[LMB] OT: AKICOTL Audible / I tunes onto CDs

[Michael Bauminger]

On Tuesday, May 06, 2008 5:48 PM, queenortart 
<queenortart at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2008/5/6 Becca <becca_price at yahoo.com>:
>
> > I've learned the hard way that it's important to not
> > have *any* other windows open when you're burning books
> > to cd, and not to use your computer for anything other
> > than burning until the book's done. Can this be your
> > problem?
>
>
> I shall try it, no-one ever told me it might be an issue
> before now. I normally have *loads* of windows open at
> any one time

There are two possible issues -- improper burning speed and 
buffer underrun. If the media you are burning is only rated 
to be written at 8X and you are trying to write at 16X (or 
similar mismatches) you can get bad sectors on the burn. The 
second problem is a little more technical. When a track is 
being burned, you get the best results if it is burned in 
one pass; that means that the data has to be available to 
the burning program when it needs it. If too much else is 
being done on the computer at the same time, the buffer that 
stores the data for the burning program can be emptied 
before it can be reloaded from the data on the hard drive. 
If that happens, depending on the burner you are using and 
the features it has, you can end up with bad sectors on the 
burn.

The more modern your computer and burner, the less you 
should suffer from either of these problems. Newer computers 
have faster hard drives and newer burners. Newer burners 
have faster writing speeds, bigger internal caches, and a 
feature called "Burn protection" or something similar that 
modern burning programs can enable that prevents bad burns 
even if you underrun the buffer. Another thing you can do is 
enable the Verify after Write feature in the burning 
program. This will not prevent a bad burn, but it will tell 
you if the burn you just made went bad so that you can toss 
the bad disk and try again while you have the whole burn set 
up to go.

-- Michael