Burning Your Own CDs

Unlike ripping songs from a CD, burning digital music to CD doesn't require you to set a lot of format options. That's because whatever format the original file is in, when it gets copied to CD it gets encoded into the CD Audio (CDA) format. All music CDs use the CDA format, so whether you're burning an MP3 or WMA file, your CD burner software translates it to CDA before the copy is made.

There are no quality levels to set, either. All CDA-format files are encoded at the same bit rate. So you really don't have any configuration to doother than deciding which songs you want to copy.

How CD Burning Works

tip

To play your new CD in a regular (non-PC) CD player, record in the CD-R format and use a blank CD-R disc specifically labeled for audio use. (CD-RW discs will not play in most home CD players.)

The easiest way to burn a CD full of songs is to assemble a playlist beforehand (in your CD burner program), and then copy that entire playlist. You can record up to 74 minutes (650MB) worth of music on a standard CD-R disc, or 80 minutes (700MB) on an enhanced disc.

After you've decided which songs to copy, load a blank CD-R disc into your computer's CD-R/RW drive, launch your CD burner software, and then follow the program's instructions to start translating and copying the song files. After the ripping begins, the digital music files on your hard drive are converted and copied onto a blank CD-R in standard CD Audio format.

tip

A quicker way to select songs is to create a playlist first, then select that single playlist on the Burn tab.

Burning the CD

Just as you used Windows Media Player to rip CDs to hard disk, you can also use WMP to burn CDs from songs stored on your hard disk. Here's all you need to do:

1.	Insert a blank CD-R disc into your computer's CD-R/RW drive. caution If you're trying to copy too much music to the CD, WMP will display a "May Not Fit" message in the Status column of the final tracks. WMP will try to fit these tracks on the CD, but there may not be room for them.
2.	From within WMP, select the Burn tab, as shown in Figure 31.3. Figure 31.3. Getting ready to burn a CD with files from your hard disk.
3.	Pull down the Items to Burn list (on the left) and select All Music.
4.	Check those songs you want to burn to CD.
5.	Select your CD-R/RW drive from the Device list (on the right), then select Audio CD.
6.	Click the Start Burn button.
7.	WMP now inspects the files you want to copy, converts them to CDA format, and copies them to your CD.

tip

To create labels for your custom CDs, use a label maker program like cdrLabel (www.ziplabel.com) or the Neato CD Labeler Kit (www.neato.com).

When the entire process is done, WMP displays a Closing Disk message for the final track on your playlist. The burning is not complete until this message is displayed.