best medium to master from

[snow lizard]

Thanks for the links, Tom. The Carleton U. one has a pretty good overview of DAE.


sl

 

[snow lizard]

But none of this has anything to do with the discs themselves ...... these differences are in the files and software associated with the different types of files. The actuall discs themselves are no different at all other than the music discs having a file on them that lets a 'music' burner use them.
So if 'data files' are more robust than audio files ...... the difference in in the type of files and everything associated with that and not with the discs themselves.

Sort of, yeah.

As for the discs themselves, a better distinction is cheap, low quality, error-prone media vs. something more solid. The difference in cost might buy you a happy meal if you're buying quantity. It might be less critical if you're burning from a high quality Plextor drive or something, but you're still talking about a few cents per disc. (Cheap data CD-R vs. better quality, data or otherwise)

Audio CD-R burns are far more likely to be accurate with quality hardware and software. They're more sensitive to errors. They also lock you in to 16/44.1 stereo files, and even the best ones might be prone to dropping a few hundred samples at the beginning or ending of a waveform. Stuff like this can also vary between pressings of commercially made CDs if it wasn't compensated for at the time. It might still be viable, but there's more to consider.

Data CDs offer the advantage of not being quite so picky, plus if your mastering guy can work from any type of .wav file there could be huge advantages to sending the files exactly as you mixed them. If you did a mix at 24 bit, 48k for example, you'd need a data disc anyway to send those files.


sl

 

[frankieballsss]

Actually, that's not quite true -- I don't know if they're still doing it, but there used to be a number of consumer products that would only use "Music CDs". These CD-Rs designated for "Music" were a half-brained attempt (like SCMS was) at stopping digital copying. They force the recorders to only accept these "Music CDs" which basically had the copybit preburned to ON, and they would charge a premium price (by misleading the consumer into thinking that CDs marked "For Music" were somehow better than standard CD-Rs...) It was a pretty silly concept for the most part....

Ahhhhhhh, I thought that "music" cds were universally friendly for being read by more cd players. Im not sure if thats true, but I do know that lower quality cds ive used for making audio cds would not be able to be read by some of my older cd players.