can choose to not install these, but you must specifically opt out.

CDBurnerXP

Despite its name, CDBurnerXP works on all versions of Windows. It perennially ranks among the most popular burning clients on account of its simplicity, feature-set, and lightweight footprint.

DVD Flick

When it comes to authoring your own discs from video files, no free app does it better than DVD Flick. DVD Flick supports a tremendous number of disc formats and codecs. Its defining feature, though, is its ability to create complete DVDs from video and audio files.

Read More — so it’s only a partial replacement for Nero.

DeepBurner

DeepBurner has been around for a while now and remains one of the best Nero alternatives. Not only is it available as a regular installable application — it’s also a portable app. So if you want something you can carry around on your USB flash drive then check this one out.

Ashampoo Burning Studio

The biggest, beefiest, and most fully featured client is Ashampoo Burning Studio Free Edition. Its feature suite appears similar to many of the other programs in this list. However, it ups the ante by throwing in disc ripping capabilities. On the downside, Ashampoo (even the Free Edition) requires registration through the Ashampoo website.

BurnAware

BurnAware’s elegant and simplified interface doesn’t just look great — it’s functional too! It comes with a large number of features, like rewriteable disc support. On top of that, it’s light on resources and supports every other format that you can imagine (including Blu-Ray). Burning is fast because this software burns data directly onto the medium, instead of waiting for “hard disk staging”.

Magnetic vs Optical Media

The Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) is an international trade organization dedicated to the promotion of standardized writable optical technologies and related products. Incorporated in 1992, OSTA is made up of members and associates from the leading optical media manufacturers and resellers of North America, Europe, and Asia. OSTA members include Adaptec, Hewlett-Packard, Philips, and Sony.

Multi-beam CD-ROM Drives

A new technological development, the multi-beam CD-ROM drive uses laser beams instead of one to to produce 36X performance from a 6X rotation speed. Six beams are used for reading data; the other one is used for error correction. A new development by Hi-Val in multi-beam CD-ROM drives, the first 40X drive, utilize laser beams, reading simultaneously. (that read, and one for error correction, the same as above). The yield is true 40X performance and a transfer rate that can reach 6MB/second. The CD-ROM disc rotates as smoothly as a 6X drive.

DVD-ROM Drives

Although DVD-ROM drives have a much lower RPM (revolutions per minute) value, data transfer rates are substantially higher than a CD-ROMdrive at equivalent RPMs, because the data is compressed by the use of a greater number of smaller data pits and a smaller track pitch (the distance between tracks). For example, a 1X DVD-ROM drive transfers data at 1,250KBps, whereas a 1X CD-ROM drive transfers data at only 150KBps. By 1998, multispeed DVD-ROM drives became available that were capable of reading DVD media at double-speed, resulting in a transfer rate of 2,700 KBps, and of rotating CDs at 24X. By the end of that year DVD drive speeds had increased to 5X. Presently, DVD drives are capable of a 6X speed (8,100 KBps) for DVD media and 32X speed for reading CD-ROMs.

CD Recording and Playback

When a CD is placed in a CD player, the recorded track is scanned by a low-intensity infrared laser. To enable a consistent scanning rate (from the smaller center to the larger outside of the disk), the rotation rate slows from 500 to 200 rpm (revolutions per minute) as the laser beam spirals outward. Two additional lasers are sometimes used to help control the focus of the primary laser and the rotation of the disk. The pits and smooth areas (the smooth areas are called lands ) are read by a laser when the disc is played. Pits and lands reflect the light from the laser differently, and that difference is encoded as binary data: the light hitting a land reflects back directly to a photodiode, which generates an electrical pulse, while the light hitting a pit is refracted (deflected from a straight path, or scattered), and, consequently, reduced below the level needed to activate the photodiode. Based on its length, each pit is interpreted as a sequence of zeroes, and, based on its length, each land is interpreted as a sequence of ones. Digital-to-analog conversion translates the binary data into audio signals for reproduction.

Standards and Specifications

ISO 9660

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 9660 is the most common file and directory naming standard, written in 198for CD-ROMs.

