Burning standard CDs

[wlloydcain]

I'm new to Audacity, and quite inexperience with recording audio material. But it appears that I can input almost any audio file from various sources (such as an old record from a record player). However, it does not appear that I can burn this to a standard CD -- that is, not MP3 or any compressed formats. Would like to burn CDs that I can play on my CD players in my home and car that are not MP3 compatible. Is there a way of doing this in Audacity? Do I need to download a supplementary file? What to do?
Thanks for any help someone can offer.

Lloyd Cain

[kozikowski]

You're almost home.

Audacity doesn't burn anything.

Export your work as WAV files (not "Save," Audacity doesn't save sound files).

Pull the WAV sound files into Windows Media and use the built-in tools to burn a standard music CD. A lot of people would rather open a vein with a rusty razor blade than use Windows Media for this job, but if your Windows is new enough, it does work.

You can export your work as MP3 if you want, but Windows Media is just going to have to uncompress the work back to WAV to make the CD, damaging it both ways, so just leave it as it is. You might want to set the Audacity Preferences to 44100 and 16 bit sound rather than 32 bit floating. I don't think Windows Media knows what 32 bit is.

Let us know how you get on. I would take a really short 2-3 min. sound track to mess with rather than trying to experiment with your whole Beethoven collection in one go.

If you think there may be something wrong with your sound files, download the Piano Trill from here...

http://www.kozco.com/tech/soundtests.html

...and use that. It's 6 seconds long and should work, even though it was recorded at 48000/16.

Koz

[waxcylinder]

And do use good quality CD-Rs and not CD-RWs.

WC

[wlloydcain]

Last May 29 I posted my first inquiry about burning standard CD's from Audacity and received two replies. Since I can't seem to figure out a way to send a personal "thank you" to these two people, I'm hoping they will pick it up here. They signed themselves as "kosikowski" and "waxcylinder." Their info was very helpful. Since May,I have been on vacation, entertained several grandkids for a week, got behind on other work, and had a wife in the hospital for surgery -- so I am just now getting around to following their advice. Have only done a test run, but it works, so I know that I can now transfer the music from my many records and tapes to CD's. Thanks again, whoever you are!!

Wlloydc

[kozikowski]

<<<"kosikowski" and "waxcylinder.>>>

Glad to help. Actually, there's a "z" in there. Between us we have W, X, Y, and Z covered.

Koz

[waxcylinder]

Thanks for the feedback - glad you are up and running.

Just another tip about the CD-Rs: do remember that they are light sensitive (that's how the burning laser creates them in the first place) so do store them well out of direct sunlight. I would also recommend keeping at least one copy of all the WAV files as backup too - I actually retain two copies on two separate external USB discs (these are relatively cheap these days). And my son in London gets an occasional copy of my library - he thinks he is getting access to my music - actually he is my off-site backup!

Have fun with the conversion project.

WC

[wlloydcain]

Thanks again, to both of you who responded. Have completed recording several songs and burned them to a CD -- using the advice you offered. One other question. You recommended using Microsoft's Media Mgr to burn the CDs. I also have Real Player on my computer. Is this as good, or any better to burn CDs?

Have a great day.
wlloydcain

[kozikowski]

Authoring a Music CD is a relatively straight forward process and you can do it in a number of different programs. A simple authoring program actually comes along with several pieces of hardware if you're building or modifying your own computer. It's only if you want to get fancy that you need a more sophisticated program. If, for example, you need to eliminate or change that 2-second gap between songs, I'm betting the free programs will not let you do that.

Koz

[waxcylinder]

One that gets mentioned favourably a lot is Nero - I don't believe that it is free though. I used to use an older version of Nero on a previous PC on which it came bundled from Dell. Both my current Dell machines came bundled with different burner s/w: the laptop has Roxio, the desktop has RecordNow - both seem to produce good results.

WC