Once More Into The Fire

Welcome back you pyromaniacs! You are not content with just knowing how to 
write audio and data CDs, are you? No! You want to know how to write 
bootable CDs, how to write Hybrid CDs that work on both Macs and PCs. You 
want to know how to squeeze more than 74 minutes of audio onto a single 
disc. If that's what you want, then you are definitely in the right place. 
But before we start with the fun stuff, let's take another look at the 
technical side of the CDR, the power behind the magic. 

How It All Works

In the Guide to CD Burning Part 1, I gave the impression that there was a 
single layer on the CDR disc, and that's where the data is written. That 
description is, unfortunately, something of an oversimplification. In 
reality, there are actually four different layers present in a CDR disc: 

The first layer, the one closest to the label side, is a clear plastic 
layer, which is in fact where the label of the CD is printed. Another 
function of this layer is to act as a protection for the gold layer. 
The layer beneath the plastic layer is a gold colored layer. This is real 
gold. The primary purpose of this layer is to reflect the laser of the 
drive. 
The layer underneath the gold layer is the dye layer, where the actual data 
is recorded. 
And at the bottom is another clear plastic layer, which acts as protection 
for the dye layer. 

At this point, allow me to make a slight digression to address a question 
which many people have asked: Why do CDRs have different colors? The 
question can be easily answered by looking at the middle two layers, the 
reflective and the dye layer. The reflective layer is usually one of two 
colors, either gold, or a silver alloy mixture. The dye layer can also have 
different colors, depending on what it is made of. One common compound for 
the dye layer is cyanine, which is bluish in color. Another popular mixture 
is phthalocyanine, which is colorless, more or less. The resulting color of 
the CD is thus the color addition of the two layers. For example, 
green/gold discs combine a gold reflective layer with a cyan-colored dye, 
resulting in a gold appearance on the label side and a green appearance on 
the writing side. 

Ok, back to the main point of this section. One thing to note about the dye 
layer is that unlike the other three layers, which are smooth, the dye 
layer is pre-grooved. In other words, etched on the back of the plastic 
layer are grooves laid out in a spiral path. The dye then fills those 
grooves to form the dye layer. So why is it pre-grooved? The purpose is to 
guide the CDR laser. With this pre-grooved layer, CDR drives no longer have 
to figure out where it's burning, which simplifies it's design, thus 
lowering the price. Just think of the CD laser as a dog and the pre-grooved 
tracks as leash that guides the dog and tells it where to walk. To record 
data on to the disc, the laser actually melts the dye layer. Once the dye 
layer is melted, the lower plastic layer (which has also been heated up) 
actually flows into the hole created in the dye layer, and forms a pit. So 
then during the actual reading process the same laser reads the disc at 
lower power. At each pit, laser light reflects off the gold layer. The 
reflected light enters the laser reader, which detects the varying 
reflectance as the pits go by. 

Rainbow Colors

Whenever you are writing something that is going to be shared among 
thousands, if not millions, of people, you had better have a standard. CD 
writing is no exception. Depending on what data you are writing to a CDR, 
there is always a standard by which the CDR software must comply. 
Otherwise, the data written by one CDR will be unreadable by another. Below 
is a list of the most common standards, each of which correspond to a 
specific data type being written to the CD: 

Red Book (also known as CDDA) is used to encode audio data. 
Yellow Book is used to encode data CDs and CDXA (more on that later). 
Green Book is used to encode Compact Disc Interactives (CD-I) 
White Book is used to encode Video CDs 
Blue Book is used to encode Video CDs and CD Extras 
Organ Book is not really a standard for encoding any data. It is simply the 
physical descriptions of a CDR disc. 

So many standards and so many colors! What is a person to do? Thankfully, 
for the most part you don't have to know any of the technical details. But 
here, I will take time out to discuss Red Book, because information from it 
might help you to understand some of the other concepts discussed later in 
the article. Since what I am about to discuss is rather peripheral to the 
main purpose of this article, feel free to skip to the next section if this 
discussion is not likely to hold your interest. 

Red Book

First up is Red Book. As I mentioned earlier, it is the standard by which 
audio data is encoded. Phillips and Sony released the "red book" 
specification on Compact Disc Digital Audio System, and was adopted by the 
Digital Audio Disc Committee. It was later ratified as the IEC 908 standard 
for digital audio on compact discs. The IEC 908 standard primarily 
specifies the layout and data structure of the information area of the 
disc, which begins at the groove 46 mm from the center of the disc, 
extending to 117 mm at the edge of the disc. A Red Book compliant CD would 
story audio data in sectors, each valued at 2352 bytes, precisely 1/75th of 
a second of audio recorded at stereo 44KHz and 16bits in 2's complement PCM 
format. (So it's not actually the WAV that gets recorded. It's the WAV 
converted into a PCM format. PCM, by the way, stands for Pulse Code 
Modulation. For the pedantic, the 2352 bytes is not the amount of data 
that's actually on the CD. The 2352 bytes is the size after the data has 
undergone EMF demodulation and CIRC error correction, and after the 
subcoding stuff.) 

Beginning at 46mm is the Lead-In Area. This area stores meta-data that 
describes what kind of data is stored on the CD, the TOC, logical block 
addresses, etc. (Meta-data is information that describes characteristics of 
other data. For example, if my vitals were listed in a big book, that would 
be the data. Information such as the book is red, the ink that prints the 
data is blue, the data is written in Spanish, is meta-data.) By the way, if 
you are interested, the Lead-In area extends from 46mm from the center to 
50mm from the center. 

After the Lead-In is the program area, where the actual audio is stored. 
According to Red Book standards, there must be a pre-gap before the actual 
data. This pre-gap is simply 150 sectors of blank data (or two seconds). 
There is a pre-gap in every track. Without getting into the gruesome 
details dealing with subcodes, simply note that there is a way to change 
the length of the pre-gap, and also to store non-blank data in the pre-gap. 
Keep this last statement in mind, as it will become useful later in the 
article when we discuss the trick behind Hidden Track CDs. 

I know that I just went through a lot of technical detail. So here is a 
quick summary: 

Red Book is the standard used to encode audio data. 
Red Book specifies that there is a Lead-In which describes what is stored 
on the CD 
There is a two second pre-gap between each audio track, and also prior to 
the first track (this is why some CD players will display -00:02 seconds. 
It's the pre-gap time). 
Pre-gap lengths can be changed through changing something called subcodes. 
After the pre-gap comes the actual data stored in PCM format (converted 
from WAV), in sectors that each stores 1/75th of a second of audio data. 

