CD Burning

[Michel]

Calling all Audiophiles!

I want to "back up" my collection onto CDR's, for use in the car, etc, so my originals dont get scratched and so on.

What is the best possible way I can do this? I have a "seperate" hifi for recording, but the discs are pricey and you can't even get the excellent Taiyo Yuden discs in "audio", in the UK.

I am therefore looking at a CD Burner for use with a computer, but want to know how to go about it properly in the best sound.

Is anyone experienced in doing this and can help?

Much appreciated,

Michel

[orbital]

The way I do it, if you have one CD burner and no seperate CD player on your computer, is to convert the CD into an APE and cue file on your computer, and then burn those files on to a blank disc. It will be lossless. There are many programs that do that, I use Jet Audio.

Or if this is too much hassle, you may rip the CD's as wav files which will again be lossless, and burn them from there. That way you will have an another digitial lossless copy on your harddrive. Of course there is not a hard drive big enough to hold a fairly large classical music collection in that format 

[Michel]

The way I do it, if you have one CD burner and no seperate CD player on your computer, is to convert the CD into an APE and cue file on your computer, and then burn those files on to a blank disc. It will be lossless. There are many programs that do that, I use Jet Audio.

Or if this is too much hassle, you may rip the CD's as wav files which will again be lossless, and burn them from there. That way you will have an another digitial lossless copy on your harddrive. Of course there is not a hard drive big enough to hold a fairly large classical music collection in that format 

This might be useful, as I would also like to electronically catalogue my collection. Do you know of any good discussion forums/websites that contain all this useful kind of info?

Thanks Orbital

[SimonGodders]

Try here Michel:
http://www.avforums.com/forums/index.php

[PerfectWagnerite]

I just use SonicRecord. You put an original in, it reads it and then asks you for a CDR. You stick the CDR in and in a minute you are done. Lostless, no compression, no hassel, even keeps the 5-10 second buffer between tracks as in the original recording if there are any.

[head-case]

If you have a CD burner in your computer the software that came with it can probably perform the function (mine came with a pared down version of Roxio Creator).  If you don't have one built in, the easiest solution is probably an external CD/DVD burner that connects to a USB port and which will more than likely come with some simple authoring software that can manage dupication of an audio CD, as well as routine data archiving functions.  The nice thing about the external devices is that they don't require irritating physical installation and can be used more than one computer with no difficulty.

[david johnson]

is this anything like those old-time recording burnings, or maybe book burnings?

dj

[Michel]

I am not convinced this is the best way, though, is it? The has to be superior quality doing it another way, or with a particularly good recorder.

There seems to be no forum dedicted to it; even avforums doesn't

[Gurn Blanston]

I am not convinced this is the best way, though, is it? The has to be superior quality doing it another way, or with a particularly good recorder.

There seems to be no forum dedicted to it; even avforums doesn't

Michel,
I have burned several hundreds of CDR's using the method described by Perfect Wagnerite and Head case. It has worked perfectly every time, without fail, as long as the source disk is in good shape.

It is simple, you are talking about 0's and 1's here, not like taping a record. All you do is take the 0's and 1's from one source and put them back on another target. There is nothing you can do to improve the quality at this point, with the sole exception of using high quality media and in some cases slowing things down a bit to minimize errors, depending on your burner.

If your software has an applet called "Make an exact copy", which is what B's Gold uses, or "Disk Copier", which is what Roxio uses, that is as good as you can get.

Orbital's plan works fine, but it includes a lot of unnecessary steps that do NOT add to the quality. However, if you are going to save a lossless copy on your hard drive, then do it his way, it can't be bettered, AFAIK.

[DavidW]

It's time to adjust to the times-- the reason for using a compressed lossless format was because of the cost of blank media.  It was the best way to do it for along time, certainly.  But now blank media is so cheap that I say it's time to reconsider simply doing a 1:1 copy-- bin+cue, iso, wav+cue etc.  The reason is that the monetary cost of extra cd-rs or dvd-rs is not the most important issue anymore.  The time spent on backups now becomes a priority.  Converting to ape (boo proprietary format!) or flac (smiles it's free as in freedom!) doesn't take that long compared to a lossy compression, but it does add up... it's significantly faster to back something up if you don't have to compress it at all.

