Off: Writing CD's

[Paul Mather]

On Wed, 16 Oct 1996, Andy C wrote:

> This is way off subject but I guess some one here may have more of an
> idea than I.  Is it possible to take a .wav or .au file and write it onto a
> CD in such a way that the CD will then play in a normal cd-player ?

If you want the CD to play in every normal CD player, it must be mastered as
according to the CD-DA "Red Book" specifications.  Probably the best way
to ensure this is to get yourself some CD mastering/authoring software
that can produce red book CDs.  Make sure the software can output in red
book format.

You will need the authoring software anyway to massage the .au or .wav
files into the correct sample size and rate for CD-DA.  (For example, if
your .au/.wav file is 8-bit mono sampled at, say, 16 KHz, you'll need to
get the software to resample it as 16-bit stereo @ 44.1 KHz for CD-DA.)
You'll probably also want the mastering software for re-EQing the tracks
so they're all uniformly level and alike.

> The reason ?
> Some of us are playing around with a method to get AC-3 onto PAL
> laserdisks and want to make a demo of it to pass round.

I dunno what AC-3 is, but laserdiscs are a whole different kettle of fish
when it comes to mastering seeing as how they (at least the original
beasties) encode the video as an *analogue* (not digital) signal!  (I
believe audio is still encoded as a digital track.)

Cheers,

Paul.

ob3CD: Frank Zappa, _L\"ather_

e-mail: paul at csgrad.cs.vt.edu                    A stranger in a strange land.