The Joliet Specification is an extension of ISO 9660, and was developed by Microsoft for Windows 9It allows CDs to be recorded using long filenames (up to 6characters in length, including spaces). It also allows the use of the Unicode international character set.

CD-ROM Data Storage

Although the disc media and the drives of the CD and CD-ROM are, in principle, the same, there is a difference in the way data storage is organized. Two new sectors were defined, Mode for storing computer data and Mode for compressed audio or video/graphic data.

CD-ROM Mode 1

CD-ROM Mode is the mode used for CD-ROMs that carry data and applications only. In order to access the thousands of data files that may be present on this type of CD, precise addressing is necessary. Data is laid out in nearly the same way as it is on audio disks: data is stored in sectors, which each hold 2,35bytes of data, with an additional number of bytes used for error detection and correction, as well as control structures. For mode CD-ROM data storage, the sectors are further broken down, and 2,04used for the expected data, while the other 30bytes are devoted to extra error detection and correction code, because CD-ROMs are not as fault tolerant as audio CDs. There are 7sectors per second on the disk, which yields a disc capacity of 681,984,000 bytes (650MB) and a single speed transfer rate of 150 KBps, with higher rates for faster CD-ROM drives. Drive speed is expressed as multiples of the single speed transfer rate, as 2X, 4X, 6X, and so on. Most CD-ROM drives support CD-ROM XA and Photo-CD (including multisession disks).

CD-ROM Mode 2

CD-ROM Mode is used for compressed audio/video information and uses only two layers of error detection and correction, the same as the CD-DA. Therefore, all 2,33bytes of data behind the sync and header bytes are for user data. Although the sectors of CD-DA, CD-ROM Mode and Mode are the same size, the amount of data that can be stored varies considerably because of the use of sync and header bytes, error correction and detection. The Mode format offers a flexible method for storing graphics and video. It allows different kinds of data to be mixed together, and became the basis for CD-ROM XA. Mode can be read by normal CD-ROM drives, in conjunction with the appropriate drivers.

Enhanced CD

E-CD specifications are detailed in the Blue Book, a 199supplement to the 198Philips and Sony Orange Book, that was intended as a separate definition for stamped multisession disc format. Because the disks are stamped (pressed from copies of the original recording), they are not user-recordable. The Blue Book, which called the new format CD Plus specified two recording sessions, one for audio data and one for any other included data. Like all CD formats, enhanced CD is based on the original Red Book specifications. E-CD is sometimes called CD-Extra, CD-Plus, stamped multisession, or simply Blue Book format.

E-CD format is designed to overcome the problems of mixed-mode CDs, which also consisted of separate tracks for audio and other data. Mixed-mode disks were often responsible for speaker damage: when a CD player tried to read the data tracks, the result was loud static. Because E-CD data and audio tracks are written in separate sessions, the data track(s) can be made invisible to the CD player, so that only the audio tracks are played.

Multisession CD

A Multisession CD is a recordable CD (like a CD-R) that allows data to be recorded to a disc in more than one recording session. If there is free space left on the CD after the first session, additional data can be written to it at a later date. Every session has its own lead in, program area, and lead out. This takes up about 20MB of space, and therefore, is less efficient than recording data all at once.

Multisession CDs can be read in current CD-ROM drives, unless data is recorded track-by-track or sector by sector. This process is known as packet writing and in this case only newer CD-ROM drives accompanied by appropriate software would be able to read the disk.

Double-Layered DVD Disks

An additional feature that improves efficiency is the dual-directional readability of the second data layer. Unlike standard-density CD-ROMs, which can only be read from the innermost part of the spiral track to the outermost part, the second layer of the double-layered DVD can be written to and read from either direction. This results in faster transitions by the reading laser. It can actually take less time for the reading laser to refocus to retrieve data from a different layer on a DVD than it does for the laser to relocate and retrieve data from a different part of the same layer on a CD-ROM.

