Steinberg WaveLab 3 Operation Manual

							21
Burning an audio CD 
						

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21 – 572 Burning an audio CD
Introduction
For a description of how to create a DVD-Audio disc, see “Creating a DVD-
Audio compatible disc” on page 589.
This chapter describes the basic CD burning process, as well as some 
general reference information about the CD format. 
It does not, however, describe the necessary preparations for creating a 
CD from a basic audio CD or an Audio Montage. In other words, this 
chapter assumes that the respective preparations have been completed, 
and that you are ready to execute the actual CD burning.
Please refer to the chapters “Preparing a Basic Audio CD” and “The Audio 
Montage” for a description of the respective preparations before following 
the instructions in this chapter.
Note that some procedures and menu items differ according to what 
method has been used to prepare audio tracks for burning.
Selecting a CD-R unit
Before you start writing, you must specify which CD-R unit WaveLab 
should use (for example, you can have more than one unit connected at a 
time, and switch between them from within WaveLab).
1.If you are starting from a basic audio CD, pull down the “CD” menu and 
select “Write CD”. For Montages, click the CD tab and select “Write CD” 
from the Functions pop-up menu.
2.Use the Device pop-up menu to select your recorder.
3.Click the “i” (info) button next to the Device name.
This will show you details about, and settings for, your specific CD-R unit. Click the ques-
tion mark icon in the dialog for details.  
						

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Burning an audio CD 21 – 573
Testing a basic audio CD before burning
There are two ways to check a CD before burning:
Check
The “Check” command on the CD menu scans through the basic audio 
CD and checks that the settings conform to the CD standard. For Mon-
tages this command is on the Functions menu (CD tab selected). This 
command does not access the CD-R recorder in any way, it only checks 
the setting in the list against a set of rules. These rules are described in 
the help for the Check menu item. 
This check is automatically performed when you try to actually burn a CD.
“Test writing of first track” and “Test writing of the whole CD”
These two options in the Write CD dialog (also reached from the CD 
menu for a basic audio CD and on the Functions menu for Montages) ac-
tually simulate writing of one or all tracks to the CD. This takes all settings 
into account, including the writing speed (1x, 2x, etc.), or whether a disk 
image should be rendered first (see below), etc.
• If the test fails, try writing at a lower speed.
• If the testing of all tracks is successful, you can be sure there will be no problems 
with writing the actual CD.
About the “Render to temporary file before burning” option 
(Audio Montage only)
This is an additional option in the Write CD dialog that can be used in 
case you have a slow computer and/or a lot of CPU-load intensive ef-
fects, etc. in the Montage. If this item is ticked, a disk image is created be-
fore burning, which eliminates the risk of buffer underruns.
•This option is included in the test writing if it is ticked beforehand.
Therefore if it was on when testing, it should be on when writing.
•If this option was off, and the whole CD was test written successfully, 
there is no need to activate it when burning.
It will only make the write time longer, without providing any “extra” safety. 
						

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21 – 574 Burning an audio CD
Writing a CD
Once you have set up the basic audio CD or Montage, we suggest the 
following work order for burning the CD. These steps are not mandatory 
though, just a recommendation.
Please observe the precautions indicated in the Troubleshooting chapter in 
the online documentation before writing your first CD!
1.Listen through the CD once more, from the basic audio CD window or 
from the Montage, to check that all starts, ends and transitions are OK.
2.Select Check from the CD menu (basic audio CD) or CD tab – Functions 
menu (Montages), to check that all settings conform to the Red Book 
standard.
This is done automatically before burning, but you might want to do this anyway at this 
point.
3.Insert a fresh CD-R disc into your drive.
4.Select Write CD.
5.Select the speed at which you expect to be able to burn from the small 
pop-up menu.
6.Use the test options in the dialog to check that you will actually be able to 
write the CD at that speed.
7.If you want to create a CD in the CD-Extra format, activate the CD-Extra 
Support option in the dialog.
See below.
8.Once the basic audio CD (or the Montage) has passed the test, switch to 
“WRITE” and press OK in the dialog.
If you run into problems, check the Troubleshooting chapter in the online documentation.
•In the progress dialog that appears while the CD is recorded, you will find 
an option called “Eject CD on success”. If you activate this option, the CD 
recorder will automatically eject the CD once it’s finished. 
						

