Replicated discs (often referred to as pressed discs) are created by melting down the plastics and physically pressing your data into the surface of the disc.  Duplicated discs (often referred to as burned discs) encode your data onto the disc using a laser to burn microscopic holes into the dye layer of a recordable CDR or DVDR, just like your CD/DVD burner in your computer. Replicated discs are the standard for major commercial releases and a requirement for any commercial retailer selling CDs or DVDs. Replicated discs are all and all a better product, they only suffer from 2 drawbacks:  1. Replicated discs have a higher setup costs, because of this we only start replication on orders of 250+.  2. The process for replicated discs takes longer. Duplicated discs have lots of advantages, too. They don't carry the high setup costs, which makes them a great solution for short runs of 1-249 discs. They also offer really fast turn around times. We've produced orders of up to 30,000 CDs in 24 hours by duplicating them.