What's the best CD brand?

I use Verbatim Super AZO Crystal CDs. I find them hugely reliable. You could additionally look at their Extra Protection series. Then there's their "live It" range which is supposed to be able to take quite the beating and scratches. Which is better I have no idea.

taiyo yuden makes highly regarded CD's. I use these for audio.

On the high end, Apogee makes silver and gold archival grade CD's. Couple bucks each. I've used these a couple times for final masters.

These are some of what the audio pros seem to go for..

3ghz MacPro Mac OS X (10.4.8) 2g ram, 1900xt, digi002

IMHO, Mitsui CDs are by far the best and most reliable. I've never had a coaster with Mitsui, and every Mitsui CD that I've ever burned, going back many years, still plays perfectly.

Stay away from Memorex.

best ones (excluding gold CD's) are taiyo yuden. hands down. theres a couple of reviews i read that agree with me too. best ones overall are gold CD's but they are very expensive. (like 10 times as expensive as taiyo's)

Brands are a poor indicator of quality, since major brands shift their supplier frequently. You need to check the media code of a disc to see who actually makes it. Toast, for example, can show you this information. The brands mentioned above are among the better manufacturers, but they may also supply discs of equal quality to "brand" name resellers. But to be certain, buy their own branded discs, Taiyo Yuden for example. On line stores, such as supermediastore.com have "brands" you wont see at best Buy or CompUSA.

check out this FAQ

http://supermediastore.com/dvdmediafaq.html

Talks about DVD media but the same general technology, in a way, applies to CDR's. Info that is good to know anyway.

Stay away from Verbatim CD-R's. I have had nothing but problems trying to burn Verbatim CD-R's with the Pioneer DVR-111D burner on the Mac Pro.

Rob