Recording For Best Quality CD

[jdycus]

I will be recording a live performance soon for the purpose of producing a CD. Is it better to record at 48000, 24 bit and later convert to 441000, 16 bit or initially record at 441000, 16 bit?

[bgravato]

Moved this topic to a proper section of the forum.

If the final target is 44100Hz (not 441000), then there's no advantages to record at 48000 (that would actually be worst, because resampling from one to the other only degrades audio).

I also don't think you'll benefit anything noticeable from recording at 24 bits, except it will take more disk space. 16 bits will be enough for cd quality.

[steve]

I also don't think you'll benefit anything noticeable from recording at 24 bits, except it will take more disk space. 16 bits will be enough for cd quality.

That depends on whether or not you intend to process the audio in Audacity before burning to CD.

If you are just doing a straight recording, then burning to disk, the best quality will be to set Audacity to record 16 bit 44100 Hz and turn off dither (see "Quality" settings in Preferences).

If you are intending to do any processing of the audio (for example, Noise Removal, Amplify, Click removal, Equalization...), then set Audacity to record 32-bit float, 44100 Hz with "High Quality Conversion" dither set to either "triangle" or "shaped". (The difference between triangle and shaped is pretty subtle so it probably does not matter which of these two you use).

Before you export the tracks, remember that most CD writers add a 2 second pause between tracks, so you will probably want to trim any leading or trailing silence from the tracks.

Whether your sound card works best set at 24-bit or 16-bit depends on the card and the drivers, but will probably make little difference. I'd recommend trying both to see if one sounds any better, or runs any more smoothly than the other.

[whbjr]

Before you export the tracks, remember that most CD writers add a 2 second pause between tracks, so you will probably want to trim any leading or trailing silence from the tracks.

Well, they do if you have your CD writer set to "track at at time" or if you're using a restrictive program. Most CD writers have a way to eliminate the pause (which is a good thing for the continuous-music CD I just produced), and there are other methods you can use, as explained in the Audacity Wiki on Gapless Burning.

[steve]

TAO is usually the default in CD burning software as not all optical drives support DAO.
The drives in Toshiba laptops frequently do not support DAO (or CD text).
As far as I'm aware, if the drive does not support DAO then there is no way to create a gapless CD with multiple tracks. If there IS a way, then I'd be interested to know as we have a lot of Toshiba laptops at work and none of them support DAO.