An extension of the double-layered disc is the double-sided DVD disk. To enable the refocusing of the read laser, manufacturers have constructed DVD disks with a thinner plastic substrate than that used on a CD-ROM disk. This reduces the distance that the laser must travel to reach the data pits. The resulting disks were only 0.6mm thick, too thin to remain flat and withstand handling. Two disks were then bonded back-to-back resulting in a thickness of 1.2mm, a manageable thickness. This virtually doubled the disc capacity.

DVD Regional Codes

In an effort to control the home release of movies in different countries, motion picture studios have devised a method to prevent playback of certain disks in certain geographical regions. Since theatre releases are not simultaneous, and because studios sell distribution rights to foreign distributors and would like to guarantee exclusive markets, pressure was brought to bear on the writers of the DVD standard. The standard now includes codes that can be used in playback devices to ensure that only disks purchased in the same geographical areas as the players will function properly.

Regional codes are entirely optional for disc manufacturers, however. disks without codes will play on any player regardless of its origin. One byte of information holding the regional code can be checked by the player. There is no encryption involved, but regional codes are a permanent part of the disc with no unlocking mechanism included. Although manufacturers originally planned to code only new releases, most DVD disks today are geographically coded.

Any other info that is helpful I can provide.

OK, computer does not recognize the CD Burner on either drive. It will read from but no write to.

I have used device manager to no avail. I uninstalled the DVD player twice an it did install the main driver.

Key Features

Modern laptops are getting thinner and thinner and it seems like manufacturers are getting rid of internal optical drives to keep up with the trend. Many people though still want to enjoy DVD/CD playback so a quick solution to this problem is a performant external CD drive like the one from Cocopa. It comes with USB 3.0 and it’s amazingly easy to use.

The look of this external drive is highly fashionable with an embedded cable design and the scratch-proof exterior is made with a premium material. Sleek compactness seems to be what Cocopa had in mind for this device. There are no compromises on performance however as the unit uses smart burning technology with maximum DVD read speed of 8X, 24X for the read speed of CDs and a maximum CD burn speed of 8X.

Considering a solid number of features and the premium finish of this external drive, it’s safe to say that this is an excellent investment. Cocopa managed to create a very fast and powerful device that supports many formats and media types. It’s also highly compatible with virtually any operating system including Windows 10, so this 3.0 CD drive is a very recommended choice.

How to burn a music CD on Mac

The great thing about Mac computers is that they usually come with all the software an average user may need. CD burning tool is not an exception.

Although iTunes interface might not seem too user-friendly, the software provides a great many functions for music lovers. CD burning is one of them. To burn CD with iTunes, you need to create a playlist of your favorite tracks inside the program.

Media Problems

The quality of your media is directly related with the time the media will last without losing the information. As you can see there are a number of areas where manufacturers can shave a few cents in the overall cost of the media and areas where production can go amiss to dramatically shorten the data life of your stored information.

Delamination and oxidation usually occur at the outer edge of the disc and are often the result of the adhesive not being properly applied and cured during the production process. This usually happens when price-oriented manufacturers use equipment that is 2-generations old and the least expensive materials possible.

You are the greatest danger to the data longevity of your personal, family and business information that is stored on CD and DVD. Direct exposure to sunlight and intense heat can do dramatic damage. Rapid changes in temperature and humidity can stress the materials. Gravity can bend and stress the discs. Fingerprints and smudges can do more damage than scratches.

Choosing a Recorder

You have a number of options for how you approach recording audio, and each has its own advantages. For many, a computer-based recording setup using audio software is the most versatile and convenient solution. Others like the physical control offered by hardware. We will take a look at these different approaches and walk you through the buying considerations for each.

Computer

Now, you most likely already have a desktop or laptop computer that you have thought of using for your recordings. However, you’ll want to take note of some specs that are important when it comes to deciding whether your computer can handle the job.

Mobile recording with iOS

The rapid development of musician-friendly apps on the iOS platform has led to the introduction of lots of iOS-enabled gear. These days, your iPhone or iPad can be transformed into the command center for all your audio productions. Harnessing the iOS-aware microphones, mixers, interfaces, and controllers found in the Musician’s Friend iOS Store is a highly portable and affordable way to develop your music production skills while creating projects that can rival professional work.