Know Your File Format

We are almost through the boring part of the article. I promise! But before 
we can move on to the fun stuff, it is probably in our best interest to 
take another quick look at the different file formats that can be used on a 
CDR. 
ISO-9660: Probably the most popular file system. It was created as an 
international standard for writing CD Recordables. The Level I 
specification allows for the classic 8.3 filenames found in DOS. There is a 
Level II specification which allows for long filename support. The 
disadvantage is that it is not supported under MS-DOS. A Level III 
specification is also defined for noncontiguous storage of files, but it's 
not that important. 

Rock Ridge: Rock Ridge is an ISO 9660 extension that allows for Unix'ish 
file system support. This file system allows for mixed case, long 
filenames. It also allows for symbolic linking between files. 

HFS: Hierarchical File System is a Macintosh file system. Unfortunately, it 
is not ISO9660 based, which means it is not readable on Windows and Unix 
machines. 

Joliet: A file system created by Microsoft (who else but Microsoft) to 
support long filenames. Under non-windows systems, the short filenames are 
displayed. 

Romeo: An Adaptec Easy CD Creator file format. But, it never really caught 
on. 

A fairly nice chart detailing all the file systems can be found on 
Adaptec's web site at 
http://www.adaptec.com/tools/compatibility/cdrecfilename.html

Fun Time

Congratulations, you've survived the lecturers. Now it's time to have some 
fun. In this section, allow me to introduce to you some of the amazing 
possibilities available to you by using a CDR: 

Mix your own music CDs. In fact, you can create hidden tracks and sub track 
markers using CDRWIN scripts. 
Create your own data CDs. Not only can you create data CDs that can be read 
on a PC, you can create a Hybrid CD that's readable on both PCs and Macs. 
Create an enhanced CD that contains music and data 
Create an MPEG Video CD (VCD) 
Create a bootable CD 
Create an audio CD with 5.1 surround encoding 
Creating regular audio CDs from MP3s. 
Overburning, which means squeezing more than 74 Minutes of audio or 650MB 
on to a disc. 

Be Your Own DJ

First, a very quick review of the major points covered in the beginner's 
guide: 

CD Audio tracks are just PCM files, which are converted from WAV files. 
Writing an audio CD involves extracting the tracks from an existing audio 
CD and writing it as an WAV. 
DO NOT play the CD and record it through your sound card. The extra D-A-D 
conversion lowers quality. 
Burn from a hard drive partition to avoid buffer underrun. 
Use Disc-At-Once mode to avoid the 2 second gap. 

If you are unsure of any of the above points mentioned, feel free to read 
the appropriate section in the beginner's guide before moving on. 
Otherwise, let's get started. Since we will be doing some advanced stuff in 
this article, Easy CD Creator will no longer suit our needs, at least not 
for this particular section. Instead, we will be using a program called 
CDRWIN by Golden Hawk. First, let's familiarize ourselves with the basic 
CDRWIN interface. 

This is definitely not your typical program interface. But underneath this 
unusual interface is a very powerful program. Before I go on, I would just 
like to say that this program has many features. Thus, it is impractical 
for me to cover them all here. Since this section is focused on audio, I 
will only cover the features having to do with audio extraction and 
writing. With that said, let's have a look: 

As you can notice from the screen capture above, the main interface of 
CDRWIN is divided into 2 row of 5 buttons, each of which correspond to a 
feature. If the button images are insufficiently telling, hover your mouse 
over a button to get a description of its function. 

Since we are concerned with burning audio discs, let's first take a look at 
the audio extraction feature in CDRWIN. Click on the third button in the 
top row. Wow! What a nasty looking interface. 

But don't worry, it's really not as bad as it looks. Let me just point out 
a few of the main features. If you look at the screen cap above, you will 
notice that the important features have been circled and labeled A, B, C, 
so on. 

First, direct your attention to the part of the screen cap labeled as A. 
This is where you can choose how the audio extraction will take place. You 
can extract an entire CD into an image file and automatically create a 
Cuesheet (I will get to that later). You can also do a standard extraction 
by selecting the tracks (best suited for Audio CD). If you want, you can 
even extract by specifying the precise sectors to read and copy. And the 
last option is to simply read the disc. For now, let's choose Select 
Tracks. 

With that selected, take a look at the part on the screen cap labeled B. 
This is where you can choose which CD-ROM drive to use for the extraction. 
This is also where you specify the output file for the extraction. To 
specify the output file (image filename as labeled), you need only to 
specify the first image filename and location. The rest will be named based 
on the track number and written to the same directory as the first. 

Now you are ready to choose the tracks you want to burn (look at section C 
of the screen cap). Simply click on the tracks you need. As you do that, 
the red circle representing the selected track will have a black circled 
put around it. Also notice the color codes for each of the tracks - Mode 1 
(Data tracks), Mode 2 (Multimedia data), CDI and Audio. If you inserted an 
audio CD, you should only see red circles. You may have noticed that a 
check box labeled name tracks sequentially. Why didn't I have you check 
that before? The truth is, it's really not necessary. If it is unchecked, 
then the tracks will be labeled based on the track that's being copied. For 
example, if the first image filename you specified was 98Deg, then track 1 
extracted would be named 98Deg01, track 4 would be named 98Deg04, so on. If 
name files sequentially were checked, then track 1 would be 98Deg01 and 
track 4 would be 98Deg02, assuming it was the second track copied. 

Before we click on start, let me call your attention to some of the 
advanced settings available. It is the section labeled D on the screen cap: 

Reading Options. RAW is what you need for audio discs. 
Error Recovery. Abort is self explanatory. Ignore means that any unreadable 
sector will be replaced with some unreadable data that is generated by the 
program. Don't ask me why this is in there. It sound pointless. Replace 
will replace unreadable data with some generated readable data. 
Jitter correction will compensate for the vibration of the disc as it is 
spinning. 
Sub Code Analysis. Don't worry about this one. It's a little beyond the 
scope of the discussion. 
Read Retry Count. This tells the system how many times to retry a failed 
read operation before giving up. CD-ROM drives do not support this option. 

