PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Rendering Process-Wav Files Wont Burn To CD-R

Shannon -

I'm not at my home computer, so I can't do screen shots (I can do that this evening, if necessary). I am assuming that you want to create an audio CD that you can play in your stereo CD player. Please let me know if that is an incorrect assumption.

You mentioned trying to burn 60 CD's. Unless your songs are about 1 minute each, there's no way you are going to get 60 songs on one CD.

Let's go back to the basics.

A CD-R (which stands for Compact Disc-Recordable) generally comes in two different sizes: either 650 MB (which represents 74 minutes of standard audio) or 700 MB (which represents 80 minutes of standard audio).

Standard audio is a WAV file. WAV files use about 10 MB of space per minute of audio. So with (on average) 3 1/2 minute songs, you can get about 20 or 21 songs max on an audio CD.

Audio CDs (like you buy in the store of your favorite artists) are laid out differently from data CDs. Audio CDs are designed to be played back using an audio CD player (which could be your computer, or a stereo audio CD deck or your car player). Just copying WAV files to a blank CD (essentially creating a DATA CD) is not the same thing as creating an audio CD. Most CD burning programs allow you to do both. The DATA CD will not play in your audio CD player***.

You asked about why you need a dedicated CD burning program. It's because what's built into Windows, or the Mini-Burn in BIAB are just very basic programs without many features.

My recommendation is to use BIAB to render your songs to WAV. Doing that, once a file is finished, you are allowed the opportunity to preview it (by default, I believe it brings up Windows Media Player), so you can hear if it rendered properly or if all you get are clicks. Repeat for each song, making note of where the file is saved (by default in the same folder location as the BIAB song).

Once you have the WAV files saved, then open your CD burning application (CDBurnerXP is free and it will create audio CDs). I use Nero on my computer, but you have to pay for it. Most CD burning apps allow you to create an audio compilation and just drag the WAV files into the compilation. They will let you know when you have exceeded the capacity of the blank CD.

For audio CDs, you also want to make sure you select the option to "close" or "finalize" the CD. If you don't, you'll find it won't play properly on any device other than the one you created it on.

I don't know if this helped; let us know. I can provide more information this evening (with screen shots), if necessary.

*** unless it's, for example, your car's dual system player that can play both audio CD's and MP3/WMA/WAV data CDs.