Copy music

[skg]

I have recordings on my audacity that I wish to transfer to my brother. What is the easiest way to do this? I can not seem to download the music to a cd no matter what I do. Can I export it to his audacity? Can he access my audacity from his computer? When explaining what to do please keep in mind I am a computer retard!

[steve]

In Audacity, select "Export" from the File menu.
Assuming that you are using Audacity 1.3.7, choose "WAV" as the export format.

The exported WAV may be burned to CD or copied to a USB memory stick and given to your brother,

[kozikowski]

<<<WAV may be burned to CD>>>

Windows machines tend to not have built-in burning programs to produce a data (not music) CD like Macs do. For that you'll need one of the free burning programs--one may have come with the CD drive in your machine.

You can also produce a Music CD in Windows Media, assuming you have a modern enough PC. My PCs are old enough to need the separate software like Easy CD Creator, Nero, or Veritas.

Koz

[steve]

Windows machines tend to not have built-in burning programs to produce a data (not music) CD like Macs do. For that you'll need one of the free burning programs--one may have come with the CD drive in your machine.

Windows XP and later support writing to CD without additional software;

Windows XP’s inbuilt CD-burning software allows you to select files and apparently write them to the disk immediately, by dragging and dropping them to the CD drive’s icon, or by right-clicking them, taking Send To, and selecting CD Drive x: as the destination. This gives the impression that the files are being written to the disk right then, as in a UDF system. But this is not the case. Doing this simply stashes up copies of these files on the hard disk, in a “staging area” (which, by default, is in your Documents and Settings folder).

They are only written to the CD when you take an explicit action. This may be:

* right-click on the drive’s icon and take Write files to CD; or,
* open a window on the drive and take Write Files to CD in the Folder actions to be seen in the bar on the left of the window.

In either case, all the files you previously selected are then written out to the CD as a single track — in the ISO manner — and the disk is ejected.

This burning method is strictly for CD media only. There is no support at all in the inbuilt burning for burning DVD media.

However there are many advantages to using additional software such as Nero or the excellent free "CDBurnerXP" as these provide easy and accurate control of the CD type and also support writing to DVD.