without going into which one is better or not.. i have "real" cd's which have turned yellowish and play like shit/don't play at all, i have cdr's which don't play, i have some tapes that sound like shit nowadays.... but i also have most of them still workin, so for myself all is good as long as it works.. if there are doubts about a CDR crippling up, then theres always the option to rip the audio to computer