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Burn baby burn |
Some people reckon the electric guitar is the most important invention in the world of music; others point to the synthesiser, or the sequencer, or the multi-track recorder. I don't think I've heard anyone nominate one of the best inventions of all: the CD burner. With a cheap CD burner, you can make your own records. You don't need thousands of pounds, or a pressing plant, or anything else. You can make ten copies, or you can make a hundred; you can make singles, EPs, albums or multimedia extravaganzas. If you've got a computer, you should buy one. Buying a CD burner CD burners are described in speeds, so for example you'll see a 20/10/5 drive. These numbers are the read speed, the burn speed and the rewrite speed (in that order), so in our example you're looking at a 20-speed reader that burns CDs at 10-speed. Ignore the rewrite speed: this is for reusable discs, which are only useful for storing backups of your data. The numbers refer to a standard, single-speed CD drive, so a 10x burn speed means that creating a new CD will take roughly one-tenth of its playback time (so a 70-minute disc will take around 7 minutes to create). Speeds are getting faster and faster; I've just bought a 24-speed burner (70 minutes of music in less than three minutes) and it cost less than two hundred quid. The second I publish this article on the site, someone will announce a 30-speed burner for £150. Speed is important, but just as important is a new technology called "burn-proof". Older drives have a nasty tendency to crash if you do anything else on your PC, so for example if your screen saver kicks in mid-record, the recording is knackered. Burn-proof drives have some clever technology that prevents this. Wherever possible, get an internal drive: they're faster and more reliable than external ones. They're a lot cheaper, too. If that isn't an option, don't even think about an external drive that doesn't use a Firewire (Macs) or USB (PCs and Macs) connection: it'll be so slow it's almost unusable. Most CD burners come with bundled software, usually Nero Burning ROM or Roxio Easy CD Creator (Mac users will usually get a copy of Toast, which does roughly the same thing). There isn't much to choose between them; they're both simple enough to learn and powerful enough to create CDs. Buying discs To make music CDs, you'll need blank CDR disks (this stands for compact disc recordable). These discs can be recorded on once, and once only; get it wrong and you'll have to chuck the disc in the bin. They're very cheap, and if you're paying more than about 70p per disk you're being stuffed. Don't buy CD-RW discs by mistake; they're twice the cost and they're useless if you want to make music CDs. Discs come in various flavours: branded and unbranded, jewel case or spindle. Branded means the disc will be covered with the logo of the manufacturer, such as TDK; unbranded means the discs are unprinted and come from a cheap factory somewhere (we've found they're less reliable than the branded ones). Jewel case means each disc comes in a standard plastic CD case; spindle means the discs aren't in any form of case, just 20, or 50 discs stuck on a spike and wrapped in plastic. The most important thing to look for is the discs' speed rating. At the moment the fastest we're seeing are 16-speed; try burning faster and you're likely to get errors. Many unbranded discs are only rated for 2-speed or 4-speed recording. Look for discs that can handle the speed of your recorder - they'll cost a little more, but they're less likely to go wrong. You'll need to buy labels, too. Unbranded discs are very thin, and the laser on some CD players (notably CD Walkmans and car stereos) goes right through the disc; putting a label on it makes it more reflective and less likely to cause problems. Branded CDs will need labelled to cover up all the logos plastered across their surface. Look for labels such as PressIT! Or CD Stomper labels; you can run these through your printer and use the supplied gadget to slap the finished label onto your disc. No matter how good your discs or how good the labels, bear in mind that some CD players will simply refuse to play home-made CDs. Most players are okay, but cheap CD walkmans and bottom-of-the-range stereos tend to have crappy lasers that can't handle anything other than "proper" discs; similarly, some early DVD players can handle normal music CDs but don't play CD-Rs. Be aware of this, and be prepared to refund the money to anyone whose disc won't play. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen occasionally. And that's about it. For less than £200, you can turn your computer into a pressing plant, putting out records whenever you feel like it. Whether it's ten copies or a hundred, each disc (including labels) won't cost more than about a quid; even if you sell it for £2, you're making a tidy profit. And unlike going to a pressing plant and spending thousands of pounds on manufacturing, if your record doesn't sell, you're not stuck with a huge overdraft and a garage full of unwanted CDs.
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