Nero

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Nero

You'll also need a CD burning program. I use Stomp RecordNow Max (which ships free with many CD burners) to make simple audio CDs. It's easy to use, powerful, and comes free with most burners. I use the wizard. Just follow the prompts and create a new audio CD by dragging the song files into the left side, and then hitting the Burn icon at the top (eight icons from the left, just below the Window menu).

The status bar at the bottom will tell you how much room you have left on a blank CD.

Before burning, if you like, you can rearrange the song order by dragging them around in the list with your mouse.

You can burn one CD or many. (You can save the configuration, so you don't have to re-do it each time.) Many people, when starting out, make records on CD with print runs of as little as 10 or 20 and just burn more as they run out.

Figure 13.4. Nero.

Figure 13.5. More of Nero.

You can burn one copy and use it as a master to take to a CD duplication place and get hundreds (or thousands) of copies made.

Some stores (particularly chains) won't carry burned CDs because they won't play on every machine. Ones replicated by a duplication house (even if created from a burned CD) will.

Close other programs ( especially memory hogs like Photoshop and interrupt hogs like audio and video players) while burning CDs. Go offline. The burner may put skips on the CD if it runs out of memory at any point in the burn.

If you do this and still end up with skips, you may need more RAM or a faster processor.

Also, you might turn off air conditioners and other power suckers. If they're running on the same circuit as your computer, it can cause energy fluctuations that can affect burning adversely.

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