Klone 80 min 52X CDR Review

I've been a "tape trader" for almost 9 years now.  What does that mean exactly?  It means I trade live and "bootleg" recordings of some of my favorite bands.  Granted, I haven't exactly been what one would call an "active" trader lately, but hey, what can you do?

In the quest for quality, I used a lot of different brands of CDRs.  Some were great (Kodak), some were good (TDK), and some were not so good (Memorex, Sony, Maxell).  But the ones I remain most impressed with are Klones.

Made in Japan and available at www.americandigital.com, Klones consistently give me the least amount of problems in creating copies of discs.  This goes both for my old external 4X burner (back in the stone age), as well as for the new burner that came with my Dell computer.  It also seems to work well with a variety of different softwares, from Exact Audio Copy to CDRWin, Nero to Soundforge.  With Klones, I get the least amount of pops and clicks (I'd say 99% of successful burns have none), and very rarely does a disc fail (perhaps 0.5% of the time tops).

While Klones are not as easy to find, they are priced competitively and can be bought in bulk (up to 600 in one shot).  Sure, they're a bit more expensive than the 50 pack of Imations, but if you're using them for what I'm using them for, it's well worth the extra couple of bucks (besides, I can chalk it up to the cost of my hobby).

While Klones may not be worth the extra cash to someone using them as data discs, for audiophiles who burn a lot of CDs, like myself, they're worth their weight in gold.  You create a perfect "klone" almost every time.