The Shure Motiv MV5large-diaghragm condenser mic connects directly to your Lightning-equipped mobile devices plus Mac and PCs and produces astoundingly detailed recordings with plug ’n’ play simplicity.

Multitrack recorders

If you opt to go for dedicated hardware for your recording rather than a computer-based system, there are a number of options. One of their greatest advantages are dedicated physical knobs, buttons, and faders that can be much easier to use than delving through the often complex multi-layered menus of computer-based software.

A great option to wading through software menus, the Tascam DP-32SD Portastudio offers real hands-on control of all major functions and up to 3tracks of simultaneous playback.

Controls

Some computer interfaces include hardware controls, some have software controls, and some have both. They also often include mixer software to handle routing of the I/O and level meters.

The Mackie Big Knob Studio Monitor Controller Interface features dual Onyx preamps, up to 192kHz/24-bit recording and playback and offers plenty of monitoringchoices.

Choosing Software

Without audio software, computers would not be the music production powerhouses they are today. And there are plenty of software options capable of handling your audio production at every point from start to finish: recording, mixing, editing, mastering, duplicating, and in some cases even songwriting.

Pro Tools is the de facto DAW choice of many world-class studios thanks to its sterling sound, amazing plug-ins and capabilities that will let you conquer the most elaborate audio production challenges.

Explore the capabilities of Pro Tools 12—arguably the most advanced DAW software available today.

Reason is a favorite among producers thanks to its huge set of drums, synths, and effects wrapped up in an intuitive DAW interface.

We’ve just touched on a few of the most popular audio production applications. Explore our huge selection of music software for more great choices.

Studio Monitors

The biamped M-Audio BXCarbon is a trusted monitor in countless home studios due to its flat frequency response and accurate stereo sound field.

For connections, monitors usually have 1/4”, XLR, RCA or S/PDIF jacks. Some offer only unbalanced or balanced I/O, and some have both.

Subwoofers

If you record beat and bass-heavy music or TV and movie soundtrack material, a subwoofer or surround setup will be helpful in monitoring the extended low-frequencies and extra channels necessary in those types of music.

The ADAM Audio Subhas a compact footprint, yet can reproduce frequencies down to 50Hz. Motorized controls allow easy frequency tweaks and wireless remote control.

Audio Playback

Listening using consumer-market headphones also can give you valuable insight about how your mix will sound on headphones that are voiced for the listening pleasure of the average music fan rather than 100% accurate sound as day-to-day recording and mixing headphones require.

Choosing Headphones

Headphones are generally used for monitoring during recording and overdubbing, but high-quality headphones can be used for nearly everything, including critical listening and mixing. When considering headphones, look at the frequency response and THD specs to get an idea of their accuracy. Driver size will also affect how accurately a speaker can reproduce audio, since larger drivers can reproduce low frequencies more accurately. For recording, be sure to get at least one pair of closed-back headphones, which have better acoustic isolation that open-back models. This design prevents sound from the headphones from “bleeding” into the microphones.Listening using consumer-market headphones also can give you valuable insight about how your mix will sound on headphones that are EQd for pleasing rather than accurate sound.

Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO-80 Headphones have a closed-back design and deliver highly accurate sound reproduction making them a popular choice among recording and mixing pros.

Headphones use either an 1/8” jack or a stereo 1/4” jack, and usually include an adapter for convenience when plugging into equipment that has one, but not the other.

Choosing a CD Duplicator

Between the writable CD-ROM drives available in many computers, and the proliferation of digital media, you might not have considered specialized equipment for duplicating CDs. However, there still is a demand for the CD format, and discs still are a great way to distribute demos and recordings locally.

Choosing Recording Accessories

Some accessories are really necessities, and some simply make recording a little easier. You might need monitor stands, a recording desk, a patchbay, acoustic room treatment materials, a power conditioner, or a rack for your processors. You most likely will also need cables, mic stands, and recording media and extra storage for recorded digital audio.