Now you are ready to extract. Click on start to begin. After the 
extraction, cancel out of the audio extraction window. Click on the first 
button in row one. This will bring you to the CD writing screen. 

From the CD-ROM Recorder option you can choose which drive to use. 
The Recording Information section displays data about the currently loaded 
Cue Sheet. 
Now, look at the recording options. From there you can control the speed of 
the copy process. You can also choose to use test mode. In test mode, the 
recording laser is turned off so the disc isn't actually written to. It's a 
debug mode to ensure that there are no problems with the disc. The open new 
session option opens a new session after the current one is written. This 
keeps the disc open, allowing for more data to be added later. 

There are two ways to tell the program what to write. The first is to load 
tracks. This allows you to select which files to write to the disc. If you 
extracted WAV files from an audio CD, this is what you would use. The 
second is to load a cue sheet. A Cue Sheet is like a script. Contained in 
it are a list of files to be written to the disc. After you choose the 
method you want, click on start recording. 

Now you are probably thinking "I'm going to use load track." You may wonder 
why anyone would use load cue sheet. In fact, why even use this program? If 
I wanted to do a track by track recording, I'd just go back to Easy CD 
Creator. The answer is, cue sheets provide for a powerful way to control 
how the data is copied to the disc. In the next section, we will take a 
look at how cue sheets are written and what they can do. 

Cue Sheets Overview

As I said above, cue sheets provide a new and powerful way to control how 
data is written. With the help of a cue sheet, you can: 

Control the amount of silence between tracks 
Create sub tracks. If a track has a sub track, then when you press the next 
track button on the CD, instead of skipping to the next track, the CD will 
start playing at the sub track within the current track. For example, let's 
say that a track was 6 minutes long. Unfortunately, the first 2 minutes of 
the song is a boring prelude, and every time you go to the song, you send 
10 second forward past the first two minutes. By creating a sub track at 2 
minutes into the song, all you have to do is press the next track button 
once, and the CD player will automatically start playing at 2 minutes. 
Create hidden tracks. Hidden tracks are tracks that normally wouldn't be 
played in a CD player unless you knew where it was, and specifically fast 
forward to that location. 
Create enhanced CDs that contain both audio and data. 

Now that you know the potential of cue sheets, let's take a look at how 
they are created. 

Cue Sheet Syntax

Like most scripting languages, all you need to create a cue sheet is a text 
editor. Find your favorite text editor and open a new file. Before we start 
writing the cue sheets, we need to understand its language and syntax. The 
cue sheet language is quite simple, consisting of a small list of keywords. 
Of that list, we need only need an even smaller sub set of those keywords 
for our purposes: 

FILE 
TRACK 
INDEX 
PREGAP 
POSTGAP 

If curiosity is getting the better of you, feel free to read the help file 
for CDRWIN, which lists all the keywords for creating cue sheets. Normally, 
I would probably go through each of the words, explaining their functions. 
But in this case, it is best to teach by example. So I am going to give you 
several example cue sheets and explain from there. The cue sheets should be 
very self explanatory. 

Standard Audio CD, with a WAV file for each track: 

FILE C:\TRACK1.WAV WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE C:\TRACK2.WAV WAVE
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE C:\TRACK3.WAV WAVE
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
etc. 

There are a few things to note from the above example: 

The FILE keyword appears before all other keywords listed (in fact, it must 
appear before all other keywords except the CATALOG keyword). You specify a 
file first, then a track, then an index. The syntax for the file command is 
fairly obvious. FILE <filename> <format>. The <format> parameter can take 
on the following values: 
WAVE - WAV Audio 
AIFF - Another audio format 
MOTOROLA - A type of binary data 
BINARY - the stuff we see. TXT files, documents, etc. 
Obviously we'll be dealing with WAVE And BINARY Format most often. 
Once a file is specified, a TRACK can then be specified. There must be at 
least one track per file. The TRACK command syntax is as follows: TRACK 
<number> <data mode>. The <data mode> can take on several values. But in 
our case, we'll be dealing with only two of them: 
AUDIO 
MODE1/2048 - used to write normal computer data. 
After a TRACK is specified, you can then specify one or more indices. The 
index number must be 00 or greater. To burn a normal Audio CD, your first 
index should be 01. After the index number, you must specify the starting 
time for the track. In my case, it was 00:00:00, the beginning. I could 
have very well specified 2:14:00, which would start the beginning of track 
one 2 minutes and 14 seconds into the WAV file. 
Finally, note that there is no pause area between each of the tracks. In 
other words, if the CD were burned correctly (and assuming each WAV doesn't 
have a silence in the beginning), one track would flow seamlessly into the 
next. 

Let me make one note about the time format. You may be wondering what the 
last 00 was for. After all, in 2:14:00 the 2 stands for two minutes, and 
the 14 stands for 14 seconds. What could 00 stand for? It stands for a 
special measurement called frames. Every second has 75 frames. So to 
specify 2 minutes and 14.2 seconds, I would type 2:14:15 (since 15/75 is 
1/5). So why 75 frames per second? Why not a convenient 100 frames per 
second, or even 60 would be better? The answer becomes clear if we recall 
the fact that each sector on a CD stores 2352 bytes of data, which 
corresponds to 1/75th of a second of CD quality audio (look to the 
discussion on Red Book specifications for reference, found earlier in the 
tutorial). 

In the above example we wrote the cue sheet for a standard Audio CD. 
Nothing too exciting. Now lets create another standard audio CD. But this 
time, we need a one minute gap between each track. Here is how the CD would 
change. Changes are bolded: 

FILE C:\TRACK1.WAV WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE C:\TRACK2.WAV WAVE
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 01:00:00
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE C:\TRACK3.WAV WAVE
TRACK 03 AUDIO
PREGAP 01:00:00
INDEX 01 00:00:00
etc. 

The points to get out of the above example are: 

PREGAP command inserts digital silence into a track. In our case, 1 minute 
of it. It is generated by the program. 
The PREGAP command must come after a track command, but before all INDEX 
commands. 

There is another way to achieve the same effect, and that is to use the 
POSTGAP command. The POSTGAP, like the PREGAP, must come after the TRACK 
command, but must follow all INDEX commands. 