[Larry Rinkel]

I don't back up my collection to CDRs at all; if I want to play a CD in the car I bring the CD with me. Seven years of doing this with my 2000 Toyota Camry have resulted in damage to precisely no CDs. With a CD collection numbering about 2500 by now, I have neither time nor space to make copies of everything. Occasionally I will burn a compilation disc, and I will burn CDRs of LPs I have converted to digital format and then de-clicked. (To convert LPs, I have a JVC CD-recorder hooked to the stereo that I use to make a preliminary CD-RW. I then march that CD to the computer room and rip tracks to my hard drive for editing.)

My computer has two CD/DVD drives, one read/write and one read-only. This setup is easy, as you can just stick a source CD in the read-only drive and a blank disc in the read/write. I use Nero Express to burn exact copies of a CD (or for that matter, a DVD), and Adobe Audition to rip tracks from a CD which I save as .WAVs and then edit/declick. When I'm ready to burn the CD, I open Nero Express, select the .WAVs I want and put them in the right sequence, and then I use Nero to burn the CD.

[orbital]

It's time to adjust to the times-- the reason for using a compressed lossless format was because of the cost of blank media.  It was the best way to do it for along time, certainly.  But now blank media is so cheap that I say it's time to reconsider simply doing a 1:1 copy-- bin+cue, iso, wav+cue etc.  The reason is that the monetary cost of extra cd-rs or dvd-rs is not the most important issue anymore.  The time spent on backups now becomes a priority.  Converting to ape (boo proprietary format!) or flac (smiles it's free as in freedom!) doesn't take that long compared to a lossy compression, but it does add up... it's significantly faster to back something up if you don't have to compress it at all.

The falling cost applies to hard drives as well. You can get a 250 GB external drive for around $80.00 these days. THat should approximately be good for around 400 CD's (650MB's per CD) at about 20cents for each CD backed up on hard drive. If you have a large collection it might be a problem of course.

So, then even in WAV format you may be able to backup 400 CD's at about 20cents a piece. If I am going to do a backup I'd rather keep them in a harddisk then CD-R's which are prone to  faster decay, plus organizing them is much more easier. If you have a nice digital connection to your stereo system (and a decent soundcard) your life becomes much easier 

[PerfectWagnerite]

I don't back up my collection to CDRs at all; if I want to play a CD in the car I bring the CD with me. Seven years of doing this with my 2000 Toyota Camry have resulted in damage to precisely no CDs.

I did the same, although the CD player in my 1999 Toyota Camry conked out after a few years, right after the bumper to bumper warranty ran out (of course) and I didn't feel like paying for a new one. So I listen to CDs with a pair of headphones and a portable CD player in my car (some say it's illegal but I don't care).

Anyway, I don't back up my CDs either, none of them are particularly rare and if I lose a few here and there so what. The pieces I love I probably have a number of recordings anyway so losing one here and there is no big deal.

[Larry Rinkel]

(some say it's illegal but I don't care).

It's not a matter of "some saying." In New York - where we both live - this practice is illegal. A headset in NY can only be legally used with one earpiece. Of course if you don't care I don't care either, but if you get a ticket you might care (that is if the cops aren't too busy ticketing everyone illegally using a cell phone while driving).

[PerfectWagnerite]

It's not a matter of "some saying." In New York - where we both live - this practice is illegal. A headset in NY can only be legally used with one earpiece. Of course if you don't care I don't care either, but if you get a ticket you might care (that is if the cops aren't too busy ticketing everyone illegally using a cell phone while driving).

EXACTLY ! You got bozos yapping it up, women putting on makeup, and truckers eating donuts and drinking coffee and somehow that's legal. I guess my headphones are bud-style so from afar it looks like a cellphone earpiece so cops don't give me a hard time.

[Choo Choo]

The falling cost applies to hard drives as well. You can get a 250 GB external drive for around $80.00 these days. THat should approximately be good for around 400 CD's (650MB's per CD) at about 20cents for each CD backed up on hard drive. If you have a large collection it might be a problem of course.

I have some CDs that would be very hard to replace, so have gradually been backing these up onto an external hard drive.  One or other of the online retailers in the UK usually has an offer running where you can get e.g. 400Gb for about £80.  You just plug it into a USB port, slap a CD in the PC's CD drive, and (most likely) something like the Windows Media Player will automatically start up, with an option to "rip" the disk into one of several formats, including lossless compression which would allow you to store about 3 CDs per Gb.  It really could hardly be much easier (or cheaper.)