Sega CDX

This is a relatively compact unit that combines the hardware of both the Genesis and Sega CD into one relatively small unit.  The unit provides two control pad outputs at the front, a small array of CD system control buttons at the front top edge, a CD system door in the middle top and a cartridge slot at the top rear.  AV outputs and AC inputs are found on the sides of the unit.

When you press that shutter release button, the camera does its thing and a fraction of a second later several million bytes of data needs a new home. It’s easy to regard that mass of data as simply an image file, but with modern digital photography it’s easy to generate thousands of image files consuming terabytes of storage space. Taking a picture or shooting a video is simple but what you do next requires a bit of thought – otherwise you’ll end up with a mass of randomly stored images and a big headache finding what you need in the future.

Ease of finding the photos you need

Once you’ve built up a sizeable archive of files, finding files you need can be a major problem. Fortunately, photo image files can be keyword tagged with appropriately meaningful words that can help you to find target images quickly and easily. You can use DAM (Digital Asset Management) software to build a robust database of tagged images, although even your computer’s operating system may be able to offer a rudimentary image tagging and searching facility. Storing your images in a logical structure of folders, perhaps arranged by date or subject, can also help, although I wouldn’t recommend this instead of tagging.

Hard disk drives

Hard disks are so named because there used to be a flexible or ‘floppy’ disk alternative. An electromagnetic read/write head ‘flies’ on a cushion of air, a tiny fraction of a millimetre above a magnetic disc (called a platter) that spins at up to 10,000 RPM. In principle the faster the platter spins the faster data can be written to it and read from it. The term ‘disk’ – with a ‘k’ – is historic and comes from the term ‘diskette’ or a small disc.

The most common hard drive spin speeds are 5400 and 7200RPM. Other performance factors include the drive’s cache memory and controller circuitry. Some 5400RPM drives can perform as well as, or even better than, some 7200RPM drives. Computer magazines regularly test batches of drives from different manufacturers and these tests can be a good guide to ultimate performance as well as value for money.

You may notice the term ‘green’ being used in the model name or description for a hard drive. This means that the drive has been designed to use less power and to operate at a lower temperature than the manufacturer’s standard drives. There may be a small penalty in performance, but not always. Sometimes ‘green’ drives are audibly quieter, too.

Hard disk drives are available in many capacities and several standard form factor sizes. Laptops generally use 2.inch drives, while desktop PCs traditionally use 3.inch drives (although some compact models use the smaller 2.inch drives). There are also super-small 1.inch drives sometimes used in netbooks. Until a few years ago one-inch drives incorporated into units the same size as a compact flash cards, called Microdrives, were in common use; solid state flash memory cards have now rendered Microdrives obsolete, but larger hard drives continue to improve steadily in performance and overall capacity.

The capacity of a hard drive depends on the density at which data can be written to the drive’s platter and how many platters are contained. In 3.inch sizes capacities commonly available are 500GB, or and terabytes (TB), respectively. A terabyte is a thousand gigabytes, or a million megabytes. 4TB 3.inch drives are now available and we may see even higher capacity drives in the near future.

2TB 2.inch drives are already available, although 250, 500 and 750GB 2.inch drives are the most commonly sold at present. Don’t assume that any 2.inch drive will fit inside your laptop as a replacement, because in order to accommodate extra platters the thickness or height of the drive could be greater than the space available. The most commonly used 2.inch drives are 9.5mm high, but some are as slim as 5mm and others as large as 15mm.

Optical media

As manufacturers of hard disk drives and flash memory devices have pushed the envelope and reduced costs while steadily increasing capacities, the relevance of optical media has waned. Recordable CDs and DVDs are slow and often unreliable, as well as offering only limited capacity. With 3and 64GB memory cards now commonly available, even recordable Blu-Ray discs, which remain stubbornly expensive, are unattractive for photo storage. Optical media does remain a viable option for creating slide shows and, of course, edited video movies.

Firewire

Firewire is a serial bus standard that works like a network and can operate as a chain of interconnected devices. Back when USB was just 1megabits per second Firewire was offering 400 megabit speeds, but Firewire never gained the ubiquity of USB. Later we had Firewire 800 (800 megabits/sec) but its adoption was once again far lower than USB 2.0.

