There are a number of CD-Rs doing the rounds in trading circuits which feature 2 second gaps in between tracks. Whilst this feature, a part of the 'Disc At Once' function of some burning software, is great for studio albums it's absolute pants for live recordings - the whole idea of a live recording is that you get the ambience of the crowd and so on.

This guide advises you how to ensure you create a perfect live recording CD. For illustrative purposes the most popular writing software is focussed on, Nero, although the principals are pretty similar for all types, both in Mac (eg Toast) or Windows PCs.

The guide assumes you have the files to burn ripped to your hard drive - we'll look at ripping CDs in another tutorial at a later date.

Step 1 - Defining your CD

Fire up your software and select Audio CD. Even though you may be using .WAV files to create your CD, most software will convert this to the proprietory file format used to make an Audio CD, called .CDA. Don't ever be tempted to create a Data CD with .WAV files as this simply will not play in home/portable CD or DVD players.



Step 2 - Selecting your tracks

Most burning software works on the basis of having two windows - one is the source (ie the stuff located on your hard drive which you want to burn onto your shiny new CD), the other is the target (ie a list of the stuff you're about to burn onto your CD). Each window is often sub-divided into two panes to make browsing easier.

You'll need to browse to whichever folder you have stashed your music files in, usually clicking on the left of the two panes in your 'source' window to open up the folders. It's always a very good idea to number your tracks in the order they appear on the original live recording. Here I have browsed to a folder of live Fall tracks, numbered 01-16 before the titles of the songs, which was the order in which they were played. Right click with your mouse and look at the options which appear :



In the above picture I have clicked on 'select all'. Now this happens :



All are highlighted. By right-clicking again I can now select 'Copy to compilation'. Another way to do this is to physically drag and drop each file from the source window to the target window - most software will have a shortcut - I've shown you Nero's :)

Step 3 - preparing the files for burning



As if by magic all have shifted over to the 'target' window (on the left in Nero). Note how the original numbering sequence has been preserved, so the files have been transferred over correctly. Note also how all tracks show a pause of 02 seconds (00.02:00). We do not want this - so how do we get rid of it ?

Right click with your mouse on any one of the tracks and Select All...



Then select Properties



Note the pause reading is '2' seconds :



We want to change this to '0' seconds - type this in over the 2 :



Click on OK after changing it.

And note that the pause is now showing as 00 seconds (00.00:00) for all tracks.



Now whilst this may seem ideal, if we were to attempt to burn this disc we'd get an error message. Why ? Because the CD standard states there must be a 'lead in' gap ahead of the first track - 02 seconds is sufficient.

So, right click on the first track (here it's Youwanner) and click on Properties :



Note the pause setting is 0 seconds :



Change it to 2 seconds :



and click on OK

Step 4 - burning the CD

Click on the burn icon in your software and ensure the following settings apply :



The most important settings are finalise (yes you want this) and Disc At Once (yes you want this not Track At Once)

The maximum writing speed will depend upon your writer - older DVD writers (like mine) often only write at half speed to CD-Rs, although most stand alone CD burners and newer DVD writers can write up to 52 speed.

A lot depends upon the quality of your blank CD media, the speed of your PC, and whether your writer uses BURNproof or Smartburn technology (most of them do) to prevent misburns.

Only you will know the limitations of your PC. For the record, I use an old PC for my burning - it has a 600MHz Celeron processor (positively clockwork), but the CD burner writes on Datawrite media at 52 speed without any bother : I've burned literally hundreds of discs and only created one coaster in all that time.

A 52 speed CD burner should take about 2-3 minutes to burn an 80 minute CD-R.

And that's it. My next tutorial will be about copying CDs using Nero :)

On the bit where it moans about having to have a two second lead-in for track 1, you can just click OK and it will do it for you.

Ah but some of us are perfectionists who want no error messages - ever....

I admire a man with high standards

Never mind that, do you admire me ? :P

Just because I haven't answered doesn't mean I don't love you any more.

shit, i wish i'd seen this before i sent my package to you this morning clayts!! :wacko:

ive done cdrs in wav format!!! sorry oops, anyhoo im sure you'll recopy/reformat/product your own and i'll take note for next time!!

This is cos some people need more than a bloomin' diagram drawn fer em mate...

