A burning question (CD burning, that is)

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 20 Jan 2002 10:33 pm

I have a burning question. Tonite I needed to make 5 copies of a whole CD (for you paralegals out there, it was my band's own CD, okay?

) The burning software I have is called "Easy CD Creator Plus" and it's very easy to use EXCEPT for one thing. It takes a very long time to "prepare the tracks" for burning. Once it finally started to burn (at 8X), the whole CD-R was burned in just 6 minutes, but it probably took at least twice that long to "prepare the tracks". Now, I wouldn't mind that so much if it only did it ONCE and used the same set of "prepared tracks" for each copy I burnt, but unfortunately, it prepares the tracks all over again for every copy I wanted to burn, so there was NO savings in time in making multiple copies.

Can anyone suggest a faster solution to this? I used to have Adaptec, but don't anymore. Is Adaptec faster? Does it prepare the tracks just once and then let you make the separate copies without reinventing the wheel each time? Thanks for any help,
jc

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The "Master of Acceptable Tone"
www.jimcohen.com

John Lacey · Post by **John Lacey** » 21 Jan 2002 3:29 am

Jim, if you have a bunch of copies to be made, rip the wave files off the mother CD so they're on your computer, then it won't have to prepare the tracks.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 21 Jan 2002 3:57 am

If you had the files in MP3 format, it has to convert them to burn. If you have wav files it doesn't have as much to do. Also, if you are doing multiple copies, set the number of copies option to more than 1 and that should help somewhat.

I use the Easy CD Creator and I burn as fast as the CD Burner will allow, it's not the software that slows things down. But any blank CD needs to be "prepared" before you can write on it. It's nothing you can do ahead of time, it has to be done when you do the burn.

Within Easy CD Creator you can save your CD setup so you don't have to setup the order for the songs.

jolynyk · Post by **jolynyk** » 21 Jan 2002 6:12 am

I know that a lot of people are Adaptec oriented.. I was too until I learned to use Nero.. With Nero just copy CD & it gives you the option to save an image on your hard drive.. then you can go and burn the image as many times as you like in a few minutes.. if you shut your computer down & return again, the image is still there until you physically remove it yourself.. we made a band CD, put the image on the hard drive & I've burned 250 CD's off that image..took about 2 minutes per CD at 12X, & every CD was OK, not one coaster.. Granted I think Adaptec & Roxio are a bit more user friendly, but once I started using Nero I found it will do everything that Adaptec & Roxio will do and more.. plus it will work with windows XP.. My 3 cents worth.. John

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 21 Jan 2002 7:32 am

Thanks, guys. I guess next time I'll rip them as wav files first. That would probably save a lot of time. For the record, I did indeed set the # of copies to 5 right from the start, thinking that it would use the same set of "prepared files" over and over again, instead of starting anew each time... but I was wrong. It started all over each time with preparing the files (whatever that means).

------------------
The "Master of Acceptable Tone"
www.jimcohen.com

Fred Murphy · Post by **Fred Murphy** » 21 Jan 2002 8:20 am

When I use Adaptec I usually don't use the (test and copy) feature. I just select (copy) and it saves quite a bit of time. It doesn't seem to make any difference anywhere and I don't have any problems with the copy.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 21 Jan 2002 3:48 pm

I just did some audio CD burns this afternoon. I used the "track at a time" and the "preparation" time was about 1 second for each track. The song files were all wav's.

(I use the "track at a time" for my steel CD as it puts the 2 second gap between songs. If I'm just burning an audio CD and want to get as much on one CD as possible I use the "disk at once" to pick up the extra two seconds between each song).