In the previous example you learned how to generate a pregap with with the 
PREGAP command. There is another way to generate gaps, and that is through 
the index command. In all of our previous examples we always index our 
tracks starting at 01. But in fact the index can start at 00. The time 
between index 00 and 01 is also considered as pregap time. Most CD players 
will skip index 00 and go straight to index 01. So to create a two second 
pregap with the index command, here is how the cue sheet would look: 

FILE C:\TRACK1.WAV WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
INDEX 00 00:00:00
INDEX 01 00:02:00
FILE C:\TRACK2.WAV WAVE
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 00 00:00:00
INDEX 01 00:02:00
FILE C:\TRACK3.WAV WAVE
TRACK 03 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:30:00
INDEX 00 00:00:00
INDEX 01 00:02:00
etc. 

Points to get: 

Notice that INDEX 01 is now shifted to 2 seconds, and INDEX 00 starts at 
00:00:00 of the WAV file. 
There is a subtle difference between using PREGAP and INDEX 00. When you 
use PREGAP, the data generated is always digital silence. When INDEX 00 is 
used, whatever data was stored in the first two seconds of the audio file 
is written into the pregap, even if it was normal audio. 
PREGAP And INDEX 00 can be used together, as in track 3. The PREGAP 
generated 30 seconds of digital silence, followed by two seconds of 
"stuff" from the WAV file. 

So why bother with INDEX 00? PREGAP seems easier. It is. But there is a 
neat trick you can pull with using INDEX 00, and that is to create hidden 
tracks. Remember that most CD players will skip the PREGAP And go straight 
to INDEX 01. So what you can do is to store a segment of audio in between 
INDEX 00 and 01. That data would never be read by normal CD Players. But on 
some CD players (such as mine) if you press the rewind button, it will 
actually rewind into negative time. That negative time is the "stuff" in 
the pregap. Most people don't notice it because most pregaps are only 2 
seconds long. The rewind is too fast. But if the pregap were a lengthy 2 
minutes, then you will see the time go negative. If you release the rewind 
button, the CD player will actually play the stuff in the pregap index. And 
there is your hidden track. Unless some one knew that there is data before 
a track, they'd never hear it. The CD player would just skip over index 00. 
Note that the hidden track technique can not only be applied to hiding 
audio data, it can also be used to create an enhanced CD that contains both 
data and audio by hiding the data in the pregap. Unfortunately, we cannot 
do that with CDRWIN. But it is a possibility with other programs. 

Let's continue with our discussion of using indices. We can create many 
indices under a single track, up to 99 indices. The purpose is to create 
sub tracks within tracks. When you press the next track button on the CD 
player, the CD player actually jumps to the next thing in the table of 
contents. In most cases, that would be index 01 of the next track (Index 00 
is actually not stored in the table of contents). But if there happened to 
be more than one index to a track, the CD player would jump not to the next 
track, but to the index subindex within the current track. So let's look at 
the cue file: 

FILE C:\TRACK1.WAV WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
INDEX 00 00:00:00
INDEX 01 00:02:00
INDEX 02 03:00:00
INDEX 03 05:30:00
FILE C:\TRACK2.WAV WAVE
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 00 00:00:00
INDEX 01 00:02:00
INDEX 02 04:00:25
FILE C:\TRACK3.WAV WAVE
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 00 00:00:00
INDEX 01 00:02:00
etc. 

Since no new syntax is introduced, I will forgo the point-by-point 
summaries. Notice that track one now has two additional sub indices. And 
track 2 has one more sub index. When you press the next track button in 
track one, it will first jump a point 3 minutes into the track. Press next 
track again, and it will jump to 5 minutes and 30 seconds into the track. 
On track 2, press the next track button and it will jump to a point 4 
minutes and 1/3 of a second into the track (remember 75 frames per second). 

A friend comes to you and says that he wants to create a CD that whose 
tracks flow together from song to song with no stops in between. He tells 
you that cutting the big 650 meg WAV file into separate tracks, and making 
sure they all flow together is too difficult. You said you could solve his 
problem in six letters - CDRWIN. You proceed to tell him that CDRWIN can 
write a single WAV file into multiple tracks like so: 

FILE C:\FULLCD.WAV WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 01 04:31:00
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 08:32:00
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 10:58:00
etc. 

Absolutely astounded, your friend gives you a million dollars (or at least 
a big thank you). 

Lastly, let's see how we can write MP3 files into standard audio tracks. 
There is really not much to it. You first need to decode the MP3 file into 
a WAV. The most popular way is to use Winamp's built in disc writer 
functionality: 

First, open Winamp. 
While with Winamp's main window in focus, press Ctrl + P to bring up the 
properties menu (right click would also work). 
From there, choose Output. 
From output, choose the disc writer plug-in. 
The plug-in will now ask for a directory in which to store the output 
files. Choose a directory and click on Ok. 
Back out of the properties dialog box. 
Load your MP3s and have them decoded into WAV. 

After the MP3s are decoded to WAV, you can now record it onto a CD 
following the instructions above. 

Writing 5.1 Surround Sound to a CDR

Here is something that will impress your friends - writing some surround 
sound audio into an audio CDR. "How is that impressive", you ask. "After 
all, isn't it just like writing normal audio CDs?" The answer is no. The 
file format used for Dolby Digital AC3 format is quite different. To fully 
appreciate the elegance of writing 5.1 surround to a CDR, you will need to 
read up on AC-3 standards and audio remixing. Suffice it to say that if you 
asked the professionals, they will tell you there is no cheap way of 
writing AC3 audio to a CDR. 

As always though, someone smarter always comes up with a solution. That 
someone is Mike Sokol of EQ Magazine. The material discussed below is 
derived from his excerpts. You can read the articles at 
http://www.soundav.com/letter.html. 

As you all may well know, a 5.1 AC-3 audio streams consists of 5 channels 
of audio (Left, Center, Right, Left Surround, Right Surround) and one 
subwoofer channel, more properly known as the LFE, low frequency effects 
channel. To create a 5.1 audio stream, you cannot use a simple WAV file as 
it does not have any implementation for surround sound. Instead, what you 
will need to do is to store the audio for each of the six channels in its 
own WAV file and then encode those six wave files into an AC3 stream and 
write that to the CD. The AC3 file will have a WAV extension, but will not 
have the content nor structure of a normal wave file. If played on a 
standard CD player without the decoder, it will produce loud, obnoxious 
sounds that could potentially damage your speakers. 

Are you ready? Let's do it! 

