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CDR Trading FAQpreview version 0.92 (June 18, 1999)Compiled by Bas van der Meer ( basm@casema.net). Please send any comments to me, so I can make a final version of this FAQ.1. IntroductionRecently there has been a tremendous increase in CDR-trades and CDR-trees on the Rust List, mostly due to the low prices of CDR-writing equipment. Copying a show on CDR is cheap and the sound quality does not degrade with generation as with analog tapes.However, there are quite a few differences between CDR and analog tapes. CDR-recording does require a bit more technical knowledge. You can't just test out a few things to see what happens. If something goes wrong during the recording of a CDR, there's no way to save the CDR. With a tape you could just spin it over. The people you are trading with expect you to know how to make a good CDR. In order to do that you need some basic knowledge of CDR-recording. This FAQ tries to provide you with this basic knowledge. This is by no means an authoritave document, just a small intro. Because it's often interesting and usefull to know how others 'do the trick', I included the results of a little survey I did on Rust in May 1999. There were 21 people who responded, enough to give a general picture about how other people do it. Always remember that what's good for you may not work for someone else. 2. About CDR Trading2.1 General infoFor an introduction on trees, for now I'll refer you to the Treeing Tapes on Rust Tutorial by Randy Schechter and David Lybrand. Many things that apply to tape-trees also apply to CDR-trees. Soon there will be an extensive tutorial on Treeing CDRs on Rust to cover the variations that CDRs have brought to trees.2.2 Some extra comments2.2.1 Things that can happen meanwhile in real-life* Always remember that people have a real-life with real things that can happen, good things and bad things. If you are trying to contact someone and he/she doesn't respond within a few days, don't start flaming that person right away. Always keep in mind that there might be a good reason (or a sad reason) for somebody not to be able or to want to respond to your messages. Bad things always happen at the worst times. If something happens to you and you are not able to reply to other people for a couple of weeks, you don't want to come back and find yourself being flamed by impatient people.2.2.2 Sending with or without case?* This is an issue you should settle with your trading partner. Sending with cases might give a bit of extra protection, but they tend to break in the mail and they add to the postage cost, especially if you're sending multiple discs in one mail. Sending without cases but with some extra cardboard protection might be an alternative. Note that there is a difference here with audio-tapes: CDR-cases are much larger than audio cases and thus much more vulnerable in the mail. There is also a weight difference: by sending tapes without cases you get a 50% weight reduction, but by sending CDR's without cases you get a weight reduction of 80%. Most people prefer to use a padded envelope, but a hard cardboard photo-mailer will also do when sending a disc without case.2.2.3 What are the 'standards' for CDR Trading?(You may not agree with these standards, but that's why this FAQ is currently only a preview-version. Please send comments to me.)
3 Some technical details about CD-recording(For more technical information: see the CD-Recordable FAQ by Andy McFadden.)3.1 Hardware3.1.1 CD-writersBasically there are three kinds of CD-recorders. First there are those stereo-components that can make copies of audio-CD's, I won't talk about these here simply because I don't know much about it, only that they are expensive and that you need special expensive CD-audio-blanks. Secondly there are those stand-alone-CD-copiers. Great stuff (can often burn 3 CDR's at once) but you need quite a lot of money to buy one, so I won't talk about these things either.Most people use a CD-writer installed next to or instead of their CD-reader in their computer. These CD-writers are quite cheap nowadays and blank CDR's are also quite cheap. But of course you need a decent computer to burn CD's with such a CD-writer. So what computer will do? A 3-year old pentium should do, but here are some results from the survey:
And what CD-writer should I use? You should buy a CD-writer that does support disc-at-once. Most people have a internal IDE-CD-writer, simply because they are the cheapest and these are good enough. But you could also consider a SCSI-writer or a (external) parallel-CD-writer, or maybe even an USB-writer, just what looks good to you. There will be no difference between a CDR recorded with a cheap writer and one recorded with an expensive writer. But here's what writer people are using and how they value their writer. Looks like everybody is happy with his/her CD-writer (except for 1 Pinnacle-device):
3.2 How does CDR-copying work?Normally the process consists of two parts:- the process of extracting the audio from a CD to the hard disk, also know as "ripping". You will need a large harddisk with about 750 Mb of free space to make a temporary copy of a CD. - the process of writing the songs from hard disk to a blank CDR, also know as "burning" Both for ripping and for burning you need software. There are also programs that can do both. Not all software gives the same results with the same hardware, so you'll have to experiment a little with what works best for you. It is also possible to copy CD's in one step without writing the music to the hard disk, this is called "on the fly"-recording. This is a bit more sensitive to errors. It is only recommanded if you have a good combination of CD-reader, CD-writer and software. Most people don't prefer this method for recording audio CDR's. I did ask in the survey what method people prefer for copying Audio-CDR's, using their hard disk or on the fly. Here are the results:
IMPORTANT: when copying live-music, normally you want to record a CDR without silence between the tracks. To do this you need to record with an option called disc-at-once (DAO). Not all CD-writers and not all software do support DAO. As default, many programs have this option turned off, so you'll have to turn it on somewhere. Without disc-at-once you'll get 2-second gaps between songs. Many traders only accepts CD's recorded with DAO. So if you're looking to buy a CD-writer, make sure you choose one that does support DAO and look for software that can handle DAO. If you want to know why normally there will be 2-second gaps between songs, you'll have to look for documentation elsewhere, I won't try to explain it here. 3.3 What about my sound-card?The sound-card is not involved in either the ripping or the burning- process. In fact, you can very well copy audio CDR's without having a sound-card installed in your computer. The process of ripping audio from a CD uses digital audio extraction (DAE). DAE is not supported by some older CD-readers. Most modern IDE/ATAPI and SCSI CD-readers do support DAE. So, it doesn't matter if you have a very good sound- card, if you have a cheap crappy sound-card or no sound-card at all. What is important is the quality of your CD-reader and the quality of the CD-ripping software.BUT: if you want to connect your audio-equipment to your computer to transfer music from your tapes/DATS/MD's or whatever to CDR, then you'll need a high-quality sound-card. For best results you will have to look for a sound- card that supports digital-audio-input (I think that's what it's called). You will also need software to record and edit the music. This will not be discussed here. 3.4 What if something goes wrong during the writing process?There are quite a few possibilities of what can be wrong with a CDR:a). You can't do anything with the disc at all. It just refuses to play in all your CD-players. (Note: some very old CD-players can't handle CDR's, so if your CD-player is more than 10 years old that might be the problem) b). The disc plays allright up to track xxx and than, all of a sudden, it stops, or starts repeating the last few seconds. c). At first glance, everything appears to be OK, but when you listen closely to the music, you notice some annoying 'cracks'. d). Everything is fine, except between every two tracks you hear a loud 'crack'. e). You get 2 second gaps between tracks. a) and b) are the result of an error during the recording process, the disc
has been ejected before the process was finished. An error can be
caused by a buffer-problem of your CPU/CD-writer. Especially heavy
multitasking while burning a CDR may cause in a failure. You are advised
not to use your computer while burning CDR's, unless you know that
your system can handle it. Inferior quality of CDR-blanks often lead to
errors during recording, resulting in unfinished CDR's.
In all these cases: there's no way to repair the damage. These 'broken' CDR are referred to as 'coasters', because that's what you can use them for now! Here's a list of things you can do with broken CDR's 3.5 What software should I use?Important note: not all software works (optimally) with all CD-burners. Some software that does support dao, might not support dao for a particular CD-writer, though that CD-writer can handle dao with other progs. So check the specifications of your writer and of your CD-writing-software. If something doesn't work in the way you thing it should, check the websites of the companies involved, you might find a FAQ-there, or you could mail your suppliers. The software you use depends of course on the operating system you are using. As you probably know there are lots of different OS'es around. Here's what people in the survey were using and what's their opinion about it. (BTW: I'm the Linux user)
Some programs are only for extracting audio to hard disk, others only for burning, others for on-the-fly copying. Many software packages can handle all tasks, but this doesn't mean they perform equally well on extracting, burning and on-the-fly copying on your system. If you have the opportunity, check out a few different programs. Here are results of the survey I did on the Rust List about what software people are using:
As you can see, the most commonly used programs is Adaptec's Easy CD Creator. Though it is not a very difficult program to use, some of the more important features are a little bit difficult to find. Here you'll find a few very usefull tips for Adaptec Easy CD Creator by Steve Blair. 3.6 What brand of CDR-blanks should I use?First you should know that for every system (= combination of software + CD-writer) there will be other brands of blanks that work best. So if you're considering buying a large batch of CDR's (maybe because this saves money), try out a box of that particular brand before investing a lot of money based only on the experiences of other people. So what brands do other people use? Here are the results from the survey
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