How to Burn a High Quality Audio CD

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Burn a High Quality Audio CD

Though it may seem like a simple process, burning a high quality audio CD can be fairly complicated without guidance. A variety of factors and settings can completely alter the way your CD sounds when burned. You can simply burn a CD, but if you want it to have the best quality sound when you pop it into your CD player, there are a few things you must take into consideration. Use this article as a guide as you burn a high quality audio CD.

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Step 1

Only burn music that was ripped at a bit rate of 128 kbps. When ripping music from a CD to a computer, you can choose to rip it at high quality or low quality. High quality will result in the music sounding the best that it can, but will also end up with a large file size. A low quality rip won't sound as good, but the file size will be small. Right-click on the music file you wish to burn and select the "Properties" option. If the bit rate is anything less than 128 kbps (the standard bit rate of professionally produced audio CDs), it is going to sound bad after you burn it.

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Step 2

Burn at the slowest speed possible. Your burner may be able to burn at a speed of 148x, but there is also a chance of something going wrong when burning that fast. In the settings options of your CD burning software, select "1x" when asked which burn speed you'd like to operate at. It will take longer to burn the disc, but there will be no mistakes like skipping or lost tracks when you're done.

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Step 3

Use high quality CDs. Though the off-brand pack of blank CDs may look tempting at $9.99 for 100 at the store, the off-brand ultimately won't give you the best quality because the CD itself was cheaply manufactured. Spend the extra dollars and get a name-brand like Sony for the best possible disc quality.

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