The first thing you need to do is to download Soft Encode by Sonic Foundary 
- http://www.sonicfoundry.com/ - which will encode the 6 wave files for 
you. The full version of the software costs about 1,000 dollars, a little 
steep for your normal consumer. Luckily, there is a demo version which you 
can download and use. The downside (and you knew that there is always a 
downside) is that you cannot actually encode the file. That feature is 
disabled. But let's not let that stop us. Maybe we can't encode, but we can 
still have some fun. 

When you open Soft Encode, you should arrive at a screen similar to the one 
shown in the screen cap. Now click on the File menu and choose open. Here 
is where you can choose to open the six (or less) WAV files you need to 
encode. Simply select them one after another. After you select them, click 
on open. Now your screen should appear something like the this screen cap. 

Notice that now there are six tracks (or however many files you opened). 
Each of them represents a channel. To select which wave file corresponds to 
which channel, you will have to use the little diagram I have circled in 
red. The diagram consists of 6 boxes. In any given one, five of them are 
black, and one white. Those six boxes represent the channels. The white one 
is the current channel to which the file is assigned. So if the box on the 
lower right side of the diagram is white, that means the file will be 
playing through the back right speaker. Note, however, that the box in the 
center of the diagram is not the center channel. It is the LFE channel, in 
other words the subwoofer channel. 

After you assign the files to the different channels, you are ready to save 
the file. Click on File - Save As Wave. Now if the program had been the 
full version, you would have been presented with a dialogue box from where 
you could adjust what format to encode it to and such. Choose 3/2 and 448 
for the bit rate. Encode the wave and write to your audio CD. And that's 
it. Once the CD is played in a DVD player with AC3 decoding, you should 
hear the surround channels. One note though, since this is a make shift 
technique, some DVD players will not play them, notably the pioneer DVD 
players. But it works on a majority of the players. So if you ever wanted 
to impress friends, this is the trick to pull. 

Creating Your Own Data CDs

Now that we know how to write audio CDs, let's move on to writing data CDs. 
In this section, I will first go over writing basic data CDs, then move on 
to writing hybrid CDs that work in both Macs and PCs, and finally conclude 
with writing enhanced CDs and bootable CDs. The program we will be using is 
Nero Burning ROM. Since basic concepts and file formats have already been 
covered in the beginner's guide as well as earlier in this tutorial, I will 
thus dive straight into explaining the program. If you feel the need to 
review any of the concepts, do so by all means. Let's get acquainted with 
our program. 
Once you start Nero Burning Rom, the first thing you will see is a wizard 
that attempts to guide you through the process. For now, let's cancel that. 
Instead, go into the file menu and choose New. At this point you should see 
a dialog box like this: 

Take a look at the section labeled A. This is where you choose which type 
of CD you want to burn. ISO means a normal data CD. Mixed Mode CD is what I 
call enhanced CD, which contains both audio and data. CD-Copy is a way to 
make an exact duplicate of a CD, data or audio. If you scroll down the 
list, you'll see options like Bootable CD, Hybrid CD (readable on both Mac 
and PC), UDF formats and UDF/ISO hybrids. The UDF format may be unfamiliar 
to you, and with good reason. It is not a format supported by CDR drives. 
Instead, it is the format preferred by CDRW and DVD drives. The format was 
designed to handle large file sizes and to minimize the necessary changes 
if a file needed to be added or deleted. Since this guide primarily focuses 
on writing CDR discs, I will not discuss the UDF format any further. A 
definition is included simply for completeness. 

Let's write a normal data CD. So select CD-ROM (ISO) from the left hand 
side. 

Now take a look at the part on the screen cap labeled B. These tabs 
represent the different groups options available to you, based on your 
selection of the type of CD you are writing. Click on the File Options tab 
(3rd one). Now you should see several groups of options. Refer to the 
screen cap for confirmation. 

The section of the screencap labeled C1 is where you can choose the format 
used to write the CD. Your best bet is to use ISO Level 1 for maximum 
compatibility. As mentioned above, while ISO Level 2 allows for long 
filename support, it is not supported under DOS and Win 3.1. If you must 
have long filenames, then check the Joliet checkbox in the part of the 
screencap labeled C4. This will create a secondary parallel directory 
listing with long filenames. Win 9x and NT will read that directory listing 
while older systems will read the 8.3 filenames from the ISO directory 
listing. 

Now look at the section labeled C2. From here you can set what mode the 
tracks are written in. Mode 1 is what normal CD-ROMs are written in. It has 
the widest compatibility. Mode 2/XA is a special mode for writing 
multimedia CDs, such as a Video CD. In most circumstances, leave the Mode 
on Mode 1 as Mode 2 CDs cause problems with older CD-ROM drives. 

In section C3, you can change the character set used to describe the 
filenames. This determines what "symbols" can be used in a filename. This 
is analogous to saying that a filename can use the whole range of letters 
found in French, or perhaps Greek. Obviously the two character sets are 
different (French vs. Greek). In our case, the three available options are: 
ISO 9660, DOS and ASCII. The differences between the three formats are 
subtle. Most often, you will not run into a situation where the differences 
matter. Thus, for maximum compatibility, leave the character set on 
ISO9660. 

Moving on to section C5, this is where you can relax the ISO9660 standards, 
such as allow for more a directory depth of more than 8 levels. But be 
warned, some systems may not read the CD-ROM correctly if the standard is 
relaxed. This naturally leads us to section D. Pay attention to this bottom 
area. If you have selected an option that could make the CD-ROM unreadable 
on some systems, a warning message, like the one shown, will appear. 

With all the options set, you are ready to select your files. Once you 
click on new, you should see two windows open up. 

On the left hand side is whatever is currently in your CD. On the right is 
a view of the files on your system. Simply drag and drop whatever files you 
need into the left side. Notice the blue bar at the bottom of the screen, 
which indicates how much space is still available. 

Once you are done selecting your files, click on the Write CD from the File 
Menu. This will bring you the following screen. 

