Help - Producing higher quality audio CD's??

[fishbob]

A good program that I use when doing audio recording is "Cool Edit." Within the program is a multichannel mixer that boosts the signal right to the "0" limit without clipping. It will calculate the necessary increase and preset it to give the absolute best reproductions possible. Infact I have a digital am/fm receiver that is loaded through my sound card (of all things) and I listen to the radio here in Spokane that plays back to back jazz, swing, R&B, without the DJ talking over the songs and let my computer go for hours on end. When I feel I want to quit I go through and cherry pick the songs the DJ played. Once I have done that I (through "Cool Edit") find a place in the broadcast that has dead air and select this small segment and the program does a read on this wave sign and I tell it to go through and remove this signal wave. You can select how much you want to remove of this sign wave to (i.e. 10% 40% 100%). I'm serious when I say I have CD quality music without distortion normally caused by that FM carrier sound in the background. I swear by this program. It is very cool. It can be a little overwhelming at first but once you get a feel for the interface "it rocks." It also convert to and from many audio file formats and it will do batch processes. Give it a try, I think you will like it.

[Biff]

You could try converting to wav using musicmatch jukebox, seems to work good for me. You can download a demo at http://musicmatch.com/home/

[lec169]

try Nero 5.0, it will burn about anything

Lec

[Roy]

MP3 is a data compression scheme that throws away quality in favor of file size. Once it's gone ... .

[atari2000x]

First thing to do after downloading is do a defrag of the harddrive where you got your music in before "burning"....Always burn at a lower rate (1x-4x)....Always have "error correction" turned on in your "burning program"(if this option is available)....There is a feature in NERO 5.0 similiar to a "noise reduction" which eliminates any noise from a certain "-db" level....For higher quality bit rate: 160-256 is the "ideal" rate, anything higher and the signal tends to "fall off" and higher "noise" creeps in....You can eliminate some "pops" and "cliks" from WAVS by converting to a higher MP3 format...Also, the less times you convert from one format to another also preserves signal quality(the more conversions, more the signal degrades)....Found out that some of those "pops" can be traced to the CD-ROM(mechanical noise that finds it way to the CD)....Hope this helps......

[Woodcycl]

I have been experimenting with and learning how to burn audio CD's for the past few weeks to only end up a little frustrated. The quaility has not gotten any better as I've educated myself on the processes & procedures.

Here's my setup and my process for creating my audio CD:

Teac 4/4/32 CDRW
EZCD 4.03a bundled
Normalizer
Remixer Converter v1.2
Napster
Maxell & TDK CDR media (74 minute)

1) I only download 192 to 320 bit rate MP3's using Napster.
2) I listen to each MP3 beginning to end to ensure a 'naked ear' quaility.
3) Choose my songs for a given CD
4) Use Remixer Converter v1.2 to convert from MP3 to WAV.
5) Use Normalizer to normalize the volume.
6) Use EZCD to create a CD image
7) Use EZCD to create CD from CD image using Disk-at-once w/ test and create CD turned on.

I don't seem to be getting 'near' CD quality sound from my custom CD's based on the process above.

Any suggestions on how I can improve the quality? Different software, IDE Cable, different media, etc?

I appreciate your help.

-b

[Woodcycl]

It appears that running MP3's thru the Remixer converter to WAV files, may be the culprit. I listened to a 320 bit rate 'Breathe' MP3 from Faith Hill and it sounds great. However, after I convert it to WAV using Remixer, it has many pops & crackles in it....very noticeable in the first few seconds of the song since there are no words.

Has anyone noticed this problem ?? Is there anything else I can do to improve?