suggestion for a sticky

[bleak orange]

Hi,

The setting : I was asked to make a master cd, to send to the pressing plant. The band had got tme music mastered by a proper ME, and I got the files as 24\44.1. My job was just to compile the tracks in the right order and make a red book master cd,with cd text and ISRC codes, no prosessing.

As I don't make master cds on a regular basis I found that I had to do a bit of research before sending it off to the cd plant.

So, I was thinking maybe it would be cool to have a sticky, or at least a thread with the experience people had with the "compiling" stages of mastering ? Sorry if this has been done before, but I could only seem to find discussions about individual parts of the process, not discussions of the whole shebang in one thread...

So, what do you use ?

Experience with programs that are able to make red book masters, with cd text, ISRC codes etc : Wavelab, CD Architect..?? on Mac and PC

Burning speed when making a master ? slowest possible ? Always make an iso file and burn from it ?

How to check your burned master for errors ? third party programs ?

Known CD-R that works, i.e. any particular brands that people have good experience with when sending it off to the cd plant ? Any difference in European or American brands ?

Dither : ( this is probably a can of worms but...) Use the included dither plug in your burning software, or dither to 16\44 before compiling the tracks in the burning software ? Are Pow-R ( 1,2 or 3 ) Pow-R ? or are there different implementations of the algorithms ?

Anything else ?

Btw, the cd I sent off to the plant was fine,

I used Sony CD Architect for the compilation of tracks.
I added cd text in CDA ( band name, song titles and ISRC codes )
I did not include any digital copy protection, nor did I put on "emphasis"
I burnt to an iso file before burning
I burnt on 16 x speed ( slowest possible in CDA )
I had buffer underrun protection enabled
I used the dither plug in CDAto dither down to 16\44
I used Verbatim cd-r ( off the shelves Verbatim ) to burn
My CD burner was a LG burner

[MASSIVE Master]

I used Sony CD Architect for the compilation of tracks.
I added cd text in CDA ( band name, song titles and ISRC codes )
I did not include any digital copy protection, nor did I put on "emphasis"
I burnt to an iso file before burning
I burnt on 16 x speed ( slowest possible in CDA )
I had buffer underrun protection enabled
I used the dither plug in CDAto dither down to 16\44
I used Verbatim cd-r ( off the shelves Verbatim ) to burn
My CD burner was a LG burner

There really isn't a lot of "rocket science" to the actual burn - Use a solid authoring program that will prepare and burn a compliant disc.

* Text, fine.
* Copy protection / ehphasis - Off is good.
* You didn't burn an ISO file - I'm not sure what you *did* burn, but you can't make an ISO image of CDA (unless you just made an ISO of the PCM data).
* There seems to be a "sweet spot" at around 20-25% of a drive's rated speed. 16X is a bit on the quick side, but not "bad" by any means.
* Buffer-underrun -- THAT, I'd kill. Seen problems there. Theoretically, if it kicks in, you're already out of compliance with the burn.

[bleak orange]

turning off "buffer underrun protection" is a new one for me, thanx for the tip !

You're probably right, it isn't a ISO file, but the program made one big file of the tracks being burned and saved it to disk, and that was the file which was used for the actual burning...I just assumed it was an iso file...

I know of a few fellow ME that have had bad luck when sending masters to certain pressing plants, especially European ME - American plant or vice versa

So if there is some sort of general guidelines that could prevent that in the future, or at least minimize the chance of it happening, it would be great !