From this screen, you can change some of the settings for writing the disc. 
Most of the options are self explanatory. Don't use disc-at-once unless you 
won't be adding any more sessions to the disc. The option is most useful 
for Audio CDs, as it eliminates the 2 second gap problem. One nice feature 
that Nero has is caching. Under the options box, you can choose to cache 
small files. By default, it is enabled. You should leave it as is because 
caching will significantly decrease your chances of getting a coaster, 
especially for writing small files and files on slow mediums like CD-ROMs 
and floppies. God forbid that anyone would actually try to burn a file from 
a floppy! Once you are done, click on Write CD. One thing I should mention 
is that don't finalize the CD until all of your sessions are written. Once 
a CD is finalized, no additional files can be stored. But once you are sure 
you won't be adding any more sessions, do finalize the CD. Some older CD-
ROM drives have a hard time reading non-finalized discs.

Mixing Music and Data

Now that we are masters of both data and audio CDs, let's put it all 
together and create an enhanced CD that has the best of both worlds. As I 
had mentioned before, there are three types of enhanced CDs. Mixed Mode (CD 
XA) puts the data first, then the audio. CD Plus is a multi-session CD that 
puts the audio first, then the data. And hidden track CDs put the data in 
track 1's pregap area. Now the question is, does it really matter which 
method we use? The answer is yes. The reason is for compatibility with 
older and even some of the more recent CD-ROMs. Old CD-ROMs will look at 
the last session for data. Most audio CD Players will expect to find audio 
on track 1, session 1. If it doesn't, it will assume that the disc is not 
audio. So the logical choice seems to be CD Plus. 

To write CD Plus discs, we will go back to using CDRWin. Since the CD Plus 
format requires that a disc have two sessions, you first need to create a 
cue sheet for the audio data. Once the cue sheet is created, write it into 
the first session of the disc using the record function. Be sure to select 
the Open New Session option in the recording window before you start. 
Otherwise, you won't be able to add another session to the disc, which will 
prevent you from recording the data part of the disc. 

Now let's move on to writing data discs. To write the data section of the 
disc do the following: 

Back out of the Recording dialogue box. 
Click on the 4th button in the first row. It's caption should be File 
Backup and Tools (Take a look at the screen capture) 
Within the tools dialogue box, choose the option Record Directories and 
files directly to an ISO9960 disc from the drop down menu in the section of 
the screen cap labeled A. Note that if you already have an ISO disc image, 
you can also choose the appropriate option to use that instead. If you know 
what an ISO9660 image file is, the options in the drop down should be 
fairly self-explanatory. If you don't, then just use what I mentioned 
above. 
The part of the screen cap labeled B is where all the files are listed. 
Notice that I circled the text (use drag and drop). I bring this to your 
attention because it is much easier to drag and drop your files from an 
explorer window than it is to add it through a dialogue box. 
If you'd like, you may also choose to change your file options in part C of 
the screen cap. The defaults should work fine. 
And finally, click on Start to begin recording. 

And you are done. That's that. 

Now, let's look at writing a CD XA disc, putting the data first, and then 
the audio. There are two major differences between CDXA and CD Plus. One of 
them is the placement of the data section of the disc, as I have mentioned. 
Another subtle difference is that while CD Plus is a multi-session disc, CD 
XA is not. CD XA discs can be written in one session. Simply place the data 
in track 1 and all other audio tracks following it. The simplest way to do 
this is to create a cuesheet. An example cue sheet is provided below: 

FILE C:\MYDATA.ISO BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2048
INDEX 01 00:00:00
POSTGAP 00:02:00
FILE C:\MYAUDIO.WAV WAVE
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 05:50:65
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 09:47:50


Since I have already extensively covered writing cue sheets, I won't go 
into detail here, except to say that when you are combining data and audio 
tracks, there is a mandatory 2-second post gap after the data track. Other 
than that, everything else should be pretty clear. 

Video Discs

Now that we've done integrating both data and audio, why not go one step 
further? Let's put together data and video. When you integrate both data 
and video onto a CD, you are creating a CD-I disc. CD-I is a bigger 
umbrella term for a CD that stores special multimedia files and such. There 
are some substandards defined under the CD-I term for VCDs, Karaoke CDs, 
etc. The Video CD Standard (defined by White Book) allow for more data to 
fit into a CD than is possible if the data were stored on a Data CD. It 
also allows for interactive selection of content. The reason is that in a 
Video CD, certain bit errors are tolerable in that they will not degrade 
the quality of the movie noticeably. Thus, some of the error correction 
mechanism implemented in the data CD standard is removed. That extra space 
is thus available to store more movie stuff. In the end, a video CD can 
store 13% more than a standard data CD. 

A Video CD is composed of several Mode 2 CD XA tracks. The first track on 
the CD is actually a standard Mode 1 track. This is necessary to store the 
ISO information so that the CD is viewable on the computer. The tracks 
after track 1 store the actual movie files and such. Those are Mode 2 
tracks with 2324 bytes per block, as opposed to the 2048 bytes for normal 
mode 1 tracks (hence 2324/2048 yields 1.13, or 13% gain). 

A VCD comes with several standard directories: 

VCD: information about the available tracks and how they shall be played 
EXT: contains info that tells a CDI player how to play the disc. 
CDI: this directory contains the Philips CDI application and it's support 
files. 
MPEGAV: this is where all the movie files are stored. 

Note that even though CD-I standards allows for interactive menus for VCDs, 
Nero doesn't support that feature. If you must have interactive menus, use 
Adaptec Easy CD Creator's Video CD Creator program. Having said that, let's 
write our first Video CD: 

First create the MPEG you need, or download it from you know where. 
Click on File - New from Nero 
In the New File dialogue box, choose Video CD from the left hand side. 
You can leave all the settings the way they are. 
Click on New 
At this point, you should see two windows. On the left hand side is your 
Video CD compilation windows. The top portion refers to the ISO section of 
the disc, the part that stores the normal computer files. The bottom 
portion displays the number of MPEG tracks available. On the right hand 
side, you should see a file browser window from which you can drag and drop 
the files you want to record. Note that if you drag an MPEG file into the 
upper portion of the Video CD window, it will not be recorded as a video 
track. You must drag and drop it into the lower portion. 
Once you are done, click on the record button (the icon on the toolbar with 
two CDs on it). 
Viola, you are done. 
 
Bootable CDs

If you are like me, then 90% of your computer is probably betaware. More 
often than not (MUCH more often in my case), your system ends up crashing. 
What you need is a quick way to restore everything. Here, your CDR drive 
can also help you. With a CDR drive, you can create a bootable CD that can 
restore everything for you, much like the ones that come with Dell, IBM or 
any number of PC retailers. If you've used one of those disks, you'll know 
that once you put the CD into the CD-ROM drive, the system will 
automatically boot off the CD-ROM, much like how it boots off a floppy 
disk. Once booting is complete, the system will automatically start to 
restore your files. 