.. but then we are fall Fans i 'spose, and hey i can't even post images. How bout a tutorial on that :D

V clever postin pics of the actual screen shots, well smart & dinky... :)

Hooray, it's good to see I'm doing it something like right. Thanks for this Clayts.

However, I have a question you may be able to help with.

My PC/Nero is probably about the same as yours, I'm sure there's a small rodent in there in a wheel. Anyway, a couple of times I've downloaded songs, for example the live stuff from the multimedia section of the website, and they've got to my hard drive ok (at least I can find them in explorer etc), but when I try to burn them Nero locks up after 2 or 3 seconds. Any ideas?

Right. So is it only me that just uses the normal Windows Media Player to burn CD's then? :huh:

- you used to be able to get a plug-in for that and it got rid of the 2 sec gaps - I had it for a while but it stopped working after a media player update -

So is there any free software I can use to eliminate this two second gap problem?

Feurio is shareware - a great program.

http://www.feurio.com/English/index.shtml

If you use Windows Media Player 9 - I don't think it works in 10 -you can install a free Nero Plug-in, where you have the options of cutting out the gaps. It does the trick for me.

Heres the instructions:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/s...eptember16.mspx

Top stuff, cheers HTL :applaud:

No more gaps in my future trades now :)

Clayts, hoping to try this tonight - expect further frustrated postings :lol:

YES YES YES - I knew it would be easy :whistle:

4 CDs burnt so far - taking longer than expected, 20-mins for a 60-min concert, speed only 4.

But I'm happy, that my downloads will now be safe from computer crashes :lol:

Cheers Clayts :beer: :beer:

4x
That's one slow CD burner. Sure you've set it to the maximum burning speed ? A 52x writer should take no more than 2 mins 30 secs to write a 60-80 minute disc

Tried setting it higher, and it sends an error message and automatically resets it to 4.

I have my computer hardware expert coming round shortly to sort my excel out - it seems to have deleted itself ???:banghead: I'll ask him about it.

But think positive - much progress here. I don't expect to be doing the amount of burning you do, so initiatially speed is not too much of a problem.
:mellow:

Sorted, it was the discs I was using, bought some more yesterday and I'm getting either 12x or 16x.
So it is 5-mins or less to record. :applaud:

It's easy this computer stuff :whistle:

That's still quite slow - maybe worth investing in a dual layer DVD burner that can write to CDs at 48x - you can bag one for around £26 these days :)

At the moment 5-mins is ok for me.
When I stop work and start commercially producing the stuff and flogging it on e-bay, I may invest.
I'll also need a decent printer for the covers...

Anyway that's enough of my business plan for now :lol:

A couple of unrelated questions from a novice at this game....

1) Is it possible to convert mp3 format into something that you can burn onto a CD that will play in your CD player?

2) I have noticed that some of the CDs I have burnt will not play on some CD players. These tend to be older CD players, but is this a common trait? When you put them in these players the player does not recognise it.

1) (Audiophiles look away now) Select Audio CD in Nero, drag and drop MP3 tracks from right window to burning window. Nero does the conversion for you. Most CD players in this day and age can handle CD-R media.

(2) Correct, older CD separates and portables could not play CD-Rs. Most modern ones can :)

I thank you, pleased about both answers. :applaud:
1) I can convert some mp3 only stuff
2) It's not me being a plonker!! :lol:

regarding that vexed 2-second gap:
I always get rid of it in Nero by switching at some point (i can't show you this in pictures, sorry) to Nero Express interface, there's always this option called "Remove gaps between songs" - then I re-switch to the regular Nero interface. all in just 3 clicks. and the necessary initial gap stays there.

A silly question:

does a high-speed burning (say, x24 or higher) cause a loss in quality?

It does when I do it; not worse sound quality as such, but it might skip, leave gaps, or some songs won't play etc. (most often track 7 for some reason?!) I suppose it wouldn't on a better PC. 10x is pretty much what this one can bear.

Thanks Basmikel! :beer:

No, i haven't noticed any skips, glitches or gaps. The thing that bugs me is, since i have installed (and then uninstalled) Nero, i cannot burn CDs at less than 24x speed, even with other CDburners i used before. :confused: :huh:

.ape VS .flac WHICH ONE IS MORE LOSSLESS?

No difference.

Quick and concise. Thank you, Del. :)