(ã 1998)
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The
Making Of An Album
Page 10
- Burning The Audio CD -
by Michael Tyler
Computer Music Products
I formatted a blank CD-R in preparation for writing (burning) the first audio CD of the project. Using the Easy CD Audio software, I created a queue list of the songs in the order we wanted them to appear on the album. The software leads you by the hand every step of the way, so this was extremely simple to do. I then directed the software to go ahead and burn an audio CD. I burned the CD at 2X speed so it took about half as long to create the CD as it would to actually play it.
In about 20 minutes, I had my first CD ready to listen to. I was thrilled to say the least! Everything sounded great, but I noticed some of the overall volume levels from song to song needed adjusting. Of course, I had anticipated this. This is where the mastering mixdown took place for me. I wanted to hear what the songs actually sounded like from a CD before playing with the overall levels. The goal here is to adjust the volume relationships between songs so that a listener isn't forced to reach for his stereo's volume control every time a new song comes up.
I made notes of the songs that needed adjustments, opened the WAV files within Cakewalk, and made the adjustments. Then I re-exported the WAV files, overwriting the originals. I burned another CD, and took a listen. I actually repeated this process about a half a dozen times before Jeremy and I were satisfied with the song transitions. Thank goodness the blank CD-R's are cheap (less than $2.00 apiece). We now had our final sub-master CD to send off to the duplicator!
Next Page (pg. 11) Contacting The Duplicating House
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