How is this accomplished? There are three basic parts to a CD of this kind: 

A bootable image on the CD, so that a basic operating system can be loaded 
from the CD. 
A program that will automate the restore process on the CD. 
A single data file, or a set of data files, which contains your system 
data. 

The bootable image is created by the CD writing program. In our case, Nero 
Burning Rom will do the job. In order for Nero to create the bootable 
image, you will need a bootable floppy on hand. Nero will then read the 
bootable floppy and compile the image file from there. One thing to note is 
that even though you are booting from a CD ROM drive, your system will not 
be able to access the CD-ROM unless you install DOS level drivers. What I 
just said may seem like a contradiction, but it is true because when you 
boot off the CD, your system treats the CD-ROM drive as a floppy (unless 
you use hard disk emulation, which not all systems support.) In fact, what 
happens is that your A:\ drive will become the CD floppy, and your actual 
floppy is shifted to B:\. In this situation, only the data written as a 
part of the boot image is accessible. To access the rest of your files, you 
must load DOS drivers. The easiest way to make a bootable floppy with CD-
ROM support is to create a rescue disk using Windows 98's Add/Remove applet 
in Control Panel. Once the basic bootable files are created for you, you 
can go ahead to edit the autoexec.bat and config.sys as you see fit. (I 
will briefly cover multi-boot configurations in the proceeding section. But 
first, allow me to go over the last two parts of a bootable CD.) 

Besides a bootable image, you will also need a program that will automate 
the restore process. One of the most popular programs is Norton's GHOST. 
This program will both create the image file and restore from it. It is 
ideal for large scale system replication. Look on PC911 for a tutorial on 
using ghost. 

Write The Bootable Image

First, prepare a Win98 boot disk, or any boot disk with CD-ROM support. 
Then follow these instructions: 

In Nero Burning ROM, create a New CD Layout (File - New) 
Now insert your boot disk into Drive A. 
Choose Bootable CD from the left hand side column of the File - New 
dialogue box. 
Now click on New and you are ready to add the rest of your files to the CD. 

Just to drive a point home, notice the part of Expert settings inside the 
red rectangle. From there, you can see that the bootable CD must in fact 
emulate a disk drive. Thus, by default, if the CD emulates a floppy, then 
you must load DOS CD-ROM drivers. 

A Brief on Multiple Configurations

As of DOS 6.0, the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files supported multiple 
boot configurations, allow the user to custom load a set of drivers for a 
particular task. This is the same menu you see with Windows 98's boot disk. 
In this section, I will quickly cover the basics behind reading and 
understanding multiconfig config.sys/autoexec.bat files. Since you'll most 
likely be dealing with Win98's boot disk, let's take it's autoexec.bat and 
config.sys files as our example. 

Autoexec.bat file

@ECHO OFF
set EXPAND=YES
SET DIRCMD=/O:N
set LglDrv=27 * 26 Z 25 Y 24 X 23 W 22 V 21 U 20 T 19 S 18 R 17 Q 16 P 15
set LglDrv=%LglDrv% O 14 N 13 M 12 L 11 K 10 J 9 I 8 H 7 G 6 F 5 E 4 D 3 C
cls
call setramd.bat %LglDrv%
set temp=c:\
set tmp=c:\
path=%RAMD%:\;a:\;%CD-ROM%:\
copy command.com %RAMD%:\ > NUL
set comspec=%RAMD%:\command.com
copy extract.exe %RAMD%:\ > NUL
copy readme.txt %RAMD%:\ > NUL

:ERROR
IF EXIST ebd.cab GOTO EXT
echo Please insert Windows 98 Startup Disk 2
echo.
pause
GOTO ERROR


:EXT
%RAMD%:\extract /y /e /l %RAMD%: ebd.cab > NUL
echo The diagnostic tools were successfully loaded to drive %RAMD%.
echo.


IF "%config%"=="NOCD" GOTO QUIT
IF "%config%"=="HELP" GOTO HELP
LH %ramd%:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001 /L:%CD-ROM%
echo.
GOTO QUIT


:HELP
cls
call help.bat
echo Your computer will now restart and the startup menu will appear.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
restart.com
GOTO QUIT


:QUIT
echo To get help, type HELP and press ENTER.
echo.
rem clean up environment variables
set CD-ROM=
set LglDrv=


This may seem scary at first glance, but let's take it one part at a time, 
and you will see that it is quite simple: 

@ECHO OFF
set EXPAND=YES
SET DIRCMD=/O:N
set LglDrv=27 * 26 Z 25 Y 24 X 23 W 22 V 21 U 20 T 19 S 18 R 17 Q 16 P 15
set LglDrv=%LglDrv% O 14 N 13 M 12 L 11 K 10 J 9 I 8 H 7 G 6 F 5 E 4 D 3 C
cls
call setramd.bat %LglDrv%
set temp=c:\
set tmp=c:\
path=%RAMD%:\;a:\;%CD-ROM%:\
copy command.com %RAMD%:\ > NUL
set comspec=%RAMD%:\command.com
copy extract.exe %RAMD%:\ > NUL
copy readme.txt %RAMD%:\ > NUL


In general, what this part of the batch file does (script file) is that it 
assigns values to a bunch of variables so that the rest of the program can 
use it. Those are the set commands. It then copies some of the vital files, 
such as extract.exe and command.com to a temporary part of your memory 
known as a RAM Drive. And that's all this part does. Simple. 

In the next part: 

:ERROR
IF EXIST ebd.cab GOTO EXT
echo Please insert Windows 98 Startup Disk 2
echo.
pause
GOTO ERROR


In the Error section of the autoexec.bat file, the system checks to see if 
a file called ebd.cab is present. This is the file that contains most of 
the vital DOS commands on your boot disk, such as format, sys and fdisk. If 
the file is found, the batch file jumps out of the error checking loop and 
proceeds. If not, it loops back to the start of the ERROR and continues 
looping until the ebd.cab file is found, or until the user forcefully 
terminates the batch file. 

If ebd.cab is found, the batch program jumps to the EXT section of the 
file: 

:EXT
%RAMD%:\extract /y /e /l %RAMD%: ebd.cab > NUL
echo The diagnostic tools were successfully loaded to drive %RAMD%.
echo.


