As far as I can make out from the Audacity wiki I’m supposed to burn my WAV audio files to CD but when I try this my CD-R discs wont work on any of my players and even in Windows Explorer there are no files to be found on the discs. Also according to Wikipedia …
Audio CDs__Audio CDs do not use WAV as their sound format, using instead Red Book audio. The commonality is that both audio CDs and WAV files have the audio data encoded in PCM. WAV is a data file format for a computer to use that can’t be understood by CD players directly. To record WAV files to an Audio CD the file headers must be stripped and the remaining PCM data written directly to the disc as individual tracks with zero padding added to match the CD’s sector size.
I now have a bin full of duff discs and am fed up of wasting money. Anyone know what (probably obvious) thing I am doing wrong? 
Ed :
What software are you using to burn your CD’s?
You need to be making Audio CD’s rather than Data CD’s, but are you even able to burn data CD’s so that they work on your computer? (I’m wondering if your CD-r’s and your CD writer are OK or not).
I have got both Windows Media Player and Nero but both seem to give trouble as they dont like WAV files although I have exported my Audacity recordings as audio WAV files. Also what exactly does this mean from the wiki
To record WAV files to an Audio CD the file headers must be stripped and the remaining PCM data written directly to the disc as individual tracks with zero padding added to match the CD’s sector size.
If this is the case why are WAV files practically the default type when they they cant be burned to disk.
Another thing which is puzzling me is exactly why always seem to end up with not only WAV files but also DATA and AUP files so that when Nero asks which files to add I dont know which to choose and none of them seem to work anyhow?
Totally confused!
Ed
Lets start with first things first and try and clear up some confusion.
I think this will explain: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=File_Management_Tips
Before we go any further - does that make sense now?
That’s more of a technical detail really - perhaps it’s not written very clearly. If you can find that bit in the wiki again, could you post a link to the page - perhaps we may be able to rewrite it a bit more clearly . [EDIT] Hang on a minute, that’s from Wikipedia, not the Audacity wiki. There is a link to the Audacity wiki home page at the top of this page.
Basically, the “Red Book Standard” is the standard for audio CDs. This specifies that the audio should be 16 bit and 44100 Hz uncompressed audio data (among other things). Using WAV or AIFF you can have uncompressed audio with these exact specifications, and that is why it is recommended. We usually refer to WAV rather than AIFF because it is more common and more widely supported. The stripping of file headers and all that stuff is what your CD burning program does automatically when you tell it to burn an audio CD.
The most likely reason for that is that you have the wrong “sample rate” or “bit depth” for these programs to understand. The sample rate should be 44100 and the bit depth should be 16.
In the Audacity wiki it tells you how to do this: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_burn_CDs
I would strongly recommend that you use Nero rather than Windows Media Player - it’s a lot better for burning CDs. With 16/44100 WAV files, Nero should be happy.
Thanks again Steve. I will now give all this new info a lot of looking at and it should, hopefully sort me out.
Cheer
Ed 