CD Burning: What Route Should I Go?

Here's my two cents.

1. Get a new computer with a built-in cd burner.

2. Get the Freeware (yes it's free) EXACT audio copy on the internet.

There are major high-end audio manufacturers who use this method over anything else for compilation demos at CES and in-house for their own use, even above stand-alone ''professionnal'' audio burners.

This freeware is a bit complicated, but when you have learned all of it's parameters and possibilities, you can tailor the sound and actually remove some of cd's inherent faults with this incredible software. And best of all, it's free.

Kevziek,
I get my Mitsui's for excellent prices at American Digital Services. Their number is 1-888-872-3287. Have fun!

Kevziek,

You should be able to burn CDs with your computer, but I think you'll need to buy an external burner, a firewire PCI card and Toast in order to do it. What OS are you running?

I've had sketchy experiences with the compatibility of some add on PCI firewire, USB, video, SCSI cards in different models of Macs over the past seven years. Compatibilty can be hit or miss, and it'll be tougher with an older machine.

For burning CDs and DVDs I have had success with Macs of varying vintages.

I have a 1996 Powermac 8500 with processor and video accelerator cards, an internal Firewire/USB PCI card, and an external burner and Toast and it runs fine. I use a Dual 1.25GHz with a built-in SuperDrive at work which runs great. And I do all my iMovie and iDVD projects on a suped-up Apple Cube with an external LaCie SuperDrive which allows me to burn my Tivo content onto custom made DVDs.

It can be done with an older machine, but I think your idea of getting a $799 eMac is a much better solution. It comes with a built-in combo drive that will allow you to burn CD-Rs and view DVDs, so the only thing you might have to buy is a copy of Toast. Another thing you may have to worry about is getting used to using the new OS 10.3 Panther operating system.

Have fun!

I agree with Sonicbeauty...Exact Audio Copy is a great FREE program that copies quickly to the hard drive and makes high quality copies:

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

Does anyone know of a free or inexpensive program that will allow you to burn a CD at 1x speed? The programs that I can find all burn at 2x or higher speed. I've found the lower the burn speed the better quality the CD copy.

I just bought an external NEC DVD/CD burner off FleaBay and I'm quite pleased with the product. It handles virtually every type of media available (CD/CD-R/DVD-R/DVD+R/DVD-RW/DVD+RW) and comes with both USB and Firewire interfaces and cables. All you need to add is a card to your Mac and you're good to go.

Here's a link to the same type of unit I bought - for only $119!!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=44955&item=4132291639&rd=1

As for software, EAC is quite good, but a bit of a pain to use. If you're looking for something a little easier to use and with much more capability, take a look at Feurio, it ROCKS!

www.feurio.de

And, for those folks bashing Windows-based PCs - get a clue, fellas. The reason that Windows PCs get attacked more often by viruses is because Windows is present on approx. 95% of the desktops in the world. What hacker is gonna waste his time making a Mac-only virus for a measly 5% hit rate? EVERY OS is vulnerable to attack, Windows is just the biggest target.

-RW-