IF "%config%"=="NOCD" GOTO QUIT
IF "%config%"=="HELP" GOTO HELP
LH %ramd%:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001 /L:%CD-ROM%
echo.
GOTO QUIT


Here is where the vital DOS commands from the ebd.cab is extracted to your 
RAM drive by using the extract command, which was copied to the RAM drive 
at the very beginning of the program. After the files are copied, the 
system then checks to see if the user chose to have CD-ROM support via the 
config.sys menu. If so, CD ROM drivers are loaded. If not, the program 
quits. 

To add your own commands so that they are executed regardless of which 
configuration is chosen, you must put those commands before the line that's 
marked red. To ensure that one of your commands is only executed if the 
user chooses to use the CD, put it in between the two blue lines. 

Now, let's look at your config.sys file: 

[menu]
menuitem=CD, Start computer with CD-ROM support.
menuitem=NOCD, Start computer without CD-ROM support.
menuitem=HELP, View the Help file.
menudefault=CD,30
menucolor=7,0


[CD]
device=himem.sys /testmem:off
device=oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
device=btdosm.sys
device=flashpt.sys
device=btcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
device=aspi2dos.sys
device=aspi8dos.sys
device=aspi4dos.sys
device=aspi8u2.sys
device=aspicd.sys /D:mscd001


[NOCD]
device=himem.sys /testmem:off


[HELP]
device=himem.sys /testmem:off


[COMMON]
files=10
buffers=10
dos=high,umb
stacks=9,256
devicehigh=ramdrive.sys /E 2048
lastdrive=z


This file is much more readable. In the [menu] section, three choices for 
the menus are defined. Each menu item is associated with a specific section 
of the file. For example, if Start computer with CD-ROM support is 
selected, the system will proceed to load stuff in the [CD] section of the 
file, after it loads the [COMMON] section. Basically, anything under the 
COMMON section is loaded regardless of which configuration is chosen. 
Everything else is pretty obvious if you've ever dabbed in config.sys 
files. 

With the understanding of these basic concepts behind multiboot startup 
files, you should be able to modify the Win98 boot disk to suite the needs 
of your bootable CD-ROM. Be sure to make sure that everything works before 
you write it to the CD. 

Hybrid CDs

So far, we've only written discs that either use ISO9960 format to be cross 
platform compatible (in other words, it runs on both Macs and PCs), or 
we've leveraged the strengths of a file system specific to a singular 
platform, and sacrificed the cross platform compatibility in the process. 
So is there a way to write a disc that can have the best of both worlds? 
The answer is yes! You can create a Hybrid CD that has both an ISO9660 file 
system, which can be read on PCs and Unix systems, and has a HFS file 
system, which is used under the Mac. In this manner, Mac users would be 
able to enjoy long filenames while PC users would still be able to read the 
disc. 

Unfortunately, to create a hybrid CD, you will need a SCSI hard drive with 
a HFS file system. Thus, for most casual users, Hybrid CDs are not an 
option, unless you are working on a Mac. But assuming that you have the 
necessary equipment, here is what you need to do: 

From File - New, choose the CD-ROM(Hybrid) from the left hand side. 
In the right hand side is a box that lists all of your HFS partitions. If 
the box is empty, that means you don't have any. 
Choose the HFS partition you need, and click on New. 
From here, drag and drop the files you need and after you are done, proceed 
to finish burning the disc. 

A few things to note about the hybrid CD. First, Nero will only write none 
shared hybrid CDs. What that means is that every file that needs to be 
visible on both file systems(PC and Mac) must be written twice, once in HFS 
and once in ISO. Also, the amount of space available to you for writing is 
less than 650 MB because the file system itself must take space to 
implement. You have approximately 640MB available on a Hybrid CD. Just keep 
these two points in mind, and you are ready to go. 

Overburning

Overburning refers to the idea of squeezing more than 650MB of data onto a 
CD. The advantages to overburning are numerous. For one, you can store more 
stuff on the CD, which makes it handy for copying games and other programs 
which are bigger than 650 MB. An overburned CD can store up to 79 minutes. 
The typical extended time is about 2 minutes though. Overburning is also a 
great trick to create a CD that can't be copied, at least not by novices. 

But as the old saying goes, nothing is for free. Overburning is no 
different. There are also an equal number of disadvantages to overburning. 
The most common problem is that the data stored beyond the normal capacity 
is not readable. On an audio CD, the situation could range from scratchy 
noises to the track not being readable at all. On a data CD, the situation 
ranges from long, repeated reads to unreadable data. A second problem that 
could occur is an error message like Write emergency or track following 
error. Thus, if you are writing in disc at once mode, then you are screwed. 
The last problem is that it may damage some CDR drives, although the 
situation is very rare. Also note that not all CDR drives support 
overburning. You must check with your manufacturer to make sure that it is 
supported. 

If after considering the pros and cons, you decided to write an oversized 
disc anyway, here is how: 

In Nero, click on File - Preferences, 
Go into the Expert Features Tab. 
Click on OK and start compiling your CD. 

Note that there is no surefire way to determine the largest oversize burn 
possible. You will have to experiment with different settings. I'd suggest 
running a burn in test mode first to see just how big it can get. 

A Few Tips

Before I conclude this article, here are a few tips for successful burning: 

Disable Screensaver. These can cause problems and ruin a disc. 
Along the same lines, turn off monitor auto shutoff. 
Disable all background programs if possible. 
Disable Auto insert notification. 
Delete useless files. You need some space to copy and burn the files. 
Defragment your hard drive if it is slowing down. 

Conclusion

The world of CD writing has changed dramatically from the when the first CD 
writers hit the market. Back in those days, it was a pain, and coasters 
were surely a part of every burning experience. But today, things are 
drastically different. CD writing has never been easier. Aided by countless 
wizards and programs that are smarter and a lot more error resistant, truly 
anyone can use a CDR drive effectively. But to become a master at the art 
of CD writing (a title which I myself cannot yet claim with a clear 
conscience), a lot of practice and dedication is still needed. It is my 
hope that the two part CD writing guides I've authored have aided you in 
the pursuit of that goal. If you have any questions or suggestions on how 
this article can be improved, feel free to drop me a line at xinli1
@uiuc.edu.


http://www.pcnineoneone.com