What CD burner do you guys use?

[Moa94]

Hey guys! New PC Engine Duo-R (white) owner here! I often wrote off this system as some weirdo thing that had no games I'd be interested in, and man was I completely wrong. I'm excited to join you all in loving this system for a long time to come.

I guess I should start with the typical noob question here on the forums, my recently acquired Duo-R refuses to play any burned media for me (using cheaper the green back, silver top Verbatim discs), it can play normal games and normal CDs, but that's it, Burned games? Nope, burned music CD? Also nope, now I got pretty lucky on eBay, and got an incredible deal on this system, it's been modded with both a region switch AND an RGB output mod. Looking inside the system it seems to me all the caps that are normally a problem for these systems have been replaced as well, the board is genuinely spotless. On top of this I know this system CAN play the cheaper green back, silver top Verbatim discs as the seller sent a video of a couple of burned games being played on it. I had asked the seller what burner they were using and unfortunately, they weren't able to help me much as they were using a burner that came with their pre-built PC, so all I know is that it's a Dell tower. They did assure me that they were using 4x burn speed unfortunately, I was a bit overzealous and didn't do ENOUGH research on the burners and found out that was just as important as the media you were using for burning. Currently, I have an LG GP65NB60 external DVD/CD writer unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work, and I am unsure if it's just because the burner just isn't accurate enough for what I need or because it does not allow for 4x burn speed (10x in the minimum). As I understand it, some people have perfectly fine luck with higher burn speeds which has me leaning more toward the former.

On to the question, what burner do you guys use? I'd be very interested to know in particular what burner people use if your PCE Duo can also read the cheaper Verbatim discs. I understand I might just need to try different CD-Rs at this point, and I'm planning to as I've also acquired a PC-FX system as well, and am having the same problems there.

Thanks for your time guys!

[Necromancer]

Like the seller, I also use whatever burner came in my older (i5-4440) Dell desktop.  I feed it Taiyo Yuden / JVC discs, and my RX and FX seem perfectly happy with them.  My Turbo Duo, however, doesn't like any burned discs that I've tried, and I've long since given up on trying to make it work.

I don't try to force it to burn at slower speeds, just at the slowest for which the discs are rated (16x).

[Keith Courage]

I've learned from years of working on DUOs that not all DUOs like the same types/Brands of discs.

I've worked on many that only work with the cheaper typical light green bottom Verbatim CDRs, but I've also worked on just as many that only work good with slightly Higher quality CDrs like Verbatim Datalife plus discs. 94755 to be exact as they use darker (bluish) Azo Dye. There have also been many situations where changing out the lens or making lens adjustments makes no difference as to what kinds of CDRs work good but in some cases it does help.

I have also found that the model of CDRW/DVDRW drive plays a big part depending on what kind of CDR media you are using as to how good the quality of the burn turns out. Meaning, say I have a DUO that only works good with cheaper Verbatim CDrs. I could burn the same type of disc in two different CDRW drives only to have one burn that barely works and the other works perfect. But then the opposite could exist for the AZO dye discs. Meaning the CDRW drive that made the junk burn for the cheaper CDR discs, ends up working better for the AZO dye discs. So it's really a lot of trial an error.

Don't go out of your way to find an older drive that burns slower. If the slowest your drive will go is 12X, well then that can be good enough as long as the CDRW drive is good quality. I typically use older drives only because I have a bunch of used ones laying around from Old PCs I have recycled for customers over the years. I usually burn at 8X speed with them.

So don't look for a specific CD burner. Just get one and give it a try.


You might want to try a different CD burning software. What are you using? Image burn? I find that depending on the CDRW/DVDRW I am using, I will sometimes have to use Nero or Alchohol 120% but sometimes Image burn is fine for other drives.

Also, make sure you are burning your discs using the .cue file and not the .iso or .bin itself. cue is the file to select to burn the disc.

[Moa94]

Thanks to the reply from both of you, I had looked around the forums before posting, which is how I concluded that a better quality burner might be the issue rather than the speed or the media (though the PC-FX might be more picky, we shall see).

I've learned from years of working on DUOs that not all DUOs like the same types/Brands of discs.

I've worked on many that only work with the cheaper typical light green bottom Verbatim CDRs, but I've also worked on just as many that only work good with slightly Higher quality CDrs like Verbatim Datalife plus discs. 94755 to be exact as they use darker (bluish) Azo Dye. There have also been many situations where changing out the lens or making lens adjustments makes no difference as to what kinds of CDRs work good but in some cases it does help.

I have also found that the model of CDRW/DVDRW drive plays a big part depending on what kind of CDR media you are using as to how good the quality of the burn turns out. Meaning, say I have a DUO that only works good with cheaper Verbatim CDrs. I could burn the same type of disc in two different CDRW drives only to have one burn that barely works and the other works perfect. But then the opposite could exist for the AZO dye discs. Meaning the CDRW drive that made the junk burn for the cheaper CDR discs, ends up working better for the AZO dye discs. So it's really a lot of trial an error.

Don't go out of your way to find an older drive that burns slower. If the slowest your drive will go is 12X, well then that can be good enough as long as the CDRW drive is good quality. I typically use older drives only because I have a bunch of used ones laying around from Old PCs I have recycled for customers over the years. I usually burn at 8X speed with them.

So don't look for a specific CD burner. Just get one and give it a try.


You might want to try a different CD burning software. What are you using? Image burn? I find that depending on the CDRW/DVDRW I am using, I will sometimes have to use Nero or Alchohol 120% but sometimes Image burn is fine for other drives.

Also, make sure you are burning your discs using the .cue file and not the .iso or .bin itself. >cue if the file to select to burn the disc.

Got it, since I already knew that green bottom Verbatims worked I thought maybe I could get something more consistent if I grabbed someone else's, but honestly you've made a great point. A quality burner, any of them SHOULD be my best bet no matter which media I use. As for the burning program, I started with Imgburn since that seemed to be the most popular one people were suggesting but every disc I tried gave the "Please set disc!" error when I tried to run it, I then moved to CloneCD, which seemed to give better results, either giving me a "Load error!" message or just loading indefinitely. My best results were at 10x and 24x speed so I'm very positive that the speed of the burn didn't have much to do with it.

[xelement5x]

I'll also say I have had a lot more success using 650MB discs instead of the 700Mb discs.