Audio questions..would appreciate your aid please.

[013]

Have some commercial cd's want to make copies of and also want to copy tracks to hdd for storage.

Would appreciate help and advice to the following.

1. What is the best media (CD) for backing up and best compatibility, and are CD audio's required?(I just got 300 taiyo yuden's from Rima...will these be fine?)

2. I have a toshiba dvd/cd ROM and a pioneer A09 dvd/cd burner. What is the best ROM drive to read from and the best burner or does it matter? Am I ok with what I have?

Now for the ripping of the singles to hdd.

1. Same hardware question, is the A09 fine for this?

2. I understand that mp3 is compressed and wav is not compressed, that wav is lossless or almost lossless. I don't care about size of file, when I copy the singles to the hard drive I want the best copy of each single with NO loss of quality or anything. Is wav the way to go for that or is there a better one?

3. Is wav ok now for HiFi? if not what?

4. Copying the singles like this to hdd is there any loss in things such as channels, dolby or any of that stuff?

I just want to make the best copies and singles I can as I am going to sell my collection of originals, and want dependable backups.

5. Is there any way other than listening to the cd all the way thru to determine if it is a perfect copy or not?

6. Same thing in 5, for the singles copied to the hdd, any way to make sure they are perfect copies?

BTW I am using SOnic Recordnow deluxe to do the burning and ripping. Is this ok software or is there a better one?


thanks for all the help.,..t

[redwudz]

1A. Don't know. TY is good for DVDs. Should be fine for CDs.
2A. Yes. Use the Toshiba.

1B. Use the Toshiba.
2B. WAV.
3B. Yes.
4B. No.

You can use a program like CloneCD and make an exact copy of a CD fairly easy.

JMO.

[guns1inger]

I don't know if so called Audio CDs are necessarily that different to standard CDR blanks (happy for someone to explain if they are, what the difference is - apart from the extra cost), but I do know that in a number of cases these will play in players that won't play back standard CDR blanks. These are discs from the same manufacturer.

[olyteddy]

IIRC 'Audio' CDs are tagged in the media descriptor as such. This was done so they could charge more for them and collect royalties from stand alone CD recorders.

[RyanTP]

Yeah, "Audio CD's" such as the ones that are distributed professionally are taged as such because of their format being a Red Book CD. I believe that the ISBN codes have to do with CD information and copy proection...these codes also tell where and when the disc whas printed to metal mother at the duplication house.

I have done some high-end blank CD comparison at the studio with a Digidesign employee and mastering engineer...very pick dude...we basically deturmined that the foreign...i.e. Japaneese brands of CD-R's happen to be the best...not to bash any company but do NOT use CD-R Blacks....better scratch resistance but noticable effects on the quality...eventhough it is all just binary information...it really seems to make a difference...you may also just use universal CD-R for music CDs. The ones that state 700 Mb 80 Mins are fine.

If you are concerned about accuracy in data transfer and compatibility of the CD-R with most all CD players...remember to burn the CD copy at 1X ONLY. Higher burning speeds tend to make the disc not able to be played back in some older (and newer as i have discovered) CD players...burring errors are also less common at 1X.

Also remember to burn the final master CD (copy or compliation mix or whatever) as "Disc-at-once." This will allow you to basicall author the "Red Book" format (actually Red Book compliance is deturmned by the CD Buning software). If you burn as "Track-At-Once" this will author you a Orange Book (i believe) CD which mastering houses hate and may not be compatable with all CD players...it spitts the remaining data back onto the disc before burning the next track.

Remember a Red Book CD is a constant PCM (Pulse Code Modulated) data stream with PQ bursts (data really) to tell the CD player to go onto the next track

If you rip the CD to a digital audio editing platform such as Wavelab or Nuendo (for example) you will want to use PCM uncompressed stereo interleaved waive files. This will be EXACTLY what is on the original CD.

No...PCM is completely lossless when compared to the CD's original data. Also rip the files at 44.1 KHz and 16 Bits---if your ripping software allows you this option...if not it will be that by default. Then save the file to your hard drive at exactly the same PCM uncompressed stereo inteleaved format at 44.1KHz 16 bits (sameple rate and word length). You may then compile tracks of these spec into a compliation mix and retain the same quality as the originals.

Yes yes...MP3 (MPEG 1 layer 3) is really distructive to audio qualitty...aviod this if your condcern is audio quality. There is no such thing as a HiFi CD really....there is CD24 i believe that is not a Red Book CD but for your purposes just stick with what i have told you.

When burning...the drive is not as important as long as it is a good CD-R/CD-RW drive...i recommend a DVD-R/DVD-RW drive...i find the laser to be better and burn better grooves.

If you use Wavelab for example it does give you the option to valirfy the data after being burned to a medium such as a CD. This will take care of your concerns of a "perfect copy"

No need to rip the CD files at anything higher than 44.1KHz 16 bit...you will only be waisting hard drive space and then must import them to audio editor and dither back down to burn to CD. When working with 5.1 i use sample rates and bit depths much higher than CD but this is pointless for your purposes.

You may also want to check out Sonic Foundry (Sony) CD Architect...i bit easier to use than Wavelab and will also allow your to burn Red Book CD's

Let me know if you have other questions.

[Disco Makberto]

Re: CD-DA vs. CDR

Aside from dye color and some differences in reflexion (or refaction), there are some CD players, I mean, there were some CD players that specifically stated that they were not intended for CDR's. One of them was from the Kenwood brand, I think. Anyway, these players had problems with CDR's and playback was accompanied with errors, particularly when playing a CDR right after playing a CD-DA.

Carl-Bert "DiscoMak"