K3b won't burn at full speed
 

I have a 32x burner, and when I burn cd's the buffer is almost empty the whole time, and it burns at about 8x. I am running Slackware 10.2 with kernel 2.4.31.
Thanks, Noaah

Try to run cdrecord with root privilege (set it suid root).

have you checked the burn rate? i mean when you first run k3b it ask you to verify the burn rate of the burner what does this say?

Okay, I have an Athlon 1.3ghz with 512 megs of ram, and a 52x32x52x cdrw. Yes, I did set k3b for a 52x burner. It will burn a data cd at full speed, but will only burn an audio cd at 8-12x.

When I logged in as root, ot didn't run any faster.

I upgraded to kernel 2.6.13, and now it burns with the buffer full the whole time, but it still won't go over 32x. I have a 52x drive and 52x cds.

I have a LG-burner which supports up to 42x. BUT at greater than 24x with PCAV-technique (partial CAV) -- whatever that means. In consequence I can use it only with 16x ... :mad:

Anything like this in your machine?

<Edit> Found it: "Devices that always spin at the same rate are called CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) drives. Devices that maintain a fixed linear velocity are called CLV (Constant Linear Velocity) drives. Devices that switch from CAV to CLV when the maximum speed is reached are called PCAV (Partial Constant Angular Velocity) drives." From http://rus-linux.net/MyLDP/FAQ/cd-re...faq.html#S5-22

So this should not be the cause...

Have you tried using a different brand of CD-RW media? I know that you said you are using 52x media but what brand? That could make all the difference in performance. I know that when I use my Sony 20x CD/DVD burner with Sony CD-RW media it runs at full speed with K3b. On the other hand when I use cheap disks the performance falls off to 4x.

You have to consider that even a 52x writer and/or media will burn faster than 32x only at the end of the media. That is maybe around the very end, some software don't display the actual speed while it is writing so you have to consider that probably around 500mb it could go faster than 32x but not before.