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Burning an audio CD 21 – 575
CD-Extra support
When writing an audio CD as described above, it is possible to prepare it 
for CD-Extra support. CD-Extra is comparable to Mixed Mode CDs in that 
both of these formats allow for the writing of both audio and data on a sin-
gle CD. However, unlike Mixed Mode CDs, the audio on CD-Extra CDs is 
placed on the first track(s) of the CD and the data follows subsequently. 
This means that the audio will start to play immediately when the CD is 
used in a regular audio CD player, without having to skip to track 2. Also, 
when creating a CD-Extra CD, you can make use of all the functions avail-
able in the Montage.
Please be aware that some computer CD drives may not recognize CDs in 
the CD-Extra format. Plextor drives are recommended.
If you are writing an audio CD and want to prepare it for CD-Extra, do the 
following:
1.Put a checkmark in the “CD-Extra compatible” box in the Write CD dialog.
This will prepare the CD for further writing of data later. Much like a multi-session CD.
2.Write the audio CD as described above.
3.The next step is to create a CD/DVD Project containing the data you want 
to incorporate on the CD.
How to create a CD/DVD Project is described in the section “Creating a new Data CD/
DVD Project” on page 585.
4.In the Write dialog for the Data CD//DVD (described in the section “The 
Write dialog for the Data CD/DVD” on page 590), select the options 
“Track At Once” for Write Method and “Close CD” for Closing Method.
5.Click on “Write”.
The data will now be added to the CD after the audio you added previously, and the CD-Extra 
is created and finalized (no further writing is possible). 
						

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21 – 576 Burning an audio CD
Validating an audio CD after burning
With a few easy steps, you can verify that an audio CD created from an 
Audio Montage was burnt correctly on CD – i.e. you can check what was 
burnt and compare it to what should have been burnt to see if there are 
any discrepancies. Of course, you can also do this as a test before the fi-
nal burning process.
This is done with the help of CD images and cue sheets and WaveLab’s 
ability to extract full CD images complete with all tracks, all index (and 
sub-index) markers and pauses, as well as CD-Text, ISRC and UPC 
codes.
Proceed as follows:
1.Make sure that the montage is set up as it should and click the Render 
button in the Master Section.
This opens the Rendering Preferences dialog.
2.Activate the option “Create CD image and cue-sheet”.
This is only available if the options “Whole Montage” and “Create Specific file” are activated, 
and if there are CD track markers in the montage. See “Mixing down – The Render function” 
on page 527 for detailed information about rendering a montage.
3.Select a name and location for the saved file, then click OK to render the 
CD image and cue sheet.
4.Next, open the CD image you rendered by selecting “Import cue-sheet/
CD image as Audio Montage” from the Open submenu on the File menu.
The CD image opens as a new montage.
5.Initiate burning from the Audio Montage Write CD dialog, as described in 
the section “Writing a CD” on page 574.
6.When the CD is recorded, open the “Import Audio CD Tracks” dialog 
from the Tools menu.
7.Select the drive containing the CD you just recorded, select the option 
“Convert to CD-Image/Cue-sheet” and import the CD.
This will extract a complete disc image of the CD. Please see “Importing audio CD tracks into 
WaveLab” on page 594 for detailed information about importing audio CDs into WaveLab. 
						

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Burning an audio CD 21 – 577
8.Select “Compare Audio CD images…” from the Tools menu.
The “Compare CD-images / cue-sheets” dialog opens.
9.Click the folder buttons to the right of the two text fields to open the cue 
sheets you created in step 3 and step 7 above, respectively.
The cue sheet you created in step 3 describes the contents of the CD as it should have 
been burnt, and the cue sheet created in step 7 describes the CD as it was burnt.
10.Click “Compare”.
The two cue sheets are now analysed, and a comparison of the two cue sheets/CD images 
is shown in the “Result” area at the bottom of the dialog.
The audio CD format – Background information
This text aims to provide you with some background information on the 
CD format, to help you better understand how to create your own CDs. 
This is a big subject, and we will only be able to touch upon it here. For 
more information, try a text-book on the subject, or search the Internet for 
more information.
The basic CD formats
There are a number of different formats for the contents of a CD disc. You 
are probably familiar with audio CDs, CD-ROMS, and CD-I. These are all 
slightly different, although they use the same media – CD discs. The au-
dio CD specification is called Red Book. It is this standard to which 
WaveLab conforms.  
						

