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In 2018, I overburn-tested a cheap no-name-brand CD-RW.

Overburning means attempting to burn beyond the disc's apparent maximum capacity at the risk of overshooting the actual limit.

When playing back that audio CD-RW using a very old CD player, towards the outermost edge, the disc rotation which is very slow starts speeding up more and more until it spins faster than at the beginning of the disc.
The audio fades into noise and then the CD player fails finding the track.

I am not sure whether this is the case with all CD-RW's or other disc types such as CD-R's.

Side note: Some older optical drives might have problems burning unknown brands of optical discs such as burning a CD-RW with the wrong laser strength making it appear blank.

In 2018, I overburn-tested a cheap no-name-brand CD-RW. Overburning means attempting to burn beyond the disc's apparent maximum capacity at the risk of overshooting the actual limit. When playing back that audio CD-RW using a very old CD player, towards the outermost edge, the disc rotation which is very slow starts speeding up more and more until it spins faster than at the beginning of the disc. The audio fades into noise and then the CD player fails finding the track. I am not sure whether this is the case with all CD-RW's or other disc types such as CD-R's. Side note: Some older optical drives might have problems burning unknown brands of optical discs such as burning a CD-RW with the wrong laser strength making it appear blank.

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[–] • 1 pt

AudioCD format has no appropriate error correction mechanism, so it's more difficult to recover when an error is met.

With overburning, you leave the safe territory of the CD surface at the risk of more errors, so when these are encountered (which can't be avoided) the drive tries to work harder to read the audio data.

[–] • 1 pt

So I am not the only one familiar with these things.

I am sure you know what C1 and C2 errors are.

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

Yes.

I remember when some people had the idea that you could write data in AudioCD format so that you could gain in capacity, without thinking that they sacrifice the necessary volume originally reserved for data integrity.

[–] • 1 pt

You might be interested in this (en.everybodywiki.com).

I created it but anyone can edit that page.

[–] • 0 pt
[–] • 1 pt

That's indeed interesting. Lately I have been thinking about BR media and whether I should trust them, as people use optical media less and less these days and I have a fear that BR hasn't been tested broadly enough yet.

[–] • 1 pt

as people use optical media less and less these days

Because they don't know the benefits.

There are a few additional issues such as:

  • Proprietary optical drive firmwares
  • Some optical drives do not allow error scanning (e.g. HL-DT-ST. TSSTcorp sadly quit in 2016.)
  • HD-DVD with the more physically robust centered data layer, instead of co-existing like DVD+ and DVD-, never made it.
  • DVD+RW DL that could have been read-only supported by existing optical drives, only made it to prototype.