Creating CDs DIY

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tsswitch

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Well, my band has gone through a long and painful home recording process, but soon we'll have a pretty awesome full-length DIY record to show for it.

The question is, what is the best way to create the final product (the CD)?
As in, what format should the music files be in, etc.
Not really concerned with the label/booklet etc. as that is pretty self explanatory.

Also I've always wondered what the difference between a CD-R with high quality files and a professional printed CD is. Anyone care to explain?

Thanks!
 
Depends on how many you are looking to make. If it more than 100, I would just get them made by a duplication house. Most places have package deals with the insert, case, and printed disc
 
Honestly, I'd make sure my stuff is on itunes, then I'd burn/stomp some cdrs and put them in paper sleeves.

In my experience, the kids buying cds at shows these days aren't buying it for the cd, they're buying it to support the band. If they actually use the cd, it'll be for the 30 seconds it takes to rip to itunes.

Save yourself some money with diy cdr's, and save your fans some money by selling for less. You'll do more volume this way.

Also, this way, if your band breaks up the day after you get your cd shipment (has happened to me!!! Well... 1 month after) You aren't stuck with 1000 cds in your basement. You can make as many as you think you'll need per gig.

One thing that is worth spending money on is mastering. Take it to a real mastering place that will do a good job and make you a redbook audio cd that you can make your copies from. Also, tell him it will be distributed digitally, as mp3/aac mastering has *slightly* different standards than cd mastering.
 
tsswitch said:
Well, my band has gone through a long and painful home recording process, but soon we'll have a pretty awesome full-length DIY record to show for it.

The question is, what is the best way to create the final product (the CD)?
As in, what format should the music files be in, etc.
Not really concerned with the label/booklet etc. as that is pretty self explanatory.

Also I've always wondered what the difference between a CD-R with high quality files and a professional printed CD is. Anyone care to explain?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Best way to creat the final product/burn the CD is to burn at 1x.
The format the music files should be is 16bit 44.1kHz Wav
 
carlosguardia said:
Best way to creat the final product/burn the CD is to burn at 1x.
Click to expand...
That used to be the "standard" answer a few years ago, but the technology has changed somewhat since then.

First of all, 1x is often not even an available option any more on most of the burners made in the last couple of years; some of them will only go as low as 4x or even 8x as a lowest speed.

Second, many of the newest high-speed burners actually have higher error rates at some lower speeds than they do at medium or higher speeds; it's not unusual to find a burner these days that actually performs better at (just for example) 8x than it does at 4x, or sometimes even better at 12x than at 8x, etc.

The "sweet spot" burning speed varies from burner model to burner model, but *in general* these days, it seems that somewhere around 20-25% of the drive's maximum speed often works quite well.

As far as the OP's original question regarding the difference between CD-R and CD: Pro "glass" CDs can in general take more abuse and age than CD-Rs - they'll last longer.

Also, when one runs their material through a truely professional mastering process for "glass mastering", the quality of the data itself and it's ability to truly meet Redbook standards is better tracked and better insured.

G.
 
im not a 100% sure about this topic but, when you burn a cd save the image file and use that to make dupicates off of, it will act as you "glass master" and ensure that all the burned copies are the exact same.
 
I've been doing short runs of demo CDs and they are a royal pain in the ass. For anything other than a dozen or so copies, bite the bullet, get a decent master and send it out for duplication.
 
Treeline said:
I've been doing short runs of demo CDs and they are a royal pain in the ass. For anything other than a dozen or so copies, bite the bullet, get a decent master and send it out for duplication.
Click to expand...

Agreed. We're putting out a disc next month, and after weighing all the options it seems to be WAY less effort to just run a thousand having them all packaged and printed.

We figure this: costs about 850 bucks for 1,000 cds. You sell 170 Cds at 5 bucks a piece you break even. Easier said than done. But suppose you do it over a year. You've got enough dough for the second cd. Big Time. Yeah, DIY has a certain charm, but I can't be assed to make my bed in the morning. Think I'm going to burn 30 discs before every show?

Now... you have.... 830 cds left over. You can take about 250 of those and mail them off to booking agents and put together some shows... mail one a day to the local fuckass rock DJ until he starts bitching at you on the radio, use them as coasters on your coffee table (or cardboard box that serves as a coffee table), or leave them in the little CD racks where they sell Dave Matthews CDs at Starbucks (so long as the cover has a shot of a monkey fucking a pig). All valid promotional strategies.

And when you're playing a bunch of shows you've got some CDs to sell to gather up some scratch for gas money and beer. And when the dweebus college kid rolls up wearing shoes that cost $249 and says he's only got three bucks for your disc, you can just take it, because it only cost you .85 cents to print.

Sucka.
 
I've never had problems burning loads of CD's in one sitting. With Nero you can tell it how many discs you want to burn and it will just keep churning them out, asking for a new disc and continuing. But people have different levels of patience and time on their hands so it might not be for everyone. Packaging and artwork is more the reason I'd pay a company to do it if I wanted a professional job done.
 
I think the biggest turn off for DIY cd's is the lack of quality printing on the disc. Sure you could use stick on labels or lightscribe. But lightscribe is painfully slow, and labels cause playability problems. I think at the very least you should send out for CD duplication and on disc printing, then if you waqnt to save money go to kinkos and have your inserts and backs made up.
 
There are places such as psPrint which will print high-quality artwork on blank CD-Rs and inserts and send the blank printed discs and inserts back to you if you want to burn them yourselves. They will do runs as small as one copy, though the unit price is obviously more than if you order mass quantities. I have done this on CD-Rs and DVD-Rs where I have only had to make a limited number of copies (e.g. wedding videos, business conferences), and have been very pleased with the results. This is a nice hybrid solution for limited-run demos and such; quality visuals without having to pay for hundreds of discs that will wind up collecting dust or filling up the landfills.

But, IMHO, FWTW, if one is making the investment to make 500 or 5000 copies, it only makes sense to go all the way and have them fully and professionally mastered to glass. First is the difference in quality between CD-R and CD, second is a usually lower printing error rate, and third is the cost savings in your own time working on it (unless you have a mass duplicator at home.) If a project is good enough and important enough to make hundreds of copies, it only makes sense to me not to cut corners when it comes to manufactuing the actual final project.

G.
 
I personally have no problems doing all the work, but yet again I approach this process with a punk rock DIY attitude. I guess for punk rock it cool to diy but might not be suitable for other music. The biggest problem with DIY is the labeling of the disk, so I came up with a solution. I spray painted the cdrs black and then i created a stencil with the band logo. I spray painted the stencil on the cdr. It is a bit ghetto but it works.
 
You can actually buy printable CD's if your printer has the capability to print on CD's. I think Zzounds sells them online for a pack of 100 its like 35 dollars or something like that. Thats what my band is planning on doing when we get done recording our CD.
 
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