> Can anyone advise of good software for 'producing' a minidisc
> recording, ie;
> making them sound better, fading out etc. In general I would like to know
> what everyone does to move a minidisc recording to CD, what tools people
> use, interesting websites, etc. I'm talking about live gigs recorded via
> binaurals. I know the general idea is to record each track as a
> WAV file,
> and then to record that file to CD. And also a 5 second blank
> WAV file will
> work as a track separator on the CD.
Something like CoolEdit or Soundforge will be fine. If it's just basic
stuff, you might have a reasonable editor bundled with your soundcard - I've
got an old copy of WaveStudio that came with my SB16, Creative seem to
bundle a lot of stuff with their cards. Over here we've got magazines like
Future Music that review software and other music stuff, you might have a
local equivalent.
With recording onto the PC:
1) Cheapskate way - buy a 3.5mm to 3.5mm stereo lead, plug one end into MD
recorder, other into "line in" on your soundcard. Mute everything but the
line in, and record the lot as one big wav file (44khz, 16bit, stereo -
makes things easier later on).
2) Better way - get hold of a deck (any MD unit with a digital out) and buy
a soundcard that has digital in/out. There have been several reports of
cheap cards with digital i/o in the last couple of months - check the md-l
archives. Then just record in the same way - mute everything else, get one
big wav file.
Then open this big wav into your editor and chop it up (I tend to select a
whole track, then cut+paste as a new file) till you've got several wavs,
each one being a track. Tidy up the ends, do any fade in/out, etc. Then
start up a CDR program and create a new audio CD from the wavs you've got.
You don't need any extra wavs, separators, etc - the disc will be burned
with trackmarks where one wav finishes and the next begins. Include any gaps
that you want as silence on the end of tracks and burn the disc as
"Disc-at-Once" or DAO. You can create a similar effect by burning the disc
as "Track-at-Once", which will have 2-3 second gaps between tracks, but it's
a bit kludgier as a CD player will count -0.02, -0.01, 0.00 before the start
of a new track. Better to include the silence as part of the track.
> Any tips on CDRs? I know SCSI is generally the way to go, and hear people
> recommending Plextor CDRs. And CDR disks, all I've heard about
> that is that
> the gold ones are better - I've seen the slightly more expensive 'Audio
> CDR's, are these are con or worthwhile?
Any recorder that can manage DAO will be fine (that's just about everything
released in the last 18 months). SCSI is great, and the difference in price
is low enough to make it very worthwhile, but an IDE will do the job just as
well. As you're mastering audio CDs, CD-Text is a cool thing to have. Looks
very smart having MD-style titles scrolling past :)
Really, just go for as quick a drive as you can afford/justify. A very cheap
2x IDE drive will do audio CDs just as well as an 8x SCSI one, just take 4
times as long and use more resources as it does.
I think Nero's site (www.ahead.de) has a list of what recorder supports what
(DAO, CD-Text, etc). Although it's a bit more difficult to get used to, I
like CDRWIN (www.goldenhawk.com) for burning CDs - it also has a good
CD-Text editor.
With CDR discs there's little/no difference between them, but you may find
that some have problems in fussy CD players (car players, CD changers, old
units, etc). I've not had any problems with TDK Reflex discs. AVOID the
"audio" discs - they're designed for the consumer hi-fi recorders (more
expensive because of the smaller market) and probably won't work in a
computer CDR drive. There are some computer CDRs that are designed for audio
use - check out which is which before you buy.
--
Simon
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