a few cd/dvd burning questions

[tterris]

ok, i just burned some files for the first time (ever) on my new burner, and the quality of the music turned out magnificent. thing is though, i went to burn 20 mb song and when it burned onto the cd it said it took up like 150 mb of disc space. i know this has something to do with compression/decompression of files but don't know exactly what can be done about keeping the transfer of data to cd at the size it says on my harddrive.

and as far as optimizing the drive so that it burns at it's absolute maximum speed, what can be done? i have a nec3500a oem, and went to the site to d/l any new drivers or firmware, but have read that firmware isn't always trustworthy and cannot be removed once part of the drive. are there any other solutions to maximizing burn speeds?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Regular CD audio is 1,378 kbps, as opposed to the 128 kbps mp3 garbage off the web.

If you burn music to CD as CD audio, no compression is used, your MP3, WMA, AAC etc. is converted / de-compressed to the raw CD audio (roughly equivalent to a WAV file on a PC).

If you want small files, you must burn the CD as a data CD, but then you can only use it in a CD player that plays MP3 files (or WMA or whatever your format is).

 

[tterris]

i just figured that out..

the mp3 quality is awful, well not awful when it's actually coming through clear, but i'm getting alot of static now and then. are there any alternatives to cd audio and mp3?

but if i need to transfer large programs such as games or make a backup of my windowsxp, is it ok to burn them as mp3 instead of audio? or is it requisite because they won't fit onto cd audio?

 

[DaveSimmons]

You don't burn documents, photos, etc. as audio at all, you burn them as a data CD.

Your CD software probably also has a command to "copy entire disc" or "copy cd" to make a backup copy of windows or other CDs. but that will not work with games (the game CD is copy protected). Some music CDs are also now copy protected too, but most old ones can be copied.

I don't get music off the net (I buy CDs) so I can't help you with the MP3s sounding staticy.

 

[wearetheborg]

Originally posted by: tterris
i just figured that out..

the mp3 quality is awful, well not awful when it's actually coming through clear, but i'm getting alot of static now and then. are there any alternatives to cd audio and mp3?

but if i need to transfer large programs such as games or make a backup of my windowsxp, is it ok to burn them as mp3 instead of audio? or is it requisite because they won't fit onto cd audio?

If u'r burning from mp3s, the quality wont go up. So yeah, just burn as mp3