CD Duplication Question

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JonPaulP

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I was wondering...when preparing do have your CD duplicated, how do you go about doing so?

I mean, sure it sounds simple at first since you can burn the CD at your computer then ship it out to the duplication house, but home-burned discs aren't exactly known to be reliable. I wouldn't want to have 1000 duplications of a defective disc.

Is there a certain way people in the industry do it? I was thinking if the process involved sending the original .wav files to the duplication place (or a sound engineer?) and having them create the CD.
 
They almost always check the disc for errors, or you can send them multiple copies.
 
Seafroggys said:
They almost always check the disc for errors, or you can send them multiple copies.
Click to expand...
Not entirely true - The *good* places will check the integrity of the data, but may not check for compliance to standards & specs. I know of more than a few people who sent in discs burned on iTunes (or some other totally non-compliant burning application) and were made 1,000 copies of "questionable" (putting it lightly) discs. The duplicator did what they were paid to do - They made 1,000 copies of the data on the disc they were sent. That disc wasn't written to proper specifications.
I was wondering...when preparing do have your CD duplicated, how do you go about doing so?
Click to expand...
You make [SELF-CENSORED]ing well sure that you're sending in a properly formatted disc, written to proper specifications without goofy "rookie" errors (such as butting up the first purposeful oscillation right next to a track marker) along with a properly formatted PQ log. Preferably tested and logged for block error rates (which the plant will confirm, assuming there are no interesting anomalies involved - which happens).
 
Oh yeah, forgot to mention...make sure its to spec obviously :)
 
You can buy a cd duplicator for a few hundred or send it out.
 
I know when burning DVDs, it sometimes skips or has compatibility issues with different players. Are CDs the same?

Also, any recommendations for a good cd burning software, preferably one that can make all the tracks an equal volume?
 
Do a search on "red book" standards. We are also talking about 2 different things- the burning of a CD-R, and the creation of a gold-pressed CD master for commercial duplication. When you are producing a commercial product, it becomes even more important to involve the services of a mastering house. So for me, the answer to your question is- I send the finished mix to the nice mastering engineer, who makes sure my final master is compliant with all relevent standards.-Richie
 
The "gold-pressed" thing isn't even an issue - It's all about how the disc is authored. A blank disc is ("more or less) a blank disc. You can make a compliant production master on cheap crappy discs (which I wouldn't recommend, but would technically be compliant) or on high-quality, archival quality discs. The data is the same - What matters is how that data is assembled and applied.

No doubt though - If there are any doubts - *ANY* doubts - you can probably find a mastering facility** that will properly author the files to a production master disc for a reasonable price (I can think of a few myself) -- In most cases, for less than many replication houses will charge for the same.




** I should say "reputable" facility -- I've seen more than plenty of discs come out of several "mastering" facilities ("sarcasm") that had the same 'rookie' errors as I've seen on - well, 'rookie' discs.
 
I generally take advice from experts like http://www.sfvideo.com/ about sending the original .wav files. The best thing to do is to discuss it with your duplication service provider before sending a copy.
 
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