The CD-Rchive Handbook : Writing an Audio CD

Contents

## Writing an Audio CD

You have now a collection of .wav or .au files ready to write to CD
These files could be ones downloaded from the internet, captured from Audio CD using CD-Rchive or recorded via your soundcard from an external source.
No matter what the origin of the files, the process is the same,
except the way you specify the files to be written.

Settings
Go to the CDDA tab page.
The CD Writing Settings groupbox shows you what settings already exist on other tab pages, that will be used in this operation
The Device, Speed and Buffers settings are those you selected for data CDs and should normally be as shown.
Dummy Write should be True initially until we are sure of a good write
Common Name is the common name element you chose to lift tracks from Audio CD. If you have not used this feature it will be set to the default /tmp/track
Pad audio files to correct length requires a little explanation.
CDDA format CDs ie. Audio CDs have tracks that are multiples of 2352 bytes
If your tracks were lifted from audio CD by CD-Rchive, they will already be a valid length
If you have recorded them yourself, unless you are incredibly lucky they will not.
To overcome this, all you need do is check the Pad audio files to correct length checkbox on the CDDA tab page and cdrecord will pad out the files with silent binary zeros to the correct length.

File Specification
cdda2wav (as the name suggests) extracts tracks into .wav format. It will use a supplied or default common name element to the files, appending the track index and the file extension. eg. common_name_01.wav common_name_02wav etc.
If you have extracted your tracks to files using CD-Rchive with a specified common name element, this is how your files are stored.
All you have to do to write those files to CD is click the Use Common Name Element radio button
(having checked that the CD Writing Settings groupbox lists the correct path and common name element for your files).
You are now ready to write to CD.
If you have downloaded the files, recorded them yourself or if they are Sun format .au files you need to specify them explicitly.
Click the Specify all audio files radio button and the Track List - Paths to files listbox and associated controls will be enabled.
You can enter the full path and filename of the track 1 into the edit control directly.
Alternately you can locate it using the [Browse] button.
Click [Add] and it will be entered into the listbox
Now select track 2 by the same procedure, etc. etc.
To remove an entry, highlight it and click [Remove]
The tracks will be recorded in the order in which they appear in the list box, from top to bottom.
You are now ready to write to CD.

Once you have chosen your settings, ensure a blank CD is in your selected device and the Dummy checkbox on the Advanced tab page is set.
Switch to the Ops tab page
Click on the [Write Audio CD] button.
You will be given a last chance to cancel the operation, click on the [Write Audio CD] button again
The help browser window will be overlaid with one showing the output from cdrecord.
Pay particular attention to the output, to check if it will all fit to disc, consists of valid audio files and whether the files require padding out to multiples of 2352 bytes.
If there are problems, adjust the settings or the file list and try another dummy run.
When all is OK, uncheck the Dummy checkbox on the Advanced tab page and write for real.
When the operation is complete a click on [Home] will restore the help browser.

General:-
If you find that you need to abort the operation, click [Cancel Operation].
Please note that it does not guarantee a clean end to the operation. It kills the child process running the operation and attempts to reset the SCSI bus. Aborting during a write operation is liable to leave the CDR inaccesable and of use only as a coaster!
Audio CDs On the Fly