Red Book Advice

  • Thread starter Thread starter doogle
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doogle

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Hi guys, post no1. Greetings to all.

Im Mastering a tune for a friend, and i have to send them the file via the net, I know that i should burn the file via red book standards in the mastering process, but if i send this person a 16 bit wave, is there some free software that will burn a red book cd, or something along these lines, or should i burn it at my end and send them the master.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Cheers
giddyup
 
If your friend has a PC then Windows Media Player burns Audio CDs. He/she may need to update it but that's free.

The format for "Red Book" has alot to do with the physical Disc that the final product will be on and less to do with the software used to burn the master. A 16 bit 44,100 Hz wave file will be fine to send.

Keep this in mind: If you're just sending a single tune that will later go onto a CD to a duplicator with other tracks on it. The final master that goes to the duplicator should be "Mastered" also. This means choosing a track order and managing the song lengths of each track to an exact sample length to avoid pops at the tail of a track. (along with several other important things that escape me at this late hour) CD Masters should be burned at a low speed to keep burning errors down to a minimum also. There's alot more to CD authoring but is sounds like that step is a bit further down the road in your case. This is all very general stuff and I'm sure that the mastering guys here could tell you more about CD data blocks and zero point crossing stuff if you are really interested in CD mastering/authoring.

To the best of my knowledge I see no reason that Windows Media Player could cause any problems burning the Wave to Audio CD. Just tell your friend to burn it on a low speed (1 or 2 X). There is no transcoding process that takes place in WMP that could cause a change in format (as far as I know). For Mac, I have no idea. :-P
 
You can do a file transfer of wav files through messenger (msn etc..) and that way both you and your friend will have a copy of the master file. If your friend has a decent CD burner they should be able to import the wav file to their jukebox, media player, sonic, e z creator or whatever software they have and burn their own copy. Messenger file transfer is kind of slow but it it a lot faster than it would be if you burn it and mail it to them.
 
For the love of anything, make sure to emphasize that converting music into MP3 is a waste! I know of more than a few people who convert AIF/WAVs to MP3 before they burn, or in some cases, are forced to by Windows Media Player or whatnot before they can burn them.

My band's first album was ripped and burned to around 192, I think, and THAT was sent in as the master to the dupication company.

Thankfully it doesn't sound terrible, but they were going to rip to 128 (CD Quality, yeah right) if I hadn't said "No, go higher if you're going to go at all..."
 
What is the format that cd players read?... (your typical bookshelf stereo). Is it .cd or will most of them read .wav files?
 
earthboundrec said:
What is the format that cd players read?... (your typical bookshelf stereo). Is it .cd or will most of them read .wav files?
Click to expand...

Windows shows Redbook format as .cda, for CD audio. Some newer CD players will play .wav, but that's not Redbook format.
 
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