 | |
provided by:
For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.One of the coolest things about audio recording nowadays is that you can create music in your home and put it on the same medium that the biggest record companies use. When I started as a recording engineer, the best you could do was put your music on cassette for other people to listen to. Pressing vinyl was expensive. But now anyone with a computer, a CD burner, and a few inexpensive CD-Rs can put his or her music on the same format as all the best albums in the record store. You gotta love it! In this article, you explore how to make CDs of your music. You discover the best CD-Rs to buy, and you get a chance to burn a CD. You also find out how to submit your mastered CD to a company that can mass-produce your music and make it ready to sell. All that’s left are some ideas for promoting your packaged product, which you can find in this article as well.
CD BurningBecause you’re recording in your computer with Pro Tools, chances are you have a computer with a CD-R or CR-RW drive. If so, you also have software that you can use to burn your CDs. Most CD-burning software works fine for putting your mastered music onto CDs. If you don’t already have a burner and want to add one to your existing computer, check the system requirements for the burner that interests you to make sure that your system can use it. For audio CDs, you can use just about any CD burner on the market (as long as it’s compatible with your system, of course). A staggering variety of CD-R types are available. Available are green, blue, gold, and even black CDs; as well as data and music CDs. So which ones are best? Well, that depends. Unless you have a consumer CD recorder from several years ago, you can record your CD onto any data CD-R. You can find these discs just about anywhere, and they can cost as little as five to ten cents apiece if you buy in quantity. If you have an older consumer CD recorder, you have to use music CD-Rs. These CD-Rs have a code in them that allows older consumer recorders to actually record. These CD-Rs cost a lot more not because they capture music any better, but because a royalty — about one dollar, which goes to the recording industry — is figured into the price of the CD. (Don’t get me started.) So, if you have a late-model CD-R recorder connected to your computer, or if you have a professional-grade CD burner (such as the Alesis Masterlink), you can get by just fine by using run-of-the-mill data CD-Rs. As far as which of the countless CD-R brands to use, well, they’re all pretty much the same as long as you go with a major manufacturer. Personally, I always go with Taiyo Yuden if I can find them. (Do a search on the Internet for some places that sell this brand.) Keep in mind, though, that some CD-Rs work better on some recorders, and the only way to find out is to try them and see. When you find a brand that works, try to stick with it. Look for CD-Rs with a tough top surface. It’s the scratches or pits in the top of the disc that cause it not to play over time, not the scratches or pits on the bottom.
Recording Your Music to CD-RBurning a CD is easy. All you generally have to do is open your CD-burning software and follow the prompts. A few things, however, can be helpful to know to get the best sound and to create a CD that you can duplicate.
Dealing with diversity: Using different CD recorders
If you’re using a CD burner in your computer, burning a CD is as simple as opening your software and following the program’s directions for making a CD. If you use a standalone CD recorder (burner), you have to connect it to your Digidesign interface (via a digital connection) and record to your CD recorder. These options are presented in the following subsections.
Computer-based systemsIf you have a CD burner program (such as Toast, Jam, or CD Creator), burning your CD is easy. One advantage of using one of these programs to burn a CD is that you have quite a bit of flexibility to organize your songs and place space between them. In general, all you have to do is click the Add Track button on the main screen and select the track you want to add. You’re also prompted to choose any silence that you want to place before the track, as well as PQ subcode information. (A PQ subcode is “housekeeping” information added to the CD data; it includes instructions for start and stop times for each track.) When you have all your tracks assembled, you can go ahead and burn your CD. Pretty simple, huh?
Standalone CD burnersA variety of standalone CD burners are available, and they all work differently. Some record the CD the same way a cassette player records tapes: You connect the digital input of the CD recorder to the digital output of your Digidesign interface and then press Record on the CD recorder while clicking Play in Pro Tools. The CD is then recorded in real time. Other standalone CD burners, such as an Alesis Masterlink (the CD-burning standard for many pro studios), work more like computer software programs than cassette recorders. With the Masterlink, you first record the music from Pro Tools to the Masterlink hard drive (using the same procedures just listed). From there, you can edit, sequence, and even dynamically process each song before you burn all the songs to a CD-R. When you’re happy with the order of the songs and the spacing between them, you can then burn your CD. If you want to do any dynamic processing to your music in the Masterlink, be sure to send your files to the machine undithered and at 24 bit. You can dither in the Masterlink after you make your changes. This improves the sound of your final CD. If all you’re doing is sequencing your songs, you can send the files dithered if you want.
Recognizing Red Book CDsRegardless of the CD burner you get, make sure that it can create a Red Book CD. I know that this sounds mysterious, but all Red Book means is that the CD is an audio CD, not a CD-ROM. Red Book is a standard for the data used to create an audio CD; a Red Book–capable burner follows that standard. This ensures that your CD can play on all audio CD players. Your CD burner clearly states whether it can burn audio, or Red Book, CDs.
| |
provided by:
For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.