SATA and eSATA

Most basic hard disk drives, or bare drives, and other devices like DVD or Blu-Ray drives, connect to their hosts using SATA (Serial ATA). SATA is a high performance data bus designed to work over relatively short cables, connecting fast storage devices like hard disk drives inside a computer’s case. eSATA is a version of SATA; this enables SATA devices to be connected externally while retaining the same level of performance as internal SATA drives. Using eSATA-connected drive docking stations is a convenient way of using multiple bare hard disk drives.

Backup software

It can’t be stressed enough how important it is to backup your data; it’s so important that backup facilities are now built into computer operating systems. There’s also a burgeoning market for independent vendors of backup software, and the best of these will offer solutions that are easier to use than OS-based offerings. This is an important point because you will tend not to use a system that is difficult to use, no matter how effective it might be. You can backup a complete computer system operating system, applications programs and your data files, or just the data files; it’s your choice.

Social media networks

Billions of photos are shot every day – more than at any time in the history of photography, though the number of prints made from photos is lower now than it has been for many years. Instead of printing photos they are being shown on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others, including photo-centric networks like Flickr, Image Bucket, etc. Simplifying the sharing of photos to your preferred networks can save a lot of time. Look out for photo-sharing options in desktop software and, especially, image apps for smartphones and tablets.

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DVD Identifier to figure this out.

What is firmware? Firmware is the programming instructions contained on a ROM chip within the DVD recorder. This tells the recorder how to respond to commands issued by the computer software. Some firmware is flash-upgradeable, meaning you can upgrade the firmware by running a piece of software on the computer attached to the recorder. Other firmware is coded into a non-rewriteable chip, so the entire chip must be changed in order to upgrade the firmware. Many compatibility issues with different DVD Media can be solved by upgrading your firmware to the latest version.

DVD Identifier. Knowing the MEDIA ID of the media you purchased puts you at an advantage. When you find a good brand of blank dvd media for your burner, you can stick with the same dvd media as long as the MEDIA IDs match.

CD-R or CD-RW

CD-R or CD-RW drives are also called CD writers, CD burners, or CD recorders can read the same formats as CD-ROM drives CD-DA, CD-ROM, and CD-R/RW discs but can also write data to inexpensive CD-R (write-once) and CD-RW (rewritable) discs.

Note: Write speeds are typically slower than read speeds to maintain stability; write processes are highly sensitive to shock and can corrupt the disk beyond repair when forcibly interrupted. While RW drives can write multiple times, writable disks come in one-time write (R) and multiple-time write (RW) variations.

DVD-ROM

RCA DRC6277-Inch Twin Mobile DVD Players

The DRC627twin mobile DVD players by RCA make road trips fun. The seven-inch screens coupled with the headphone jack located on each player – gives you a personal theater experience without disturbing those around you. Choose to watch the same movie on both screens or opt out to enjoy a different movie than what your fellow passenger has picked. Each player features a built-in stereo speaker, a headphone jack, and AV jacks that can be configured as inputs or outputs. The DRC627includes all the accessories you need to setup the players in your car including headrest mounting kits and a special car power adapter that powers both units. Also included are two remote controls, an extra car power adapter and AC power adapters for at-home-use.

 

 

 

 

 

Final Word

First of all thanks for reading my article to the end! I hope you find my reviews listed here useful and that it allows you to make a proper comparison of what is best to fit your needs and budget. Don’t be afraid to try more than one product if your first pick doesn’t do the trick.

Most important, have fun and choose your external blu ray burner wisely! Good luck!

So, TOP3 of external blu ray burner

• №1 — OWC Mercury Pro 16X Blu-ray
• №2 — MthsTec Universal USB 3.0 External Blu-ray Burner/Writer with 3D Blu-ray Disc Playback and ODD HDD Interchangeable Case – Silver
• №3 — ASUS Computer International Direct ASUS BW-16D1X-U Powerful Blu-ray Drive with 16x writing speed and USB 3.0 for both Mac/PC Optical Drive BW-16D1X-U