Best Way to Proceed in Recording to CD?

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mwmcbroom
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2018/05/17 21:07:08 (permalink)

Best Way to Proceed in Recording to CD?

I've decided to use Sonar's built-in CD burning routine. But I've already run into one glitch and I hope to avoid any others. The one glitch I ran into is, despite doing all my mixdowns at 44.1k/16 bit (indicated, at least!), I come to find that the audio is actually 32 bits, and now I have to convert it to load the audio file.
 
I took a look at my Edit>Preferences>Audio>Driver Settings, and I see where I have my M-Audio Delta card's ASIO drivers loaded (what I want), but that below that the bit rate is set to 24 (with 64 bit precision checked), but it's grayed out, so I can't change it even if I wanted, and besides apparently my .wav files are being recorded at 32 bits anyway.
 
This is an annoyance, more than anything else, because now I have the extra step of having to convert my audio files to 16 bits. Still I'm curious what's going on, you know?
 
Except! Here's the stumbling point -- even after I go and do the Utilities>Change Audio Format to 16 bits, when I try to load this new file into Sonar's CD burner, I still get the pop-up error message telling me the file is 32 bits! Okay, what's going on here? Is the file 16 bits or 32 bits? And if it's 32 bits, even though the Sonar Interface is indicating 44.1/16, and I've just gone and saved the audio file to 16 bits, just why is this? Why is the file still 32 bits?
 
This is kinda majorly annoying.
 
But anyway, setting that stumbling block aside for a moment, I'm curious what sort of housekeeping you do prior to loading your files into Sonar's CD burning utility (assuming at this point it can even be used). What I'm thinking about doing is renaming each file in the .cwp audio directory -- or at least making a copy of it -- to the actual name of the song. Since right now, they're all bounced tracks, and indicate such in their file names. And then saving this new song.wav file name to the same directory that the .cwp file is saved to. That seems to be a fairly organized way to go about it. What do you typically do?
 
And if you have any idea how I can get Sonar's CD utility to recognize that the files are 16 bit -- or if they aren't, to indeed save them as 16 bit -- I'd be glad to "hear" from you on that, as well. Thanks!
#1

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    Cactus Music
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    Re: Best Way to Proceed in Recording to CD? 2018/05/17 21:52:29 (permalink)
    I don't think many people use it. I use Nero, I think even Windows Media player works better than the Sonar attempt. Using a proper burning program makes this easier. I think Nero cost me $16 on sale. Worth every penny,, always works. I also use it for copying DVD's etc. 

    Johnny V  
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    Focusrite 6i61st - Tascam us1641. 
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     http://www.cactusmusic.ca/
     
     
    #2
    mwmcbroom
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    Re: Best Way to Proceed in Recording to CD? 2018/05/17 22:37:22 (permalink)
    Thanks for the info. After posting the above message, I did a search here on the topic and ran across one post where the author was lauding Nero's capabilities. I have an ancient copy of Nero around here somewhere -- dating back to Win98 days, so I doubt seriously it would even work with Win7. Besides, I have no idea where it is, anyway.
     
    And, shoot, for $16 I may as well get a fresh copy.
     
    #3
    mwmcbroom
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    Re: Best Way to Proceed in Recording to CD? 2018/05/18 13:39:42 (permalink)
    Well, before investing $60+ in a 2018 copy of Nero (sorry it appears there's no more $16 Nero), I decided to see what sort of free stuff was out there. Came across CDBurnerXP, which is a product I used years ago with good results. So I guess I'll give this latest version a try and see if I can get it to do what I need.
     
    Back to the topic of housekeeping, though, how do you handle this? I've been copying (and renaming) the audio file from the audio directory to the main cwp directory for the song. Then I'll collect the audio files for the CD from the cwp directories. Just curious how others do it.
    post edited by mwmcbroom - 2018/05/18 15:19:32
    #4
    Cactus Music
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    Re: Best Way to Proceed in Recording to CD? 2018/05/18 18:53:15 (permalink)
    I don't see what your doing? 
     