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21 – 578 Burning an audio CD
Red Book CD is not a real file format
Those of you who are computer literate might know about file formats. 
Please note that Red Book CD is not a real file format. All the audio on the 
CD is stored in one big chunk, one file if you will. This is different from 
hard disks, for example, where each file is stored separately. Understand-
ing the fact that all the audio is in fact one long stream of digital data is 
something that will probably help you better understand the limitations of 
the format.
The different types of “events” on an audio CD
There are three types of events that can be used to specify various sec-
tions of audio on the CD. These are:
About frames, positions, small frames and bits 
The data on an audio CD is divided into frames. A frame consists of 588 
stereo samples. 75 frames make up one second of audio. Why? Well, 75 
x 588 = 44100, and since the sampling frequency of the CD format is 
44100kHz (samples per second), this equals one second of audio. When 
you specify positions on the CD, in WaveLab, you do it in the format 
mm:ss:ff, where mm is minutes, ss is seconds and ff is frames. The frame 
values go from 0 to 74, since there are 75 frames to a second.
Technically, there is no way to specify something smaller than a frame on 
a CD. One effect of this is that if the length of a track on the CD does not 
equal a perfect number of frames, some blank audio must be added at the 
end. Another effect of this is that when you play the CD, you can never lo-
cate (position) to anything closer than a frame. If you need some data in 
the middle of a frame, you still have to read the whole frame. Again, this is 
unlike a hard disk, where you can retrieve any byte on the disk, without 
reading the surrounding data.
Event Description
Track Start There can be up to 99 tracks on one CD. Each is identified by its start 
point only.
Track Sub-Indexes On advanced CD players, you might have noted that a track can be di-
vided into sub-indexes (sometimes called only indexes). These are used 
to identify “important” positions within a track. There can be 98 sub-in-
dexes in each track. However, since it is difficult and time-consuming to 
search for and locate to a sub-index, many CD players ignore this infor-
mation.
Pause A pause appears before each track. Pauses can be of variable lengths. 
Some CD players indicate the pauses between tracks on their displays. 
						

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Burning an audio CD 21 – 579
But frames aren’t the smallest block of data on a CD. There is also some-
thing called “small frames”. A small frame is a container of 588 bits. 98 
small frames together make up one regular frame. In each small frame 
there is actually only room for six stereo samples, which means that a lot 
of space is left for data other than the actual audio. There is information 
for encoding, laser synchronization, error correction and the PQ data (so 
called because it is stored in the “P” and “Q” bits). This PQ data is of ma-
jor importance to anyone who wants to create their own CD, so please let 
us explain it in further detail.
PQ codes and WaveLab's solution to handling them
The PQ codes convey information about track start, sub-indexes and 
pauses, as described above. They also contain the timing information 
(minutes, seconds, frames). To fit all this information in, a block of PQ in-
formation is spread out over 98 small frames.
Specifying PQ codes is not complex. However, when creating a CD there 
are a number of rules you must take into account. For example, there 
should be some silent frames before each track, sub-indexes should be 
slightly early, there should be pauses at the beginning and end of the en-
tire CD, etc.
When creating CDs from an Audio Montage, these rules and settings are 
handled by the CD Wizard. In a basic audio CD, they are collected in the 
“Advanced Settings” dialog on the CD menu. If you don't change these 
settings, you will get default values that ensure your CD will work prop-
erly. On the other hand, when the situation so requires, you can adjust 
them. We recommend you leave these settings as they are, unless you 
are completely sure of what you are doing.
ISRC codes
In addition to the basic PQ codes, there is something called “International 
Standard Recording Code”, identification that is only used on CDs in-
tended for commercial distribution. WaveLab allows you to specify an 
ISRC code for each audio track.
The ISRC code is structured as follows:
• Country Code (2 ASCII characters).
• Owner Code (3 ASCII characters or digits).
• Recording Year (2 digits or ASCII characters).
• Serial Number (5 digits or ASCII characters).  
						

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21 – 580 Burning an audio CD
UPC/EAN codes
UPC stands for “Universal Product Code”. Some CD/DVD-R units allow 
you to specify this code, which is a thirteen-digit catalog number for the 
disc. Also known as EAN.
Pre-emphasis 
Pre-emphasis works by boosting (or pre-emphasizing) high frequencies 
before burning the CD, and cutting (de-emphasizing) them when playing 
back. The theoretical result of this is that the desired audio is returned to 
normal sound, but any other high frequency content (noise) in the record-
ing is reduced.
Disc-At-Once – Writing CD-Rs for duplication into “real” CDs
WaveLab only writes audio CDs in Disc-at-Once mode. There are three 
good reasons for this:
•If you want to create a CD-R to use as a master for a real CD production, 
you must write the CD-R in Disc-At-Once mode. In this mode, the entire 
disc is written in one pass, without ever turning off the recording laser. 
There are other ways of writing a CD, namely Track-At-Once and Multi-
Session. If you use these writing formats, the “link blocks” created to link 
the various recording passes together will be recognized as “uncorrect-
able errors” when you try to master from the CD-R. These links can also 
result in clicks when playing back the CD.
•Disc-At-Once mode provides more flexibility when specifying pause 
lengths between tracks.
•Disc-At-Once is the only mode that supports sub-indexes.
Writing on the fly vs. CD images
WaveLab always writes a CD on the fly, that is, it does not create a CD 
image before burning. This method makes writing CDs faster and requires 
much less disk space. However, if for some reason you need to, WaveLab 
lets you join all audio tracks in a basic audio CD into one large file that can 
be used as an “image” of the entire CD.
Using Exabyte tape drives – Creating  DDP files
Those who work professionally creating CDs may prefer not to burn di-
rectly to CD-R, but instead create a file in DDP format (according to the 
DCA standard), for example on Exabyte tape.