I’m one of those people who takes making CD compilations seriously. I’ll start with a theme or mood, then take a couple of weeks to create a songlist. When I finally burn the CD, I often change my mind about the way it should sound, and tweak a few songs. Anyway, I end up with all of these “first drafts” that I never listen to again. Likewise, I have other burned CDs that I don’t listen to anymore and are taking up valuable living space. Is there a way I can erase these CDs and still be able to go back and burn more tracks on them? I’ve heard that passing CDs through a magnetic field may do this, but how would I go about this? Would the CD be good as a brand-new blank CD? Or would it merely be a useless piece of plastic that can no longer play or record tracks?
Sorry if this is confusing. This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.
There are two kinds of recordable CDs: CD-R and CD-RW. CD-Rs cannot be erased, but CD-RWs can. In practice, I’ve found that the price difference between the two in bulk packages is enough to make CD-RW rarely worth it if you’re doing a fair amount of recording.
Note that in order to handle CD-RW recording (or erasing) you need a burner that can handle the format. Most modern ones can, and will say so somewhere in the manual, on the packaging, etc. Also, please note that you cannot reuse bulk-produced CDs, which are manufacured in an entirely different way.
Yeah. CD-Rs can’t be erased, you may have heard about adding to CD-Rs that already had music on them (which is possible if you don’t finalize a CD).
As Some Guy said (I gotta put that in bold or I just sound stupid, heh), the price of CD-RWs (and compatability with some players, btw) make them generally not able to match up with the CD-Rs.
In bulk you can get CD-Rs at a quarter a pop, who cares if you burn a few that will end up in the trash.
CD-Rs are write once. Everything you put on the disc is there until it gets destroyed in some way. With multi-session discs, you can add more material onto a disc if it still has room. But be warned, some CD players cannot handle multi-session discs well. (Many also do not handle CD-RWs.) I strongly advice people to make only disc-at-once recordings for music CD-Rs.
If you want to make a modest change to a burned CD-R, go into your software, have it import the old session, make your changes, burn the changes. Note that even just changing the ToC can eat up several megs of space, not even counting adding new songs. (The old session is still there though, accessible with suitable software.)
Why is this? I just read the FAQ, but I’m still a little confused. I’ve always burned CDs on the default setting of track-at-once. They usually play OK in CD players other than my computer, but not always. Would this make a difference?
It might. There a many reasons a given disc might not play in a given device. Others include bad dye color (try a different brand), the speed at which it is burned, using an 80 minute CD in a device not designed for them, etc. My main reason is the gap (which more or less requires it) and just to eliminate one less worry factor. Serious “tape” traders like DeadHeads won’t even talk to you if your CD-Rs are track-at-once. So some people get kinda religious about it.
