Help me! I am woefully ignorant when it comes to CD burners. Which CD burner is a good one to buy? How do I convert .mp3’s into .wav files? What kind of software/ drivers will I need? and how do I use them? What speed burner is good for making music discs? What is the difference between a writer and a re-writer?
My you do ask a lot of questions in one thread. 
I own a Smart and Friendly IDE CD-RW drive. It was at a good price and works out great for me. My brother the computer hardware geek says that SCI interface drives are better. However he has a Yamaha SCI CD drive and still makes coasters. IDE is easier to hook up (just like another hard drive), and you don’t need another card and other cables like you do with SCI.
For converting MP3s to regular CD Audio, I love Nero. It provides wizards that take you through the process of creating an Audio CD, and you just drag your MP3s to the Audio CD and it converts it and everything.
http://www.emedialive.com/awards/award31.html
As far as I have been able to tell, speed makes no difference on quality. Just make sure you get CD-R’s that are compatible with your speed of drive. Speed has more to do with the time you want to wait rather than quality. When I make a music CD in the morning, I’ll set everything up and hit the shower. By the time I am dressed the CD is ready.
A CD-R is a drive standard where you can only write ONCE. If a mistake is made in the burning process, you have created a “coaster” (worthless). However the benefit of this standard is that all CD readers (even audio CD players) can read this format.
A CD-RW is a rewritable standard. Basically this is a disc that you can write and rewrite many times. If a mistake is encountered during the burning process, you can just erase the CD-RW and start over again. It is said that these can be rewritten about 1,000 times, but I have yet to have one go bad on me. The problem with this standard is the “burn” is very light and can only be read by readers that can adjust for this standard. Most audio players won’t play music CDs recorded on CD-RWs. My Sony rack CD player will play them and the stereo in my 2001 Chevy will (with hesitation), but every other CD player I own won’t play them.
I have noticed that on some of my CD-Rs I get lots of pops, and those are the ones that I burned on 4x speed, and the 1x speed ones are ok. Of course, that’s probably because the ones I burned on single speed were burned with the superior program which is crippleware so it only burns at single speed, and the ones I burned at 4 speed were burned with an inferior program. So basically, I’m not giving you any useful information, except that CD burneres are cool.
I’ve had a bunch of CD writers. Most 8x or better name brand units will be fine. I like the new Plextor 12x IDE units. Around 230 (www.buy.com with 30. off coupon see http://www.dealnews.com) with burnproff feature that more or less eliminates failed burns (ie costers) due to buffer underrun.
A minor correction to Rainbow Dragon:
All audio CD players made in the past 3 years or so will play CDR’s with music on them. Before that, it’s a crapshoot. Not all older audio CD players will read the CDR, and some will skip annoyingly.
I’ve been wondering about this subject too.
First just a recap (tell me if I’m wrong):
[li]my stereo system CD player is vintage 1991 or so, so I need to burn audio CD-Rs for it.[/li]
[li]A CD-RW drive can burn CD-Rs, it’s just a matter of using blank CD-R media instead of CD-RW.[/li]
[li]CD-RWs can be damaged (erased?) by prolonged exposure to bright light (like the sun).[/li]
Second: My PC has a DVD/CD-ROM drive (IDE, I believe). Will it complicate installation or operation of the CD-RW?
I am new to burning CD’s and I just tried a little experiment with the one (1) audio CD I have burned so far. I first tried to play it in a very old (1995) personal CD player–it worked! Then I tried playing it in my older (1993) and much abused CD boombox–it worked again! The only car we have with a CD player in it is in storage for the winter, so I couldn’t test it in the car CD player, but when I tried the disc in an almost brand new (July 2000) regular (hooked up to the TV) DVD player–No go :-(. This disc plays fine in my CD-ROM/DVD drive on my computer–I wonder why the regular DVD player (it plays “store-bought” audio CD’s fine) won’t recognize my burned CD? The disc I used was one of the 50 free discs I got when I bought my CD burner, so they are the cheapies. I’ll have to try again with a more expensive brand of CD-R.
Both the DVD drive on my computer and the one hooked up to the TV are Toshibas.
If you aren’t comfortable with installing your own CDRW drive inside your computer, you can do like I did and purchase an external drive that connects via a USB port.
PROS:
*Ease of setup–turn your computer on, plug in the CDRW drive, the computer detects new hardware and prompts you for the install disc. A no brainer.
*Portability–I can easily unplug my drive and bring it with me to work, were I can back up all my data onto CD and bring it home with me.
CONS:
*Current speed limit of 4x4x6 (Write speed/Re-write speed/Read speed as measured by how much times faster a normal cd would play in your stereo) due to data transfer limitations in standard USB connections. HOWEVER, I wouldn’t recommend creating audio CDs at any speed higher than 4x. Doing so greatly increases the chances of bad cd burns.
*External drives will run you about $100 more than internal ones
Your typical CDRW will usually come with a program called Easy CD Creator, which is indeed easy… just drag and drop your files into a window which shows how much room you have left on a cd you’re gonna burn… click “go”… that’s it! If you’re going to burn audio cds and do data backup, there’s no need to purchase any other kind of fancy CD writing programs.
I would also recommend that you purchase CDRs from name brand manufacturers. You can go into large computer retail stores and purchase shrink-wrapped stacks of 100 blank cdrs for ridiculously low prices, but my experience has been that these result in a way higher incidence of bad burns and stereo combatibility issues. Why save $10 if you’re gonna be burning bad disks? Pay extra and get cdrs from the likes of TDK, Sony, Memorex, etc.
When you actually get down to burning a cdr, make sure you have all other programs shut down–including screensaver-type stuff that kick in after a few minutes’ worth of inactivity. It’s a great idea to have de-fragged your hard drive ahead of time too. You want to avoid anything that may create a “hiccup, stutter” or otherwise interrupt the flow of data from your hard drive to the cdr itself. When the burning process is interrupted, this results in what’s called a “buffer underrun.” Basically, data isn’t getting transferred to the cdr in a consistent manner and the laser-head in the drive loses its place and the result is a worthless cdr. It’s my understanding that there are programs such as “Burn Proof” to avoid such things.
Hope this helps, I’ve just learned by doing and this is just my opinion on the subject.
Oh, and one more thing. Among the brand name CD-Rs, you should avoid Maxell. It’s ironic considering what quality cassettes Maxell makes that they make such shitty CD-Rs.
Ignore my question
After further review, I found out my DVD player is not CD-R compatable. I feel like such a fool :-(.
One of these days I’ll be able to figure out stuff like this myself without panicking and calling for help. 
There is an FAQ here