OFF: total cost of CD-Recording (was Re: new bootleg)

[cjohnson]

       Apologies to those non-computer people on this list; the following
       contains no direct references to HW or BOC, but has been a hot
       topic of discussion lately.

       I have been doing ***LOTS*** of thinking about CD-Recordables, and
       have been checking into things a bit.  Here is my list of required
       items in order to set up your own CDR system at home:

       Item                                      Price Range
       --------------------------------------    -------------
       Pentium PC (w/PCI bus)                    $2000 - $2500
       Wide-SCSI2 controller card for PCI bus    $ 250 - $400
       Micropolis 4.3-Gigabyte "AV" hard disk    $1100 - $1400
       low-end 2x CD-Recorder (Pinnacle or HP)   $1000 - $1300
       possibly Corel CD-Creator software        $  70 - $120
       decent-or-better sound card               $ 300 - $600
       audio mastering software                  $  80 - $400

       Consumables
       -------------
       blank 74-minute CDR media @ $7.00 each
       round CD-labels for CDR media @ $.50 each

       Access to:
       ----------
       - color printer (optional)
       - color scanner (optional)

       To make the final product even more professional, you would also
       require a Color Printer for the round CDR label and the front and
       back inserts, and possibly a color scanner to produce the artwork.
       You may also want to use some kind of page layout program, such as
       Quark Express or Adobe Pagemaker, and some cool fonts for the text.

       You cannot cut corners for your hard drive, or you will get regular
       "buffer underruns".  The hard drive must be Fast-SCSI2 or Fast- and
       Wide-SCSI2 (Wide is faster, but not much more expensive).  The hard
       drive must also be rated "AV" (for audio/video).  These drives
       start at about $800 for a 1-GB, so a 4-GB (above) is a much better
       deal.

       The CDR unit itself could be one of the 3 low end units such as the
       Pinnacle Micro, the HP, or the Smart & Friendly unit.  All are 2x,
       and if you get a hard drive like those described above any of these
       CDR machines will work.  Note that all CDR units are currently
       SCSI, so this requires a good SCSI controller card for your PC.

       If you got a cheap CDR unit, the CD Mastering software that came
       with it will probably be insufficient.  However Corel has an
       excellent cheap, easy-to-use package called CD Creator.

       You have to get the audio recording (typically an analog cassette)
       onto your hard drive, so you will need a good or great quality
       sound card (and a playback device connected to it to play the
       tape).  A cheap sound card may cause drop-outs during your transfer
       to the PC.  At least one company has put out a dedicated sound card
       specifically for recording analog audio to your hard disk, but this
       one-shot card is around $600.  If you use DAT tapes, your job may
       get a little easier, though.

       Once the audio recording is on your hard disk, you will most likely
       need to "master" this in some way, to clean up any excess noise,
       cut out any bad patches, and bring out the music better.  This kind
       of work is still as much art as it is science.  PC-based packages
       to do this start around $80 for Wave for Windows, and go up from
       there.  The key requirement is that your package must be able to
       edit the WAV file directly on the disk -- most packages are limited
       to the amount of RAM on your PC.

       The one good thing is that CDR blank media has dropped in price.
       It is actually cheaper than buying QIC-80 tapes!

       Working with CDR at work, we have settled on using a round sticker
       for labeling the actual CD itself.  We use Quark Express to
       generate the label, print the sticker on a Tektronix Color Printer,
       and just slap it on the disk.  This is cheap (we buy the
       pre-perforated CDR labels in quantity for 50 cents each), and
       allows you the flexibility to put anything you want on the label.
       Color printing may cost as much as $1 per page, if you do not
       already have access to a color printer.  The other option is to
       silk-screen the CDs; this may be quite expensive for a small run of
       disks.

       And finally, you must have some audio tapes that you want to
       record...you know, the source material!

       The gist of all this is that, with an initial investment of between
       $4500 - $6000, you can produce music CDs from your own audio tapes
       for less than $9 each.  When someone makes and sells these CDs for
       $30 each, they are making about $20 profit towards paying back
       their initial investment.

       If anybody has any further comments, questions, or discussions,
       feel free to Email me privately (or on BOC-L, if relevent).

       Captain Cloud
       cjohnson at sur1a.hpsc.hisd.harris.com