Life/degradation of CDR's made around 97/98.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I was always under the impression that CDR's would have a pretty long shelf-life in terms of not degrading / corrupting over the years ...

... but some (actually, pretty much ALL of my) PS1 CDR copies made at single speed about 10 years ago, still load and play but appear to have corruption in the audio data. (Major audio stuttering during gameplay).

This isn't in games that have separate audio tracks, so I'm guessing that in general, those discs have begun to degrade.

Is 10 years about normal for the life-span of a CDR, or, for middle-grade CDR's manufactured during that era?

Should I expect this sort of "half-life" on my DVD+R movie/game copies as well?

[evildragon]

As with any thing that is INK, ink fades with time. This includes recordable optical media.

[VACRMH]

Sure it isn't the Playstation? Wasn't that a common problem with the system?

[InsaneDavid]

You have to also remember that there were an awful lot of cheap, garbage burners back in the day (not saying that there aren't still), same with media. Stuff written on my old HP burner simply didn't hold up while the discs burned in a Lite-On drive have worked reliably since mastering.

[Willem]

wikepedia article on thesubject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-R#Optimal_storage_conditions_and_expected_lifespan )

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

It's definitely not the PS1, as I can run them on my modded PS1's (I have two) a PS-ONE with a boot disc, and a modded PS2 all with the same exact result. (And real PS1 discs run stutter-free).

I'm fairly certain that it's a combination of the lacking quality of the burner I was using back then AND the potential for the dye-based CDR's to have degraded.

In the future, would any of you recommend the "archive quality" CDR media that I've seen at my local computer shops, or are those negligible if you've got a good quality burner (which I would venture to guess I do in comparison to the 1st generation CD burner I had 10 years back.)?