[SOLVED] no sound from CD recording, but reads data

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

I’m a new Audacity 3.1.3 user on a Windows 10 PC. My intention was to record music from an LP and record it to CD for use in my car or home stereo system. Using Windows tools, I separately recorded both sides of the LP in stereo through the “Rec Out” of my Hi-FI receiver at 44.1 kHz to a .Wav file at 16 bit PCM and 32 bit Float Rate and saved them to my PC. Just to check the sound quality, I burned the two files to a DVD to play on my PC and they both sounded fine. And yes, I know that I could NOT play that DVD on any CD player!

I then downloaded Audacity 3.1 and copied the two .Wav files into it. I copied and pasted side 2 to the end of the side 1 track and had the complete recording on one track. On playback, everything looked and sounded good. I removed extra space from the start and end of the track. I added a few seconds between the end of side one and the start of side two. Then I labeled each song at its very beginning. I didn’t do any noise removal because everything sounded fine to my ears. I then exported multiple as .wav files and burned them to a CD-R.

I put the CD into my CD player. It read the total time of the recording (49 min 42 sec) and went to track 1. I hit play, but no sound came out. Also, using my remote, I was unable to switch to any other song. So, it seems there are recording/burning issues as well as labeling issues. Where did I go wrong? Please provide any suggestions.

2

What does Windows Explorer show for the CD?

If you see WAV files you didn’t burn an audio CD. (It depends on how your burning application is configured.) You’ll be able to play WAV files on your computer, and possibly on your DVD player, but not on a regular audio CD player.

An audio CD will show:
Track01.CDA
Track02.CDA…



as well as labeling issues.

Audio CDs don’t have regular files so no actual file names and most don’t have any metadata. When you play the CD on your computer the player software gets a “fingerprint” and it finds the album/artist/song and album artwork from the Internet. And of course, your homemade CD isn’t in the database.

…There is something called [u]CD Text[/u] but your player may not support it, and you’ll have to figure-out how to include it in your burn.

3

DVDdoug,

I think you found the problem. My songs show up as .wav files, not Track01.CDA. I’d never used my laptop to burn CDs before, so maybe there’s a problem with its recording process. I’m going to start this project over again and this time I’ll record the LP through Audacity and do all my editing before I try to burn the CD-R. Can you provide any tips regarding the next burning process? Thanks again.
Paul

4

You’ve made a “data CD” rather than an “audio CD”. You need to tell your CD burning App that you want to make an “audio CD”.

5

maybe there’s a problem with its recording process.

No! Your WAV files fine! You need those WAV files to feed-to your burning software. Then your burning software just has to be configured to make an “audio CD”.

Can you provide any tips regarding the next burning process?

What software are you using to burn the CD?

6

I decided to try to rerecord the CD before starting the entire project from the start again and guess what? SUCCESS. I remember I had some problems the first time getting Window Media Player to start the burn and apparently it got record as a data CD. So, Audacity Project #1 is now complete. Thanks for everyone’s help.
Paul