espn said:
Mitsubishi :thumbsup:
Heard about this Taiyo Yuiden dye from HWZ clinic, supposedly to be very good, perhaps you can check it out.
Basically, there are 3 main type of dye used in the manufacture of CD. The most common type which is used by majority of CD manufacturers is Cyanine, patented by Taiyo Yuiden, which is not a stable dye on its own and needs to add other chemical to stablise it. Phytalocyanine, patented by Mitsui Chemical, is the most stable dye and is used in high end CD espcially those expensive Kodak Gold and Mitsui CDs. The other - Azo (patented by Mitsubishi) is better than Cyanine but slightly less stable than Phtalocyanine.
Those made by Kodak, Taiyo Yuden, Ricoh, TDK and Mitsubishi factories, even though using only Cyanine dye, are quite reliable. One factory can manufacture CDs for many companies for eg. Kodak, besides making their own CDs, also make for Philips, BASF and Traxdata. Taiyo Yuiden made various brands like Imation, Philip Silver, Sony, etc. Conversely, one brand of CD can be manufactured by various factories and as a result some CDs by one factory are better than those made by another factory. Philips Gold, made by Taiyo Yuiden, is rated a good disk compared to Philip IQ Silver, made by a Taiwanese company Ritek, which has been tested to be of bad quality. Ritek, a Taiwanese company, is well known for making low quality no brand or unknown brand CDs which have been independently tested to be bad. They also make for well known brands like Sony, Samsung, TKD, Onkyo, Philips, BASF, Memorex, etc.
Generally, brands like Imation, TDK, Sony, Ricoh, 3M, Pioneer and Philips can be trusted. However, it's difficult to ascertain exactly which are the good brands, the type of dye used and which factory made it as the CDs you buy have no indication on it. The only way to find out is thru ' a software called the CD Identifier which is able to read the the country of manufacture, type of dye used, etc. on the CD. The only brands that indicate the dye used is Mitsubishi and Verbatim. They indicate "Super AZO", a better dye than Cyanine, on their label.
As a rule of thumb, the more expensive CDs are obviously better quality. As most cheap CDs are using cyanine, I avoid them. Since those Kodak Gold and Mitsui (I think no longer available in Singapore) are quite expensive, I stick to Mitsubishi and Verbatim which use the AZO dye which is very reliable.