CHAPTER 13

760 Chapter 13 Optical Storage
Don’t Forget the Software!
If you have persistent problems with making CDs, your recording software might be to blame. Check the vendor’s Web
site for tips and software updates. Be sure that your software is up-to-date and compatible with your drive and your drive’s
firmware revision. Some drives offer software-upgradable firmware similar to the motherboard’s flash BIOS; if so, be sure
your drive has the latest firmware available.
Each of the major CD-R/CD-RW drive vendors provides extensive technical notes to help you achieve reliable recordings.
You can also find helpful information on SCSI adapter vendors’ Web sites and the Web sites of the media vendors.
Creating Music CDs
Newer CD-R, CD-RW, and CD-ROM drives are enabling people to create customized archives of their
favorite prerecorded music. Roxio’s Easy CD-Creator, for example, features the SpinDoctor utility to
build music CDs and even removes pops, hiss, and other problems from old analog cassette tapes and
vinyl LPs.
Digital audio extraction allows the digital tracks on commercial CDs to be transformed into WAV files
by compatible mastering programs. Those WAV files, exactly like the ones created from older music
sources via your sound card, can then create a CD-R, which can be played back in any popular CD
stereo system.
Many users can take advantage of this type of software to burn greatest hits collections and holiday
CDs from their purchased cassette and music CD collections.
This exciting technology is not intended to give you a way to create a free music library. Instead, use
it to give the music recordings you’ve paid for an extra dimension of usefulness, and of course, to
make legal backups of the discs you have purchased.
Digital Audio Extraction
All CD-ROM drives can play Red Book–formatted CD-DA discs, but not all CD-ROM drives can read
CD-DA discs. The difference sounds subtle, but it is actually quite dramatic. If you enjoy music and
want to use your PC to manage your music collection, the ability to read the audio data digitally is an
important function for your CD (and DVD) drives because it enables you to much more easily and
accurately store, manipulate, and eventually write back out audio tracks.
CD-ROM drives installed in PCs can play audio discs. The playing function is simple: Using a CD
player application (such as the one included with Windows 95 and later), you can insert a CD-DA disc
into a CD-ROM drive and play it just as you could with a standard audio CD player. While playing,
the analog sound waveform is sent over a thin stereo cable (usually refered to as the CD audio cable)
connected between your CD-ROM drive and the sound card in your PC. The same analog waveform
usually is also sent to the headphone jack on the front of the drive (or sound card). Your sound card
then amplifies the analog signal so you can hear it through the speakers plugged into your sound card
or via headphones plugged into the front of the drive (or the sound card).
That is just fine if all you want to do is play discs, but if you ever want to record one of the songs on
your hard disk, you will run into some problems. To transfer the song to your hard drive, you would
have to play the song as you did normally and simultaneously use a sound recorder application, such
as the Sound Recorder supplied with Windows 95 and later (similar recording software is also typically
supplied with your sound card), to redigitize the audio waveform for storage as a .WAV file on the PC.
This means the sound goes from digital as originally stored on the disc to analog in the CD-ROM
drive and back to digital in your sound card, with the resulting digital file being only an approximation
of the original digital data. Another drawback is that this procedure runs only at 1x speed—
hardly an ideal situation!