    You mix your song until it sounds the way you want it and you export it
    I export as a 44.1/ 16 for CD burning
    I then Master the song in a wave editor and then burn it with Nero. 
     
    And there are a lot of free Wave editors that also include CD burning. 
     

    Johnny V  
    Cakelab  
    Focusrite 6i61st - Tascam us1641. 
    3 Desktops and 3 Laptops W7 and W10
     http://www.cactusmusic.ca/
     
     
    #5
    Cactus Music
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    Re: Best Way to Proceed in Recording to CD? 2018/05/18 18:53:15 (permalink)
    I don't see what your doing? 
     
    You mix your song until it sounds the way you want it and you export it
    I export as a 44.1/ 16 for CD burning
    I then Master the song in a wave editor and then burn it with Nero. 
     
    And there are a lot of free Wave editors that also include CD burning. 
     

    Johnny V  
    Cakelab  
    Focusrite 6i61st - Tascam us1641. 
    3 Desktops and 3 Laptops W7 and W10
     http://www.cactusmusic.ca/
     
     
    #6
    Voda La Void
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    Re: Best Way to Proceed in Recording to CD? 2018/05/18 19:21:14 (permalink)
    mwmcbroom
    Back to the topic of housekeeping, though, how do you handle this? I've been copying (and renaming) the audio file from the audio directory to the main cwp directory for the song. Then I'll collect the audio files for the CD from the cwp directories. Just curious how others do it.



    I keep mine in the song folder, but not in the audio directory.  For instance, I have a song called The Darkening and it's in its own folder like every other song.  The folder only contains the project file and then the audio folder for the song.  I export at 44.1/16, like Cactus Music above, into the song folder.  I also put any MP3 versions and really anything to do with the song in the song folder.  If I have multiple versions (usually happens throughout the mixing process as I listen and test on various stereos) then I'll number them v1, v2 and so on.  
     
    If I'm reading you correctly it sounds like you're doing the same thing.  

    Voda La Void...experiments in disturbing frequencies...
    #7
    SonicExplorer
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    Re: Best Way to Proceed in Recording to CD? 2018/05/18 19:28:35 (permalink)
    For bit conversion I've always used this freeware and had excellent results, to my ears it sounds really good....
     
    http://www.voxengo.com/product/r8brain/
    #8
    tlw
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    Re: Best Way to Proceed in Recording to CD? 2018/05/18 19:44:02 (permalink)
    Windows media player or itunes are more than capable of burning an audio cd. No need to buy software just for that.

    Sonar Platinum 64bit, Windows 8.1 Pro 64bit, I7 3770K Ivybridge, 16GB Ram, Gigabyte Z77-D3H m/board,
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    #9
    mwmcbroom
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    Re: Best Way to Proceed in Recording to CD? 2018/05/19 15:58:42 (permalink)
    Thanks for all the responses, guys. I discovered that when I import the .wav files into Sonar, I can then convert them to 16 bit from 32 bit -- even though they were supposed to be 16 bit already. However, the burning software I'm using doesn't seem to be bothered by this discrepancy. Far as I know it's burning Redbook stuff.
     
    I've decided to try the freeware CDBurnerXP. Just burned my first CD with it. It's reasonably full featured. I can include my name as the Composer, at least, on each song. It has the capability to print CD labels. I tried one so far, with mixed results. Not especially robust. I don't see a way to include album notes, for example, which should contain copyright and publisher info, at a minimum. Maybe I've overlooked them.
     
    Voda la Void, I'm doing close to the same as you, except for putting all the songs in a song folder, I'm leaving each song in its own folder along with the .cwp file. It's a trivial matter to grab the .wav file from each folder, then drag into onto the CD workspace.
     
    I've just burned my first CD with CDBurnerXP. Let's see how well it works. Windows Media Player boots when the CD is inserted. The tunes sound good so far, once I set up WMP's graphic eq. I note WMP sees it as "unknown artist" and "unknown album" and it's just showing track numbers instead of track names. Hrm . . . I thought I'd filled that stuff out in CDBurnerXP's data input areas.
     
     
    #10
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