Software for CD-Recording

Exact Audio Copy is by far the best CD-ripping utility available for recording bit-for-bit perfect audio from CDs. For burning CDs, you can go with the mass-market burners like Nero, CD Creator, etc. Pros use CD Architect from Sony Media Software (formerly Sonic Foundry) to burn Red Book audio master CDs. This application allows you to professionally edit the uncompressed audio files before committing them to a CD-R.

Equally important is the CD-RW drive you use. Yamaha's CRW-F1 has the best performance using their "Audio Master" technology for reliably burning CD-Rs and reducing jitter noise.

EAC gave best sound for me recorded at 2x - can be had for free at :

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

Taiyo Yuden CDRs are reliable. Can be found on the net or at ebay for about 30cents each.

Thank you Kthomas,Eric,Jeffloistarca, and Abtract7. I will look into your suggestions.

I've been using Adaptec CD-Creator which came with an external HP CD Writer plus (USB port believe it or not). Most of what I do is complilations from my CD's for travel purposes. I have been told that the media does make a difference, but have not put this to the test. Every time I burn an audio CD it is at 1x speed. The quality is very good, but not perfect. I have yet to ruin a disc--all have been made without failure.

AudioGrabber to grab the files and store on your hard drive, then Nero to burn the CD's. Burn at single speed for best results. Foolproof!

I find most of the time bad CDRs is due to either a poor quality CDR, or the result of an insufficient data stream being sent to the CD Recorder (i.e. poor performing bus transfer rates to the CD Recorder which could be caused by anything from a slow computer, or a busy I/O bus (this can easily occur with IDE bus configurations since all the I/O on both the primary and secondary bus is asynchronous.) I used to burn about 100+ CDs monthly for my job, and we used 5 different CD Recording stations. After a substantial trial and error period (and several hundred trashed CDRs), we found by using a separate SCSI bus configuration (both the CD Recorder and Hard Drive are SCSI) we were able to bring the reliability rate to near 100%. With a synchronous bus like SCSI, it's much tougher to starve the CD Recorder of data since all the drives on the bus are reading and writing simultaneously. We basically NEVER trash CDs anymore, and found you can still use the computers while the disks are burning since our data disk is separate from the system disk and our SCSI Controllers are all Bus Mastering (they all have 2 SCSI buses.) SCSI costs a lot more, but I feel it out weights the cost given how easy it is to waste time and money on blanks. The best drives we've had the most success with are Teac and Plextor. We've also used drives from Pinnacle, Mitsumi, and Sony, but we've been the most happy with the other two. I have no experience with the new TDK (IDE Velo CDR) or new Plextor (12x10x32 - SCSI based, it came our right after we bought the 12x4x32 unit), but they both list that a new "burn proof" technology you might want to try out if you continue to constantly trash discs. As for the recording software, I feel the best software package out there is Disc-At-Once from Goldenhawk Software in Merrimack, NH - www.goldenhawk.com. We use the 32-bit DOS version as it's way more powerful than the Windows version (you can build custom queue files (a.k.a. Table of Contents) such as multiple data tracks, mixed mode, etc. and perform sector reads on a scratched or slightly damaged media for data recovery), but the Windows version is just as reliable and it's much easier to use if you aren't that experienced. We've tried most of the others including Gear, CD-Creator, EZ-CD, Nero, and one other that I can't remember right now, but none of them worked as reliablely as DAO. Good luck!

I use CD Creator and/or Real Jukebox Plus. I have about a 10% "ruin my blanks" rate at 8x copying speed. I would also get a copy of Audiograbber to be sure that the copies you're making are identical copies - it has a feature that allows you to compare to music files and reports any discrepancies. In any case, 1 in 10 screwing up is worth it if you're copying at 8x or 12x speeds, just for the time savings, as long as the copies that don't screw up are identical.