User Manual

WAVELAB
21 – 580 Burning an audio CD
UPC/EAN codes
UPC stands for “Universal Product Code”. Some CD/DVD-R units allow
you to specify this code, which is a thirteen-digit catalog number for the
disc. Also known as EAN.
Pre-emphasis
Pre-emphasis works by boosting (or pre-emphasizing) high frequencies
before burning the CD, and cutting (de-emphasizing) them when playing
back. The theoretical result of this is that the desired audio is returned to
normal sound, but any other high frequency content (noise) in the record-
ing is reduced.
Disc-At-Once – Writing CD-Rs for duplication into “real” CDs
WaveLab only writes audio CDs in Disc-at-Once mode. There are three
good reasons for this:
• If you want to create a CD-R to use as a master for a real CD production,
you must write the CD-R in Disc-At-Once mode. In this mode, the entire
disc is written in one pass, without ever turning off the recording laser.
There are other ways of writing a CD, namely Track-At-Once and Multi-
Session. If you use these writing formats, the “link blocks” created to link
the various recording passes together will be recognized as “uncorrect-
able errors” when you try to master from the CD-R. These links can also
result in clicks when playing back the CD.
• Disc-At-Once mode provides more flexibility when specifying pause
lengths between tracks.
• Disc-At-Once is the only mode that supports sub-indexes.
Writing on the fly vs. CD images
WaveLab always writes a CD on the fly, that is, it does not create a CD
image before burning. This method makes writing CDs faster and requires
much less disk space. However, if for some reason you need to, WaveLab
lets you join all audio tracks in a basic audio CD into one large file that can
be used as an “image” of the entire CD.
Using Exabyte tape drives – Creating DDP files
Those who work professionally creating CDs may prefer not to burn di-
rectly to CD-R, but instead create a file in DDP format (according to the
DCA standard), for example on Exabyte tape.