Got a hot laptop? Hold off for six months or so till all the new USB2.0 portable burners hit the market. They may end up faster than the internals and be a whole lot easier to setup. Got an old laptop? Get used to being a second class citizen (4x). Don’t forget to check out the software bundle. Want to check out a whole slew of burner reviews? Surf on over to www.pcworld.com, I saw four comparison articles on most of the latest burners. Remember, burner speed is like the number of cup holders in a new car. It takes six and a half minutes to burn an 80 minute music CD at 12x, it takes four minutes at 24x. But you will probably spend thirty minutes copying and preparing the wav files for recording.

A predisposition to problems
One of the biggest problems most folks have in learning to use a high tech piece of gear, like a burner, is they treat their knowledge of Windows the same way they eat at a buffet. A little of this and a dab of that. Usually, just enough to get on the net and do a few basic things. Burning CDs is mostly working with files. Creating them, renaming, copying, moving, deleting, and changing properties. If your eyes glaze over when you hear “drag and drop” or “file properties”, consider signing up for a review with Vade Forrester and Don Rist. They do a great six hour Windows 95/98 class every month. It’s free and one of the best things you can do to prepare yourself to learn how to burn CDs.

What’s happnen’ in the burner world
Universal Music Group is preparing to release CDs with a new form of copy guard. It’s called Cactus Data Shield from the Israeli company Midbar Tech. It is supposed to scramble the data on an audio CD so that CD and DVD drives used by PCs can't play them. The technology is expected to be applied to at least one new CD release from Universal before the end of the year. They don’t have to put a warning on the CD.

Sanyo announced they are coming out with their first portable CD-RW drive with an IDE interface. The 24x10x32x CRD-SBP15A drive will have BURN-Proof. But, the really big news is they have developed FlexSS-BP and Shock-BP to work with BURN-Proof to reduce coasters caused by vibration and tracking errors, a real problem with very fast internal and external light weight burners. IO-Data and TDK are already working on using this drive. This is big magic for high speed burners that are all prone to vibrations.

Sanyo’s new 32x10x40x CD-RW should be in stores by the end of November with IDE and SCSI interface models. It will have BURN-Proof and a 4 MB buffer. WOW!

Sanyo also says they have developed a way to stop the copying of CD-ROM discs to CD-Rs. The culprit is a hidden file of data that will cause errors when recorded.

Nuqen Media plans to release their new 32x blank CD-Rs before Christmas .

Sony has released standards for the new Double Density CD-ROM/-R/-RW with 1.3 GB data capacity. This allows manufacturers to utilize their current CD technologies and production facilities to manufacture Double Density CDs. The Double Density CD formats' high capacity is realized by a few simple modifications to the CD formats. To increase data density, track-pitch and minimum pit length are miniaturized to increase the data capacity from 650MB to 1.3GB. To accommodate higher physical bit density, a parameter in the error-correction scheme (CIRC) has been changed, and the address format (ATIP) has been expanded. A copy control scheme (CIRC7) will be included in the format to meet the increasing demands for secure content protection.

Interested in copy protection? DoMin8Tor posted an interesting article, SafeAudio explained and should we fear it? on http://cdfreaks.com. It sheds a little light on Macrovision and their efforts to keep you from making that legal archive copy. Expect to find an improved SafeDisk2 in new games.

Just had to upgrade to Windows XP? And find your CD Recorder is not working? Surf over to Microsoft’s Knowledge Base and check out article #q309691 for the fix. Also, if you have ECDC5 Platinum, Roxio has the XP updater for you at www.roxio.com. And don’t expect your current favorite burner software to work with XP, it’s not just an NT upgrade, it’s a whole new ball game.

For the Linux challenged, Lindows is working to make Windows software run on a Linux OS. Read about it. Should be available for 99 bucks from www.lindows.com in first quarter, 2002.

The latest iteration of CloneCD version 3.1.1.0 is ready for download.http://www.elby.org To see if your burner is supported by CloneCD go to elby., click the first letter of your burner maker and find your machine on the list. If it is supported, download it from the site. CloneCD and CDMate, with the right burner and the most current firmware, should be able to make a 1 to 1 archive copy of any CD currently out there. For the best CloneCD setup info go to cdrinfo.  Some other clone software is Clony, CD Master Clone and Blind read/write.

Burning tip of the month
Still trying to make quality MP3 music files? As Sean says, it’s impossible, but do-able. Let’s see, first we take a perfectly great sounding music wav file, and beat it down to one tenth of its original size with an MP3 encoder. Then we expect it to sound as good as the original. Well, maybe not exactly as good as the original, but darn close. After researching the net for the best advise, here’s what works for me. First, install the alternate CD file system in Win9X/ME (sorry XP). Drag & drop the wav files from the music CD to a working folder on your hard drive. Reset the file properties from read only.  Normalize all the wav files. Setup the free Lame encoder from www.sulaco.org with the following settings from www.r3mix.net
LAME -V 1 -b 128 -h -m j -q 1

Setting explanation:

-V 1  the 2nd highest quality mode of VBR (variable bit rate) encoding.
-b    128 minimum bit rate of 128 kbps.
-h    represents high quality mode
-m j  selects the Joint Stereo mode
-q 1  initializes a more aggressive method of using psycho  acoustics. Typically gives 10%improvement in compression, but decreases the encoding speed.

Encode the MP3 files to a separate folder on your hard disk. Why? Now is the time to check the quality of the MP3 files with EncSpot from <>. It uses a color code to indicate which files are good and which are questionable. Now it’s time for the acid test, the listen test. If a file doesn’t sound right, delete it. Go to the folder with the wav file and listen to it. If it doesn’t sound right, delete it. Clean the original CD and copy it again. Sometimes you can clean up a wav file with a wav editor. Encode it again. Experiment with the -M and -Q settings until you get the sound you want. And when you are happy with all your MP3 files, burn a CD using your favorite burner software. I use ECDC5 Platinum MP3 because it is simple and easy to operate. Yes, a few boo boos always manage to slip by, but when you are dealing with 150 to 200 songs, that’s not too shabby. You can always redo the CD. Yeah right!

By the way, I’ve been keeping an eye on MPEG4 AAC, but it’s not ready for prime time YET. MP3Pro shows a lot of promise, but I only have the 128 free encoder www.rca.com and it doesn’t sound too good.

Alamo PC has also seen his other skills come forward with the move to the Computer Learning Center in Crossroads Mall, doing some highly skilled work and the finish work on the walls at the new location, skills learned during the years and had lived in military housing that always needed remodeling. Dale spent over 30 years in the Army as a helicopter pilot. He enjoyed the challenge of Army life, the variety of living places, and the foods of other cultures. He retired from the Army 14 years ago.