Yahoo! Internet Life: How to Burn a Cd

With record company executives now even more despised than the platoons of lawyers they employ, you might want to think twice about following in their footsteps, but producing your own customized CDs brings big benefits. You needn’t carry three dozen discs just to hear your favorite tracks when you jog or drive. Nor need you shuffle discs like a blackjack dealer when you’re partying with friends. Plug a CD-RW drive into your PC and you can cut your own greatest hits discs, program a CD that expresses your feelings for your main squeeze, or compile collections of MP3s for your CD jukebox.

Kick-Start the Software

Most CD-RW drives come with their own drivers and software for extracting tracks and burning discs. With an external USB drive, you install the software first. This way when your system discovers your drive, it can automatically set things up. In most cases, installation means sliding the software CD into your existing drive and letting Autorun step you through. Otherwise, run the Setup program on the disc.

Hook Up the Drive

Plug the drive into its power supply and switch the drive on. Then plug it into a USB port on your PC. It doesn’t matter which USB jack you use as long as the plug fits. Audio connections are strictly optional, but if you want to listen directly to an audio CD on your new drive, you’ll need to hook it up. Connect your drive’s audio output to the Line In jack of your sound card (alternately you can just plug in your headphones). An audio connection is not necessary for ripping and burning discs.

Rip Your Tracks

Dig through your music collection, put your favorite CDs into your PC’s CD drive, select your favorite tracks using the audio capture software, and rip away. Technically, the process is called digital audio extraction (DAE). Although some older CD drives have trouble properly extracting audio files, nearly all of today’s drives do so adroitly. Of course, you can use the CD-RW drive to rip files, too. Preview your ripped files with Windows Media Player. If your music is polluted with clicks and pops, either your disc is copy-protected or you have an older drive that doesn’t support DAE.

Crunch your Files

You can save space (so much that you’ll be able to fit a dozen times more music on a disc) by converting CD audio files into MP3s—if your CD player can handle MP3 files. (Most CD-ripping programs let you rip and encode to MP3 in one step.) Although most ordinary home-stereo CD players can’t make sense of the MP3 format, a growing number of CD players—especially portable models such as TDK’s Mojo and iRiver’s SlimX—can. Make sure your software is set at the appropriate bit rate for you (bit rate determines sound quality): 64Kbps is standard FM quality on the Net; 128Kbps yields near-CD quality; and 256Kbps will please all but the most discerning ears. The higher the bit rate, the more space it takes up. If you want to burn audio CDs to play on a regular CD player, you’ll be using WAV files, which are much larger than MP3s. (You’ll also have to convert MP3 files from the Net to WAV format to play on most regular CD players.)

Program Your Tracks

Time to get creative. Once you’ve encoded your tracks, run your CD-burning software. Most programs let you drag and drop files into a playlist in the order in which you want them to appear on the disc. If you change your mind, a little more dragging and dropping (or using the plus and minus keys) can change the priority of each cut. The kind of blank CD you use determines total capacity; it’s typically 72 or 80 minutes of conventional CD audio or much, much more if you’re using MP3s (the exact amount depends on bit rate). Your disc-burning software should give you a running tally so you can fill your disc to the brim. Match the speed rating of blank CDs to the top speed of your drive.

Burn Your Disc

Click the Record button to burn your disc. Your software should take care of the rest. If you haven’t burned a CD before, tell your software to test-burn first. That will ensure that your system, software, and CD-RW drive are up to snuff before you turn a blank disc into a drink coaster. If you have a choice of writing speeds, use the top speed that passes the test. After you burn several CDs, you should be confident enough to go ahead and burn without testing first. Don’t forget to label each CD you make—use a water-based permanent marker, as solvents can damage discs. Better still, invest in CD Stomper Pro [labelcd.com] or another label-making kit and print out your own labels. Most CD-burning software also lets you make colorful inserts for your CDs’ jewel cases.

FACING THE INTERFACES

When selecting a new CD-RW drive, you have three primary choices of interface: USB 1.1, USB 2.0, and ATAPI. Choose a drive with one of the two USB flavors for versatility. You’ll be able to use it with all your PCs, including any notebook that doesn’t have its own CD drive. USB 2.0 is 40 times faster than USB 1.1—480Mbps, versus 12Mbps. ATAPI drives are potentially faster than even USB 2.0 drives and are also less expensive, but they have to be installed inside your PC. If your older PC lacks a USB port, installing an ATAPI drive will take about the same amount of work as installing a USB adapter card, but installing a USB 2.0 card will let you plug any USB-based peripheral into your PC. If you only have USB 1.1, opting for a new CD-RW drive with the 2.0 interface is still a good idea. A USB 2.0 drive will work fine with your older USB port and will come up to full speed when you get a new system with USB 2.0.

We Suggest…

IOMEGA PREDATOR

A winner on all counts: It’s compact, stylish, lightning fast, and compatible with both PCs and Macs. It can rip an entire CD in two minutes and burn one in three. The USB 2.0–based drive includes Iomega’s own HotBurn software and cables for USB and audio. $210 [iomega.com]

PLEXTOR PLEXWRITER 8/8/24U

This PC-only drive combines excellent speed, today’s most popular software (Roxio’s Easy CD Creator and DirectCD), and a USB 2.0 interface. It’s all packed into a flat design that’s barely bigger than a stack of three CD jewel cases. $229 [plextor.com]

HEWLETT-PACKARD CD-WRITER 8230E

This is a hulking drive (2.6 x 7.1 x 11.2 inches) that stands out because of its supreme sturdiness and low street price (under $100). You get industry-standard software (Roxio Direct CD), adequate speed, a USB 2.0 interface, and a handful of frills, including software for labeling and organizing discs. $233 [hp.com]